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Saturday 5th December
Summary of Genre Conventions (Music Videos)
Today I looked through my music videos and collated the specifics of the technical elements (Camerawork, Editing, Mise en Scene) that were used in each music video. After doing this I put the notes into various neat forms that displayed the most conventional/unconventional things that were done across the music videos. The notes are below along with a few paragraphs of analysis for what it means for us making our production.
Genre Conventions: Camerawork
This is my collated data on camerawork throughout the music videos I've analysed.
Each column is one music video, the artists names are at the top to consider age/gender of artist and what may be applicable to each.
At the left most side you can see a camera shot/angle/movement, the ticks show which ones were present in each video.
From the grid I can see close ups, long shots and mid shots are the camera shots most used across all twenty videos, only two didn't use mid shots and one didn't feature a long shot. Because of the high frequency of the three shots we're going to use a mix of all three in our production, this will ensure we have basic camerawork as well as helping us follow the primary conventions.
Panning/zooms are used in all but four of the music videos I analysed, this means we're likely to use at least one of both in our production, I think these would be a good way to make our video more interesting and complex in terms of camerwork whilst still remaining relatively simple. Extreme close ups are another way we plan to do this in our video, although we plan to use extreme close ups of the artist red lips and her shoes since red will be an element of focus for us.
The above paragraph covers most of the most conventional camerawork that we're most likely to use in our production. Some of the less conventional shots we want to look into using are birds eye view (from above) shots, we feel this could be an interesting addition to our video and would like to explore this since it's not something we did last year. I think we'd also like to consider the use of a high/low angle shot for effect, potentially using one of the two repeatedly to create a specific opinion/view of one character and to create a recognisable image for the video.
Some of the less conventional shots we haven't looked at the potential use of are; shallow focus, tracking shots, establishing shots and extreme long shots. I think we should look at the use of shallow focus as it could be a beneficial effect for a particular shot we're brainstorming. Tracking shots could be potentially used for us to keep focus on the artist and create the artists iconography. I don't think there's place in our video for an extreme long shot or an establishing shot since we're focusing on the character/narrative of the music video. In order to highlight the location we're going to use (as setting is an important element of music videos) wide shots.
Genre Conventions: Mise En Scene
To show a range of presentation I decided not to use grids for all three elements as I felt it would be repetitive and less interesting to look back at during planning. However I still want to present them clearly visually, for these reasons I chose to do a mind map for Mise En Scene as it felt most appropriate for the technical element that can be broken down into several smaller groups.
There's a gallery below featuring the whole image of the mind map and pictures of each smaller group in order to see/read the mind map more carefully.
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In terms of location outside is clearly more used and therefore conventional in the music videos, because of this we will use an outdoor location however to create a more complex/interesting music video we plan to use more than one location. We think we're going to use an outdoor and an indoor location for more variation in our production.
Although all of the videos are balanced out in terms of how many props are used a small amount of props was used in the majority of the music videos. I think we'll likely use several props throughout our video however it's likely we're only going to put focus on a select few props that are of more significance than the others.
The most conventional colour scheme was made up of bright colours, however a dark colour scheme wasn't that far behind in terms of how many videos used them. In order to both conform to conventions and also challenge conventions by using a primarily dark colour scheme with one bright colour (in this case red) interspersed to highlight certain props and create iconography for the video/artist as well as to be unique in our colour scheme.
Our costume is going to make the colour scheme we're going to use, challenging the convention of dark costuming, having no costume (nudity) was incredibly unconventional being used in only one of the videos I analysed, however the use of it was extensive and consistent throughout the video, being used as a theme and concept. The use of revealing costume although not rare wasn't common in videos, we don't plan on using this in our video since sex appeal isn't one of the things our artist wants to base her image on, particularly because the song we're going to use has religious themes and she feels it wouldn't be respectable/tasteful in that sense.
Hey key lighting used throughout videos was most conventional however I think this would limit us in what effects we want to create as we plan to use darker themes (as conventions dictate) and the effects/messages conveyed may be numbed/less effective as messages if we were to use high key lighting throughout. In order to get a variety of effects we plan to use both high key and low key lighting for our production.
Genre Conventions: Editing
This is s PowToon I made to display the editing conventions I found based on my music video research into the indie genre.
The most conventional thing to do with editing pace was to use a mix of both fast and slow paced editing, I think we'll do this to conform to convention, create a range of effects and to create more complexity within our video. I think we'll also create more complexity through the use of various transitions, straight cuts was most conventional being used by all of the music videos analysed, however fades was also used quite often and is perhaps a transition we should used. Dissolves and wipes were seen a select few times through the videos, I think the use of one of these is liable to make our video more unique compared to the other videos. I think dissolves is more likely because wipes have a basic and somewhat comical connotations due to them being used in sit coms.
Other effects seen in videos include the use of filters (7 videos) I think we're likely to use filters in our video because it's a simple way to change the tone of the entire video, it's also something we made use of last year and can do relatively easily so it won't take up lots of our editing time. Cross cutting was used in one video to emphasis the emotions caused by the video, I don't think it would be suitable for our production. Image distortion (specifically blurring of images) is something we could make use of however I don't know if we will, I think it'll be dependant on our finalised plan for the production. Time lapse is something we very much want to try to use this year in our editing however I'm not sure how we'll fit it into the video.
Two of the videos used editing extensively throughout the video using it as a focal point, Coldplay uses a 2D style to give a unique effect to their 'Trouble' video and while it's not the main focal point of the video it gives the whole video a unique, rare style. Chvrches also used editing extensively as the main point of the video, 'Gun' uses a series of editing techniques to display a range of effects that impresses the audience. Although both videos are memorable and unique because of their use of editing we aren't going to put that amount of emphasis on editing in our production.