(21/9/10) week 2 of the music video topic

We spent the morning looking at more music videos with good examples of lip syncing such as the song 'There She Goes' by 'Six Pence, None the Richer'(below), while we were watching Mr. Duran also ran us through the use of different camera angles. Mr. Duran told us that students frequently came back from filming their band to find fatal problems in there filming such as no interesting camera angles (close ups, over shoulder, etc) or they filmed it in a dim room which meant their video was dark and dull. We then were given an mp3 player with 'There She Goes' on it, a portable speaker and a video camera and were told to go outside and film each other lip syncing the words to the song. Me and Michael decided it would be easier to mime 'Three Little Birds' by 'Bob Marley'. After about ten minutes of me and Michael arguing who should go first I managed to conquer my embarrassment and mime words while Michael filmed this excruciating episode. After that Michael did the same but just before I started filming he managed to poke him self in the eye, which meant he was squinting the whole time.It was unfortunate ,but still a rather funny event. (couldn't get the original 'There She Goes' so I got the American version.) Today was fun and satisfying. I successfully learnt to use film editing soft ware to lip-sync . It was also really useful to see to students past work and to learn valuable tips on camera angles. I think I now appreciate that when filming you need plenty of different shots such as close ups ,otherwise successful editing can become a real challenge!

(14/9/10) The first day of the 'MUSIC VIDEOS' topic

Today was the beginning of the our new topic -'MUSIC VIDEOS' .Obviously ,as the title states we will be making our own music video. In more detail we would be making our own music videos from scratch, using songs made by local bands. We were shown some music videos which I will explain in more detail in my research report. We were then shown some music videos made by the previous group, the one I liked the most was by Hadid and Ronnie who did some incredible cutting and pasting, which made it look like he was walking towards the camera while the enviroment around him kept snapping to somewhere else. I'd like to find out how thats done as I feel it could be used in a lot of ways.

MUSIC VIDEO

'Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley: I first heard about this song from a friend who was trying to make a remix of it. Although I didn't know a thing about this song I did remember hearing it a long time ago. I ended up liking it quite a lot and decided to help make a remix. While doing so

we used a lot of the original video, so I saw a lot of it.

The original music video (on the right) looks a lot like those ink prints you famously get at psychiatric tests.

The ink pulses with the beat and changes with the song. Mixed in to the ink is the faces of the musicians who are singing (a good example is the picture on the right). I had problems getting the video so here is a link to the video on You Tube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2B6SjMh_w&ob=av2e





THE LATE 1980'S

'Take On Me' by A-HA : I heard this song in an advert and found out from my mum it was a song from the 80's (1985 to be exact). It was one of the first music videos of its time to use such a massive amount of special effects, particularly a mix of drawn animation and film.

Its starts with animated sketches of race cars which start to move. It zooms out to show a young women reading a comic ion a busy cafe.The love interest in the magazine winks at her and then invites her into the story by extending a drawn hand out to her.

She accepts and the video now has a lot of fun showing us both characters,and other lesser band members in both filmed and animated states. A very cool video I thought,especially as it would of taken so long to sketch out all the frames. Pretty incredible for its time.

I really like the idea of maybe using still comic strips in a music video. A kind of Roy Lichtenstein .

'Thriller' by Michael Jackson was released on November 30, 1982 by Epic Records as the follow-up to Jackson's successful 1979 album, Off the wall. Thriller cemented Jackson's status as one of the top pop stars of the late 20th century.The video's release was hugely hyped and long awaited. It was also an unprecedented length, running for about 15 minutes. Often referred to as the greatest music video ever and has also been voted the most influential pop music video of all time, Thriller proved to have a profound effect on popular culture and was named "a watershed moment for the music industry for its unprecedented merging of filmmaking and music. Guinness World records listed it in 2006 as the "most successful music video", selling over 9 million units. It was directed by John Landis,a film maker who had made 'An American Werewolf in London.I WILL EXPAND ON THIS AS WE GO THROUGH THE TOPIC.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is a song by the British rock band Queen. It was written by Freddie Mercury for the band's 1975 album. The song has no chorus, instead consisting of three main parts - a ballad segment ending with a guitar solo, an operatic passage, and a heavy rock section.

When it was released as a single, "Bohemian Rhapsody" became a huge commercial success, staying at the top of the UK charts for nine weeks and selling more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. Though some artists had made video clips to accompany songs,it was only after the success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that it became regular practice for record companies to produce promotional videos for artists' single releases.This video is really the mother of all videos and the beginning of the contemporary mix of sound and image.