Framing and Composition

The Rule Of Thirds:

This rule means that whatever is in front of you should be divided into nine equal parts, this applies in photography and in framing compositions in media. These nine equal parts are by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines. Compositional elements should be placed amongst these lines or the intersections of them.

Here is an example of a photograph using the rule of thirds:



By using the rule of thirds it makes it more interesting for the viewer, the main reason for observing this rule is to discourage the subject being placed in the center of a shot, or to prevent a horizon from appearing to divide the picture in half.

Oliver!

As a treat for my mum's birthday I took her to see 'Oliver!' in the theatre. We have wanted to see it since Jodie Pregner was starring as 'Nancy' but we could never get tickets. My brother and I managed to get some good tickets though the cast is now different to how it was when it first started.

I was looking forward to it and I felt it definitely lived up to my expectations. I thought the set was amazing and there was always so much going on, it was brilliant! The songs in the musical are all really good as well and the way they were performed was very good. The choreography went specifically to the beats and it looked really effective. Here is a video I found on youtube of past people that were part of the musical.

Justice - Stress

Here is the music video for Justice's song 'Stress'. The video has caused a lot of controversy due to the violent content it involves.



The video was first posted on May 1st by Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay (Justice) on rap artists Kanye West website. The video is around 7 minutes long and it displays a group of French adolescents in jackets with the Justice logo on the back. There was an uproar as many people thought it was just youths of African descent shown in the video, but it is clearly youths of all different descents shown in the video. The youths cause havoc in the video and it goes to the electro beat of the music. It is filmed in a documentary type style as if they are being followed by a camera crew. They harass women, break a bottle over a cafe owners head, fight with the police and steal a car. The video ends with the car being set alight and the cameraman apparently beaten unconscious. The screen goes black and then a voice screams in French, "Does filming this get you off, you S.O.B?".

In France the video caused much uproar, and the police saw the video without knowing it was an official music video. This raised huge concern and a hunt began for the people shown in the footage. Two of the actors were found and remained in custody until they were proven innocent for the crimes committed in the video by Justice.

There was a parody made of the video which has also been a big hit in France, here is the parody:

Useful tips for a successful music video

Here are some useful points to consider whilst considering how to make our music video look successful:

Lip Syncing
- Know your lyrics (One mistake could ruin the entire look of the video).
- Pronunciation (Words need to be clear to the viewer).
- Mouth what it sounds like.
- Only lipsync the lead singers words not the backup as it can ruin continuity.
- Play the song whilst miming.

Lyrics
- Lyrics tends to establish a general mood, feeling or sense of subject metter, rather than offering coherent meaning.
- Key lines may play a part in the associated visuals but rarely will a music video simply wholly illustrate the lyrics. Remember mise-en-scene.

Music
- Take note of the tempo and pay attention to this during editing.
- Repeat with the beat.

Genre
- Some music videos do transcend genre while others can be categorised.
- Some music channels focus on genre, pay attention to this and think of what channels your video will be played on.
- Show genre conventions through; Mise-en-scene, narrative themes, performance, camera & editing style

Camerawork
- Take note of your camera movement, angles and shot distance.
- Camera movements may accompany the movement of the performers or be used to create a dynamic feel or disorientate.
- Close ups of the singer usually dominate.

Editing
- Usually fast paced, pay attention to the pace of your song

Our Questionnaire

The following is the Questionnaire we have made, results are to follow.

1. How old are you?
-14 [ ] 14-16 [ ] 17-20 [ ] 21-25 [ ] 25-30 [ ] 30+ [ ]

2. Are you male or female?
Male [ ] Female [ ]

3. How do you usually watch music videos?
TV [ ] Internet [ ] Download [ ] Other [ ]

4. What is your favourite genre?
Rock [ ] Pop [ ] Alternative [ ] Jazz [ ] RnB [ ] Heavy metal [ ] Classical [ ] Other [ ]

5. How often do you watch music videos?
Never [ ] Everyday [ ] Every week [ ] Every few weeks [ ] Rarely [ ]

6. Do you prefer funny or serious music videos?
Funny [ ] Serious [ ]

7. Do you prefer music videos that are reaistic or non realistic?
Realistic [ ] Non realistic [ ]

8. What are your expectations of rock music videos?

9. How do you interpret the lyrics "She's such a charmer"?

10. What music channel would you expect to see a Kings of Leon music video on?

11. What colours do you think represent the rock genre? and why?

Questionnaire Content

In order to gain some ideas or to consolidate on those we already have we are making a questionnaire to gain some audience feedback on various aspects regarding music videos to gain some ideas.

We will be finding out:
- Who our audience are
- Where are they?
- How they gain access to music videos
- Their expectations of a music video from our particular genre

In order to gain a good amount of information we will be including a variety of qualitative and quantitative questions in our questionnaire. As well as this being useful for our own sakes, it is also better to have a variety of types of questions for the people answering the questionnaire, this way they don't get (as) bored.

The group have not decided how we are going to distribute our questionnaire as of yet, whether it is face to face or on the internet, there is a wide range of options of how we can distribute it. We are hoping however to have some face to face questionnaires with people and filming it on our flip cameras so it can be uploaded straight to our blogs.

Andrew Goodwin's analysis on music videos.

When we were on our trip at Rich Mix, Pete Fraser spoke to us about the theory Andrew Goodwin displays in his book called 'Dancing in the distraction factory'. This theory involves what he feels are the 6 key points of what should be displayed in a music video.

These are:

1. It should demonstrate genre conventions, for example in a rock video, a stage performance. Another example would be a pop video's artist having a particular dance routine.

2. There must be a relationship between lyrics and visuals. This can be whether it is illustrative, amplifying or cotradicting but there has to be some kind of relationship between the lyrics and the visuals appearing in the music video.

3. Again, there should be a relationship between the music and visuals too, whether its illustrative, amplifying or contradicting.

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs that run which recur across their work
(there is a creative style)

5. There is frequent reference to looking and the notion of looking
(screens within screens, telescopes and voyeuristic treatment of the female body)

6. Intertextual reference to films, Tv programmes and other music videos is often used.

Lip syncing

As a group we were deciding on where we could have our band playing. We thought we would try out our school hall as a possible place and decided we would stand in the positions we would have each member of the band in. Molly was on guitar, Charlotte was on bass, Aimie was on the Drums, and I just looked silly as lead vocalist. We decided whilst looking at the positioning we'd do our own rendition of 'Charmer' in order to practice lip syncing.

Here is a video of what we got up to:



We realised whilst editing just this small section that the editing has to be so precise. We also fimed a close up of Charlottes mouth singing the words as we are wanting to have a camera shot like this in our actual music video. Though it is slightly out of time, we are getting the hang of it and we knew it wouldn't be an easy job.

Trip to Rich Mix

As a class we made a trip to Bethnal Green to 'Rich Mix', an up and coming arts centre. At Rich Mix they were holding a music video workshop called 'MTV to Youtube'. First of all we were welcomed by the Rich Mix Education officer, Thalia Cassimatis. She informed us of the itinerary for the day.

We were firstly spoken to by Pete Fraser, the Chief Examiner for OCR A Level Media Studies. He spoke to us about the history of music video, mentioning the roots and the beginning of music videos. He showed us Len Lye: A Colour Box which is believed to be one of the starting points of music videos as it was made in 1935.




We were taken through the history and worked our way up to music videos of the present time. We looked at various videos ranging from the Beatles to Jay-Z. He spoke about how the Jay-Z music video for 99 problems was different at the time to what people had seen before as he got a different director to direct this video for him in comparison to usual. He managed to get Rick Rubin to direct his video who was a very renowned director for the rock genre's music videos. He worked with the likes of the Slipknot, Metallica, System Of A Down and Rage Against The Machine. This gave '99 Problems' a different edge to most usual hip hop videos, and the amount of cuts used in the music video is certainly noticeable which Pete Fraser pointed out at the start of the music video.




The video is shot entirely in black-and-white. It received a lot of praise and also a lot of criticism from the public. It was no surprise that there would be controversy following the end of the music video with Jay-Z being shot with multiple bullets by people we do not see. This is very controversial as music video networks would not usually air videos with any violent content. On MTV, there was an explanation on every airing of the video to why it was appropriate to air the video unedited.

We were also shown a music video that was a remix of Jay-Z's 'The Black Album' and the Beatles 'The White Album' by Dangermouse (a DJ) forming a mashup of the two naming it 'The Grey Video'. I'd never seen this before and found it interesting as we were informed that music video producers heard the track and decided to then 'mash up' the video which I think looks really effective.




Pete Fraser then went on to give us tips for making our own music videos as well as informing us about the main conventions of a music video. We were then given our task to think of a concept for a music video to a given song. Pete Fraser announced the song that we would be thinking of an idea for would be Biffy Clyro - God & Satan. This caused a bit of excitement amongst some people from our school! We breaked for lunch and as a school we conducted a meeting and thought of some ideas.

Our concept:

We decided that we would have two individuals hunched over at a bar for the opening shot of the music video to 'God & Satan'. Then a split screen of the individuals and their doings to represent God & Satan. The person being represented as God would be a doctor and the person as Satan a drug addict, however due to events happening the audience's view would be switched from the stereotype they had of the doctor and drug addict as it infact would be the other way round as the doctor would be 'Satan' and the drug addict would be 'God'

The Afternoon session:

We came back from lunch to be spoken to by Liz Kessler who works in the industry producing and commissioning music videos. I found her talk really interesting as she spoke to us about all the different jobs and their roles that are possible in her specific field of the media and she also spoke about the stages of producing a music video. Liz Kessler showed us some of her exsisting work with music videos and upcoming music videos that haven't been released yet. She spoke to us about the problems encountered and also the successes. I found her talk very useful and interesting due to the fact that a lot of what was being said could definitely contribute towards helping make our music video better.

Here is one of her videos for Paolo Nutini, who stated in the brief that he wanted to be in the music video, but at the same time, he didn't.



Following this, the pitch was made for the idea for the music video of 'God & Satan'. This featured Pete Fraser, Liz Kessler, and Corin Hardy - a music director who we were still awaiting to be spoken to by. Each school pitched their ideas and then Charlotte and Dom took their turn to pitch our idea. It went down well as it got a clap from the audience which pleased us. The feedback we received from each of the panel was also very good so we were happy that our ideas and efforts paid off.

After the pitch, there was then an interview based talk with Corin Hardy and Pete Fraser. This was all about him working as a music video director and I found this very interesting. We were shown some of his work and a lot of it is mainly animation based unlike his video for God & Satan. I love the video for warriors dance - the prodigy, and when I found out he made the video for it I have to say I was quite inspired.

OMD

I went to see 'Orchestral Manoeuvres in the dark' with my family a few days ago and they were brilliant. I've had a strong interest in them for a while now as my family quite enjoy their music. I decided to look at some of their music videos because they would have been made in the 1980's to see how they would look

Here is their hit, 'Walking on the Milky Way'.



and here is a hit from their forthcoming album, "If you want it'.



It is obvious from these two videos how far music videos have come in the past 20 years due to technology. It can be seen quite clearly how camera's have advanced due to the quality these are shown in.