Change of Plan

Originally, we were planning on shooting our music video at St. Michaels and All Angels Church on the 30th of December. However, a few days prior to our shoot the vicar told us that the church would be under construction from the beginning of the new year and we would be unable to film in there again. This meant that we would have to change church because we knew it would take more than one day of filming to complete our video. We decided to go to the church anyway in order to practise using the camera, but when we arrived no one was there to let us inside.
We then had to look for a new church. Alfie contacted another local church in Dartford called the Holy Trinity Church, and they agreed to let us use the church on the 15th January.

FinalCut Effects

Here are some of the tutorials of effects we watched for the making of our own video.

The first tutorial I found helpful was 'Creating the Flim Look'. This effect gives the video a higher contrast and lowered saturation, giving it a more professional and film like display. The tutuorial also describes how to change lighting and tints in the video, so our music video could contain an orange tint to reflect warm colours in the church. The video also shows how to use the colour corrector tool and overlay the same clips to create a more vibrant colour in the video.

Actor Profiles

Actors Clothing

I drew this picture of the types of clothing we want our band members to wear as this will reflect the formal style of the video.

Things Learned from Storyboarding

From using FinalCut to create our animatic, we learned how to import music and shots into the program, how to input text and image overlays, and adding effects and transitions to our music video.

For the beginning of our music video, to reflect the slow pace of the music, we incorporated fading transitions. The list of transitions and effects can be seen on the right. For cuts between a chorus and verse we used an additive dissolve, which appeared a lot quicker and sharper, depicting the quicker pace of music.

For some of our shots, we are going to have camera movement and pans but we could not convey this in our drawings. We used a text overlay to show pans and movement that would occur when we film the music video.

The above screenshot shows the other effects and tools we could possibly use when editing the final video. Blurs and Lens Flares may be used as well as changing the colours of the video. We could use saturation or contrast tools when making our video.

Animatic Storyboard

Whilst creating the animatic we made various changes to the storyboard, for example video transitions at the beginning, reflecting the slow pace of the music. We then mirrored this idea for the end of the song to create consistency and also show that th emusic is slowing down again.

We had to find a powerful and unique shot for our final shot, so we began thinking of things we could use in the church. Candles and darkness gave a good contrast for our final scene so we thought that we could have the singer blowing out a candle at the end of the song. We then had to decide which shot to use, and we had two good choices. The first of these was a long shot whereby you could only see the singer blowing out the candle and the light coming through the stained glass window. Another idea was to end with a close up of the singer blowing out the candle and the whole screen fading to black.

We chose the final idea as our final shot because we thought it was more emotive and relevant to the lyrics. We knew that we then needed to incorporate candles into the music video throughout so that the video made sense, so we decided to have various candles dotted around the setting of the video.

Effects and Cuts

This is a clip from a video by Clocks and Clouds. I liked the way the video cuts to the beat of the drums and the video overlays used to put two people in one shot.

St. Michael's and All Angels Church Slideshow

Changes to Storyboard

As we began to create a storyboard in sync with our song, we realised that we needed far more cuts than we first planned, and that the confession box idea was unlikely to work. The first reason for this was that the churches we had found did not have a confession box, and as we had been working in final cut, we found that the video was working well without the confession box idea.

The first of the changes was to remove the confession box idea, as we were not finding it prominent in the music video. We then had to draw new shots to fill the gaps that the confession box idea left.

The second change came when we showed our original storyboard to our teacher. She felt that the opening shot of the video was good and the cuts after the start of the chorus were in time, but the opening needed to be more precise. She recommended cutting on certain notes of the cello, so we decided to rearrange some of our shots. As we had dropped the images into final cut it was easy to move them around and we found that this opening worked better.

After seeing how much better the opening of the song looked with more cuts, we decided to implicate this on the rest of the video.

We changed our method of storyboarding, and began to draw shots as we needed them, dropping them into final cut and progressing int his way. We needed more shots and cuts than we thought when we were just listening to the song and drawing. By individually syncing each shot the music, we built up a more precise storyboard.



Here you can see a screenshot of the layout of FinalCut and how our storyboard is coming along.

Learning Final Cut

Elliot used a CD and book to learn the basics of Final Cut, and then showed us what he had learned.

Storyboarding

After finalising the setting and picking the various actors for the video, we had to begin storyboarding. We had little idea how long this process would actually take until we got down to doing it. Here you can see various pictures of us working on the storyboard.

1. Initially, we sat down as a group and simply listened to the song, and imagined which cuts, shots and angles we could use. The hard part was then recording our ideas, and agreeing on them as a group. We had to continuously listen to the song, sometimes only a second at a time, and then write down what cuts and shots we should use. There were many disagreements during the process but eventually we found something that pleased everyone.

2. We then had to draw out the ideas we had already written using the storyboard sheets. Alfie and I listened to the song, whilst I drew the angles and shots he was describing. Aflie also made note of the timings for each shot and their duration. Elliot then listened to the song along with the images we had drawn and pointed out flaws or weaknesses.

3. The image on the right shows some of the progress we have made with storyboard. You can see the images we have put together and the piece of paper we used initially to record ideas.After we made it to around halfway through storyboarding the song, we took photographs of the images we had drawn incase we lost any sheets, and then began to upload them onto the computers. We then began to edit them into final cut along with the music, to see how it was looking so far.

Church Options

St. Michaels and All Angels Church

After our e-mail back from the church St Michaels and All Angels, we visited the website to see if they had any images of inside the church.
We found this:
Our first impressions were that the setting was ideal, and we all particularly liked the large window as we had planned for this sort of church. However Alfie said that he was unsure of the space below the window that we could use to film, so we e-mailed the church back asking if we could visit and look around for ourselves.

The image of the stained glass window that we found proved to be very promising, as it was the type of window that we were looking for.










Stone St. Mary's Church, Greenhithe

This is the church that Alfie's friend Ollie can gain access to, but there were now pictures of the interior on the website. We then arranged with ollie as to when we could go and taken pictures of the church and ask a few questions regarding the filming.

Both churches have many perks and it will be difficult to chose. St. Michaels is a 10 minute walk from school, so an ideal place to film and a place that is local to the entire group. However, the problems we are worrying about at the moment are that there will not be enough room or objects may get in the way of filming. This is only based on the picture we have seen from the website, so we need to visit to make sure. We would also have to check specific dates with the church which may become a problem if we need to re-film some parts, but the vicar seemed happy to help us in his e-mail. Stone St. Mary's church is further away from where we all live, and may pose problems for actors getting there. However because Ollie can get keys to the church, it would be ideal as we could film almost whenever we wanted to.

Finding the Actors

We began to look for people that could play the desired instruments in our video. The most tricky role to fill was the cello, as it is quite rare that people play it. We began to ask around and see who is reliable to perform in our video.
We decided that the band members should be wearing smart/casual clothing, ideally blazers and shirts or shirts and ties. This formal look will fit better with out video and also with the church setting.
Here are some examples of how clothing changed with the setting of a video:

We began to fill the roles of our music video and came up with this list of actors:

Mike-Drums
Dan-Lead Singer
Ollie-Cello/Violin

Luckily, Ollie can play both the cello and the violin, and also knows people who play the violin. This was very handy because it means that we had a choice of who to cast, something we didn't think we would get with the violin and the cello. Ollie also knows a church in Greenhithe that would be happy to let us use the church as a setting, and Ollie could get keys, so gaining access when it suited us best wouldn't be a problem.

Finding The Right Setting

We began to look for an ideal church to set our music video in. We need to find a local church, preferably with a stained glass window, and we need to ask permission to firstly look around the church and whether we would be able to perform inside the church.

We would have to ask what day would be best to film on and whether everything we want in our music video can be filmed there.
We decided to email a few churches local to us and see what their responses would be to our ideas.

We decided that the churches needed to be local to us and easy to get to. The e-mail above is to a church near to Alfie's house, which made it ideal because it was so close.

The church close to Alfie's house was our first reply, and we decided to ask whether we could look around and see whether it was an ideal place to set our video.

We looked at our timetables and decided that the most convenient time to go would be on a Tuesday afternoon, and we could all meet after lunch at school. The church is only a 10 minute walk from our school so this made it easy for us to meet.

Thankfully, Richard e-mailed back saying that this was a good time to meet, and that he would see us on Tuesday. When we visit the church, we will take pictures of the setting, and ask various questions about setting up in the church.

Instruments and Camera Shots

When we began to think about the types of shots we were going to use in the video, we first had to think about who would be most priviledged in the video. The video is a way of promoting the band, so longshots of the entire band must feature in the video. Close ups of the drums, lead singer and key instruments need to be shown to show the dexterity of the band and comply with traditional conventions of music videos.

Through research into music videos of our genre, we knew many ways in which singers and drummers could be presented in a music video, however we had not come across a cello before. Therefore we began to research into some ways that the cello is performed and depicted in music videos.

Here are a series of images from a band called 'Murder by Death'. They are a cello rock group, similar to the genre of our song choice. The images of the cello are often very close up with images of the strings. Longer shots are used as the pace of the music picks up, and the person who is playing the cello is seen moving quicker.

Close ups of the strings and a small part of the hand is one of my favourite shots, and something we will be looking to use in our video, particularly at the beginning of the song where the pace of the music is slow.

Longer shots and medium close ups can be used when the pace of the music increases, and the faster movements of the person playing the cello can be seen clearly.

 These are some images from music videos put together by the Piano Guys. The images above show longer shots and the types of angles that can be used when filming a cello. My favourite is the image on the left, shot from a slightly low angle, and I feel it gives a great emphasis on the importance of the cello.

These medium close up shots become more prevalent as the speed of the music picks up. I think that the image on the left we could incorporate into our own music video. The image in the center shows the person playing the cello rather than a medium close up of the cello strings or bow. There is a focus on the persons face and left hand in this shot.

The series of close ups of the cello are very interesting, and I particularly liked the one on the right that has a blurred hand and an in-focus cello. The image in the center is interesting because the close up is not of the bow, it is of the left hand nearer the top of the cello. This shot is not as common and I think it would be good to incorporate this into our video.

This shot is interesting because of the angle that the cello is shot from. I cannot see this working in our video because of the pace of the song but this does show the range of shots that can be used when filming a cello. 

Despite this shot not relating to the cello, I found this image of the drums in one of the Piano Guys' videos. when story boarding, we planned to include a shot just like this one in our own video.

Pitch Two

Our second pitch stemmed mostly from the idea of a church and the religious aspect of our song. We thought that a church, particularly one with a large stained glass window would be ideal to shoot our band in. We still wanted to keep a partial narrative to our video, but decided that it would be better if we devised a narrative that wasn't to far different from our performance. We thought the best idea would be a confession box within the church were the band are performing, featuring only the lead singer as he 'confesses'.

We had many ideas for the beginning of our video, for example:
A close up of the stained glass window, then a pan down to the cello as the song begins to play
A tracking shot of the lead singers feet as he walks up the aisle towards the rest of the band at the beginning of the song
A long shot as the lead singer opens the door to the church in slow motion and enters

The main instruments that would be priviledged are:
The cello
The violin
The drums

There will be many close ups of the singer throughout the song, and many of our camera shots will onvolve movement as the pace of the song picks up. We could imagine a shaky camera focusing on the violin as the speed of the song picks up.

Song Themes and Ideas

The strongest idea we had for a music video was based on the idea of confession within the song. We thought that a church originally was the best place to set the music video as it a place people go to for confession and redemption. We liked the idea of having a stained glass window behind the band as they performed and as we studied the song closely we thought that shots of the lead singer sitting inside a confessions box would be ideal. We studied the lyrics in more detail and jotted down some ideas and shots we would associate with certain lines:

'Something to get off my chest'

Ideas of secrets, lies, and confession, with the singer appearing upset or guilty

'Need something that I can confess' 

Would be an ideal line to say whilst inside a confession box, once again implying that the singer has done something wrong that he is ashamed of

'I'm gonna give all my secrets away'

 Relates to confession and being open about something, a shot could involve the singer gesturing strongly to show he is open about giving away his secrets

'Come by it honestly I swear'

 The word honest ties in with the themes of confession and secrets

'My God, amazing how we got this far'

 This line shows that the lyrics could have been talking about a journey of lies and dishonesty and now it is coming to an end, the confession box could be end of the journey.

All display religious or confession imagery and make a church setting even more ideal. Lines such as 'need something that I can confess' could be performed from inside a confessions box and would a way in which the video reflects the song lyrics. These ideas have added a small narrative option to our video which we had not previously thought about before, as we had originally decided to create an entirely performance video. However our ideas have changed the more we have thought about the song and setting.

Video Ideas and Brainstorm

This is a spider diagram showing our intitial ideas. The ideas need to be developed and prioritised, but we chose to use a spider diagram because we could spread a large amount of ideas onto one page.

Lyrics - Secrets

I need another story Something to get off my chest My life gets kind of boring Need something that I can confess Till all my sleeves are stained red From all the truth that I've said Come by it honestly I swear Thought you saw me wink, no, I've been on the brink, so (CHORUS) Tell me what you want to hear Something that were like those years I'm sick of all the insincere So I'm gonna give all my secrets away This time Don't need another perfect lie Don't care if critics ever jump in line I'm Gonna give all my secrets away My God, amazing how we got this far It's like were chasing all those stars Who's driving shiny big black cars And everyday I see the news All the problems we could solve And when a situation rises Just write it into an album Singing straight to cold? I don't really like my flow, no, so (CHORUS) Got no reason Got no shame Got no family I can blame Just don't let me disappear I'ma tell you everything (CHORUS x2) All my secrets away (x2)

Pitch One

Our first pitch of ideas involved more of a narrative style of video. We had already identified the theme of the song as confession and dishonesty, and then linked this to the line 'Till all my sleeves are stained red'. We then thought that this lyric could imply that a murder has taken place and perhaps the singer is feeling to guilty and emotional. We were going to have a narrative and performance based video, but concentrating mainly on the narritive part. Our teacher then told us that a murder is probably to powerful to display in a music video, and is rarely seen. We knew that controversial videos like 'Smack My Bitch Up' did include involve these sorts of narratives, but the peaceful nature of our song compared the the song by The Prodigy did not make it a good narrative for our song. We then began to plan a more performance based video.

Audience Research

An interesting and authentic music video and promotion package can seriously affect the success of a band. This document gave me a lot of advice in its marketing chapter on page 20 about how the success of a band can rely on their music video and promotion packages, as well as specifically researching their target audience.

"Videos are an essential tool for reaching music fans through services such as YouTube and social networking sites as well as specialist TV channels".

Stronger video, shot in 2007, had a reported budget of more than US$1 million and was filmed on location in Japan over nine days".

"Digital technology can be used to develop relationships between artists and fans".

I also researched into Q magazine as this is the sort of magazine that our adverts will be appearing in.

Q is a monthly music magazine with a total circulation of around 80000. It features a wide range of music and reviews of many different bands, spanning from the rock bands to the pop artists.

The magazine has a large review section, which looks at bands, artists and live performances. The majority of the interviews are taken with popular artists, no matter what genre they happen to be in.This type of magazine makes it ideal to advertise our band in.

 I looked at an issue of Q myself and found that there were 146 pages in the magazine. This is quite a lot of pages for a magazine considering most others have less than 100.

There are 24 pages of adverts, most appearing at the back of the magazine. 16% of the magazine is advertisements, and overall, there are 15 individual adverts for albums. On some pages, more than one advert is featured on the page.

There is also a huge section at the end of the magazine devoted to reviewing albums and promoting tours and gigs. This type of magazine would be ideal for our magazine advert.

What Music Channel would it appear on?

When looking into the the target audience of our video, we had to bare in mind what channel the video would be featured on. As there are so many different genres of music, MTV have expanded so that it has individual channels for each genre of music.

Our video would fit best on MTV Rocks. From the playlists and highlights section, you can see that this channel displays simiar artists and music to what we are using in our music video.

Target Audience

The music video will be used in order to promote the band as a whole, so we felt a performance video would do best at establishing iconography and the roles of each band member. This is also a common feature of music videos in the genre so would make sense to follow the conventions.

Looking at the site UK Tribes, I began to plan who our target audience would be. Clearly it would be anyone that likes the rock/alternative genre or One Republic, but other interests such as hobbies, fashion and media consumption needed to be looked at to produce a video and ancillary tasks fitting to our target audience.

The target audience most likely to consume our video would be the Young Alts 'tribe'. Tribe icons include Green Day and Kurt Cobain, fitting to the genre we have chosen.

UK tribes states that:

'Young Alts are after something different, but beyond that, they’re not exactly decided. They’ll read about or listen to a huge variety of bands and try Skater, Emo and even Urban fashions. They also love a lot of mainstream fashion and music.

Young Alts are wide eyed to the world and can be influenced by TV, radio and mainstream media. Of course, the biggest influence is the playground and their friendship groups, and they constantly scour specialist magazines and the internet for news and clues about their favourite scenes.'
I found these points interesting as it shows that the target audience we are aiming at is extremely flexible. This allows us lots of options when it comes to filming the video concerning fashion, props and general mise-en-scène. By studying the media consumption table and the description of the tribe, I found out many useful things about the tribe and how it could be targeted. 

The target audience have an extremely high consumption of both TV and magazines, so a magazine advert for the band and an effective music video is likely to attract people from this tribe.

Young Alts also like 'a lot of mainstream fashion' so by choosing a smart/casual look for our band members in our performance video we can address the style and fashion sense of our target audience.

In relation to the magazine advert, the magazine that it would appear in and the genre of the song greatly affects the layout and presentation of the advert. As the screen grab from UK Tribes suggests, our target audience like to read many magazines such as Kerrang and NME, but also 'listen to a wide variety of bands', meaning that a magazine such as Q would be appropriate for our target audience as it includes a wide range of bands.

Copyright Permission

After choosing our song, we had to gain copyright permission to use the song. Ryan Tedder, the lead singer of One Republic, wrote and produced the song so we needed to contact him in some way. We found an e-mail address related to the band, and decided to send an e-mail asking for copyright permission.

Chosen Song

Our chosen song is 'Secrets' by One Republic. They are an American rock band, formed in 2002 consisting of:

• Ryan Tedder - lead vocals, acoustic guitar
• Zach Filkins - lead guitar
• Drew Brown - acoustic guitar, keyboard, piano
• Eddie Fisher - drums, percussion
• Brent Kutzle - bass guitar, cello

'Secrets' was released in 2009, classified as both pop rock and cello rock. It was written by Ryan Tedder, and the original music video is both narrative and performance.

'Secrets'

'Secrets' by 'One Republic' is our first choice of song to create a music video for.

Our first idea as soon as the song begins to play relies on the powerful introduction of the cello. We immediately decided that a close up of someone playing the cello would be the best introduction to the video. However, as finding someone who can play the cello may be a challenge, we had to come up with a second idea in case.

One idea that everyone liked was setting our video in a church, with the band positioned in front of the stained glass window. Ideally, we would not need much lighting of our own as the light coming through the window would give us enough.

We then believed that another interesting introduction to the video would be a slow camera movement through the aisle of the church, moving towards the band positioned at the alter. The camera would reach the lead singer as soon as the singing began, and the slow movement of the camera would reflect the cello but it wouldn't be necessary to see the cello.

Other instruments we could hear included violins, drums, and the keyboard. The vocals were the most prominent part of the song apart from the cello, so we thought that emphasis would be on these two factors the most. The violin becomes more important towards the end of the song, but we realised that some instruments were not essential to the overall video.

For the first 10 seconds of the song, we expect to have slow moving camera movements, possible with pans and zooms to reflect the slow pace of the cello. As the singing begins, we expect to cut to the lead singer with a close up and as the song picks up pace rapid cuts will be used.

We aimed to have lots of close ups of the band and they played the instruments and sang, without a narrative or storyline to the video.

Intial Ideas

We began brainstorming our ideas and came up with a number of artists and bands we could use for our music video.

After listening to various songs, we narrowed down our choices to 'Pumped Up Kicks' by Foster the People, and 'Secrets' by One Republic.

Editing in Music Videos - Tips

Tips for Production on Prezi

Conventions of Rock/Alternative Music Videos

For my music video, I am looking at the Rock/Alternative genre. The music itself can be interpreted in many ways as well as being easy to recreate in a performance video because of the instruments used to make the music.

Generally, in Rock/Alternative music videos, there are many shots of the band or artist, along with their instruments. The visuals typically illustrate the music, whereby the band are seen playing the instruments we can hear.

The range of shots used in a video include close ups of the vocalist, close ups of the instruments being played, long shots of the whole band, panning shots, whip-pans, high angle shots, and hand-held shots. There is a strong focus on instruments in this genre of music video, unlike pop videos which concentrate more the artist themselves. In some videos, there can be cuts between performance and narrative. The narrative generally plays upon a small part of the lyrics or just one line, and in many cases the links between lyrics and narrative visuals are unclear. Some visuals are intertextual references or metaphorical links to the lyrics. Camera movement can be frantic or slow, depending on the music. Slow motion and distortion effects can also be used.

Cuts and edits relate to the beats and instruments played in the music video, there are usually successions of quick shots during the song. This can change at the bridge of the song, but then editing will change with the pace of the music. It is unlikely that you will find a song with shots lasting longer than five seconds. The drums are a key instrument to drive the pace of the editing.

Many videos are filmed on a stage, rehearsal area, outdoors or in a small room. Low key lighting is used to reflect the genre of music and mood, and the scene will be based around the band and their instruments. What the artist is wearing depends on the song and whether it is a performance or narrative, with slower songs tending to depict more formally dressed characters.