Brief

A promotion Package for the release of an Album, to include a music promo video, together with the the following two options

• a cover for its release as part of a digipack (CD/DVD package)
• a magazine advertisement for the digipack

Dead Ringer For Love by Meatloaf Feat. Cher

                              

The song is a duet between two famous singers but is more in the style of Meatloaf, Rock opera. The song tells the story that is being played out on screen. the lighting is dark with dim lights hanging from above and neon lighting at the windows to show the club or 'joint' that the pair hang out in. There are no visual effects and the shots have straight cuts between them to play out to the idea of the story being played out with the song, like an opera. Meatloaf is wearing a dress shirt and suit, a characteristic costume which he uses in a variety of his videos, whilst Cher is in a short black skirt and leather jacket, her own trademark costume. By dressing the pair up in their trademark costumes this song becomes a clash of the two separate performers becoming one.

Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance

Link to Video

Welcome to the Black Parade is one of My Chemical Romances most famous videos. The band, popular for anarchist lyrics and dark Punk songs, created this music video to be a piece of art as well as a song. The song uses shades of black and white as dominant themes and stabs at political ideas in its use of costume, making everyone a member of a war and victims of sorts. The main costume of the band are military uniforms for a "black" marching band, mentioned in the song. The rest of the cast are wearing similarly black costumes, mourning the loss that is sung about in the song, however moving forward to represent the overcoming of fear. The band is nearly always seen playing their instruments on top of a float that leads the parade. This is common for a rock band to appear as performers and not as characters. The editing is usually a quick cut to black then to the next scene, illustrating black as a theme of the song. The scenery is of a post apocalyptic city, showing the world that has been ruined behind these people escaping what has occurred there, a war. The song is illustrating the pain and suffering we need to move on from and become better than.

Bad Apple!! by Masayoshi Minoshima (Lyrics by Haruka Vocal by nomico)

Bad Apple is a Japanese Shadow art animation that focuses on silhouette and transiting between black and white. The solo two colours represent the feeling of opposites that the song addresses, good and bad, yin and yang. The melody of the song was taken from a popular video game series called Touhou in which you are on the side of good facing evil. The various transiting people are all characters from these games. As in shadows they can be unrecognisable, the animator made sure to emphasize the costume or character trait that sums up the character best, such as Sakura, the maid, being shown after her mistress drops a cup (showing the work she does) and throwing a knife (her main attack in the game series). The song mentions changing emotions and ideas so the transitions between the characters flow from one onto another to represent this. This gives the piece a feeling of being one continuous shot. The game features complex patterns of bullets and projectiles, so the piece has a feel of being a pattern as everything flows.

To show a feeling of the song being about the characters and not the background, the majority of scenes use mid to close up shots of the cast, using longer shots to create a feeling of the scene changing, like in the change between 1:01 and 1:08. To show movement a lot of the camera shots are tracking or panning to follow the cast and progress into the scene. There is little to no true 'editing' as most scenes are a pieced together continuation, where the camera zooms from one colour to another and then fills in the gaps. The music is electronic, and so has harsh beats in it, so the transitions try to start moving on the beat as close as possible.

Hot by Avril Lavigne

The song is celebrating fame and the idea of being an idol. The theme colour is green to represent money and wealth, but also the jealousy that others feel towards her. She wears a variety of costumes as, as well as being a singer, she is a fashion designer. The clothes are quite punky and garish, but not too harsh as the song is not about feeling angry or bad about being famous, but embracing it. The editing is strange to a modern song, as it utilises screen wipes to black and then to the next scene to show a feeling of an aged film. The different backgrounds are representative of the different aspects of fame, the public, the performance, the darker feelings and the normal girl behind everything.



Gee by Girls Generation

Korean girls group Girls Generation consists of 9 separate girls so the music video has to show a mix of being a group and being separate entities. To do this the costume choices are similar colours and styles but no two costumes are the same in any scene. The colours in the music video are bright neon and pastel colours.Doing this gives the song a bright and happy feel and goes with the genre of "bubblegum" pop. The video is split into two distinct parts, the storyline of the mannequins coming to life and the dance routine. The full dance, done in the two separate locations, has become very iconic in Korean and Japanese culture which shows how important it is for the video. Dance routines are popular for pop groups as it gives the song a unique selling point of having a dance with it, which increases popularity. Other examples of this are the "Single Ladies" dance and "Thriller". The full dance routine has been released as a separate video and has had many copies and variations. Each girl has their own separate solo area of the song so the video focuses around one girl at a time, forwarding the idea of them being separate but at the same time together, as the main singer is usually surrounded by the others.

The cuts are on-the-beat straight cuts between the scenes, and uses continuity editing with the dances to show they are all the same dance, just at different locations. CG effects have been applied on the chalkboard scene to exaggerate the lyrics on the screen. This also gives a magical feel to the video as the characters the girls are representing are meant to be manikins brought to life, so by adding CG to the video it creates a more mystical feel. The main shot types used are long to extreme long shots or mid shot or the girls upper halves. This is used to sell the girls as a group, being shown together and having fun, and showing them as separate, by zooming in on each one individually. A lot of the shots pan to the left, giving an idea of someone rotating round them, making the dance seem more peppy as the camera is always moving, along with the girls.

My progress from Year 12 into Year 13 in Media

Group Lip-sync task In The Sun by She and Him

Assessment 13/7/11 MCU

WWW

You have used visual material to illustrate your roles.
You have improved your work from last time, but it could still be more detailled- the images used should show particular aspects of music video and could be captioned to show this- e.g. close up, singer looks directly at camera etc.

EBI

There are posts missing.
You have not discussed your development from AS to A2.
You have not uploaded the planning documents you made in advance of the filming day.
You have not explained the screen grabs of final cut- how do you use it?
The photograph of someone using Final cut is not you. You should upload the photo of you and discuss it- WWW and EBI of your editing skills.

There is a lot of work missing here Jordan.
EFFORT - IN

Working with Final Cut

WWW: I think that I picked up final cut very quickly and have understood how to work everything and how to maximize my efficiency on it. I also have been able to correctly cut and time the scenes so they fit with the song and the original music video.

EBI: I may have been a little overpowering and not given Luke enough to do on the piece as I did do quite a bit of it on my own instead of trying to allow Luke to help me out.

evaluation of group lip sync task

I was responsible for the choreography of the backing dancers for the day. This meant I had to look at the video and work out the routine, then translate that to the people in the background of the scene. By doing this role I have learnt how to run a group effectively, show an idea and have others understand what they need to do and leadership skills.

My overall usefulness on the day was high as I managed the dancers and performed to the best of my ability. However I did not participate in the filming or directing as much as I would have liked to. Also I feel that some of the time it was hard to communicate my ideas to the class, either due to my teaching which could have been too fast, or my class not turning up to prior rehearsal dates