thomas-m-nescot-music-video-blog
Thomas Murray NESCOT music videos
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Hypnos: Evaluation of overall project and final video
At the outset of the project, we first decided to divide up the jobs for the pre-production based on our previous skills. Out of my group I ended up doing the fewest number of pre-production tasks at 2, with Kristian and Luis doing 3 and Alex doing 4, to make up for this i later took a primary role in the filming of the music video and many mentions of notes and reminders on the call sheet that I was put in charge of to aid in the better running of the project. I then set about working on the Filming schedule as it was around this time that Alex decided on the track that we would be using.
The main filming began in earnest with myself and another operating the camera’s to capture our actor (Luis) performing his magic tricks and the bridging scenes that would make up the majority of the music video, we were mindful of the weather as it could affect the continuity of our shots, the most difficult to film on the first day was when Luis through himself into the wall, the idea was to use after effects to make a portal appear before Luis was teleported to another area but pepople kept walking in the way of our filming location. Furthermore, the act of our actor throwing himself into a wall proved a comical site that all of the crew, myself included, had to take a break to stop ourselves from laughing.
The bridging scenes involving Luis moving from room to room as well as around the college grounds were filmed over the course of the next few days, however, we were hampered by travel issues as southern trains- the service the majority of us take- faced severe delays. This put our filming back a few days and was compounded by bad weather, we did not procrastinate at this time, we instead took this opportunity to work on other parts of the project such as leftover pre-production and after effects, I personally tweaked our call sheet in this time. When conditioned allowed we finished off the bridging of the scenes before moving on to the green screen work.
After booking the green screen facilities provided by the college and began to film the scenes with Luis that would take place within the “other world”. All in all, we filmed about twenty minutes of Raw footage before collating it all together.
Post-production began with Alex taking the footage that would involve after effects such as the portal and green screen footage and began working on the “other world” scenes as he has the most experience with after effects out of all of us. While this happened we all started our own individual edits of the music video. I started by dragging the track into Premiere Pro to see how it sounded and what needed to be cut to fit my idea. The first problem I faced was that the audio peaked very often so after consulting Sam (our lecturer) he told me to drag down the waveform which removed the audio distortion.
Upon careful study of what I wanted in comparison to the footage and track, I reduced the length of the overall track from three minutes to two minutes, I had also discussed this idea of a falling card scene with Sam, and while he did like it, as well as us filming said shot in front of the green screen, it ended up looking terrible so I had to improvise, finding a public domain .GIF of a pack of cards falling in slow motion.
The final video ended up running for three minutes due to a stupid mistake on my part, I left a section of footage at the end of the timeline and completely forgot about it so while the music tapers off at approximately two minutes in the video would just be a black screen before this final scene of Luis snapping his fingers to turn out the light plays. I made sure to both cut to the beat and cut off the beat to make sure the cuts were not too predictable. I made sure to have the centrepiece of the video coincide with the swell of the music with Luis hitting the portal at the same time as the crescendo.
Certain later scenes were prior scenes played backwards to add to the oniric feeling of magic, text on the screen is used to break up the video and set up things that you are about to see, furthermore I incorporated the short footage of a spinning galaxy near the end to add to the cosmic/space feel before showing credits of all those who took part.
Overall I am happy with the production and pre-production sections of this assignment, we all made good progress and played to our strengths as well as doing our best to cover each other's weaknesses. The only problems can be found due to human error (such as me leaving a piece of footage at the end of the timeline) and extenuating factors, for example, as I was about to render out and export my finished music video, Premier Pro crashed and I lost the previous hour of work causing me to start over.
In conclusion, i would say that our project was a success, if I could change one thing about my final product it would be to shorten the time between the credits and final scene of my video as while it was unintentional, I feel that the final moment when Luis turns out the lights adds a little mystique to the overall product.
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Music video raw files
the raw video files that will make up the bulk of the footage
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Music video audio issue
I had to pull down the wave from slightly to stop the audio from peaking
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Music video production- basic timeline
a view of the waveform without the footage
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Music Video Production: Call Sheet
here is a print screen of the completed call sheet
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Music Video Production: shot list
a screenshot of the completed shot list
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Music Video Production
I began work on the shot list and the call sheet as Alex had already selected the music track. “Mindlessfate- Hopeless”
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Music video production
due to the nature of how we divided up the work, most of the members of the group ended up doing three jobs for the pre production while i ended up having to do two. these two were of great importance though as they are important as the rest, i fell that it was a good trade off.
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Music Videos: Techniques
Song: Rap God
Artist: Eminem
1st technique: cutting to the beat
Breakdown: The video makes prolific use of the “cutting to the beat technique once the intro has past, often cutting back between the main set piece of Eminem “downloading inspiration” and he himself singing in front of the camera, each cut will coincide with a beat. The are no true transitions used, simply cuts between the set piece(s) and Eminem doing his free styling; this would usually lead to a clinical feeling when paired with the seemingly pristine monochromatic aesthetic of the visuals but instead it is somewhat graceful, likening it to “the work of God” as Eminem’s theme throughout the advert, that he does not need fancy editing to get his point across. The climax of the video (starting at 4:25) ramps up the cuts in response to the accelerated tempo of the lyrics while showing impressive effects. (More on the next slide
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Music Videos: Techniques
Song: Rap God
Artist: Eminem
2nd technique: effects
Breakdown: “Visual effects are a way of adding more of a narrative and can normally create more excitement into a music video. Sometimes an audience will be so interested in the technology behind the effects but sometimes they just like the idea of adding more of a story and colour to the video. It keeps them entertained.” (Music Videos, 2017) THroughout the advert there is a large usage of greenscreen during the TV segments that lend to an oniric feel, other such effects are Eminem rapping to a copy of himself, cgi objects being thrown around the room, and finally jumping through portals, these effects are used to reinforce eminem's status as the titular “Rap God”, capable of bending reality to his whims with the lyrics of his song alone.
Timeline: Eminem teased the release of the video online three days prior to it dropping on Vevo on the 24th of November 2013, it received three nominations at the 2014 MTV awards but did not win any of them.Jim Farber of the Daily News noted that the song brought back a “Super-sick humor of that era, which comes as a relief after all the internalizations and ruminating of Em’s more recent work"
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Music Videos: Conventions
Song #2: The Pretender
Artist: Foo fighters
Convention Breakdown: The video begins with the lights coming on in a sterile white hanger as the musicians pick up their instruments before the music's tempo increases with cutting to the beet to accentuate the rebellious feeling of the music. The lyrics are mirrored in an impressionist was as the lead vocalist mentions “Sending in skeletons” before a riot officer eventually shows up with his compatriots, skeletons are the foil of many hero in fantasy writing, standing against the hero, the presence of riot officers are the opposite of the foo fighters portrayal in the song, discipled and quiet while the the former is loud and rebellious. This makes the riot officers the contemporary flesh and blood skeletons that the foo fighters are fighting (and isn’t that an oxymoron?) the tidal wave of red at the end is mise en scene used to show the tidal wave of anger if they are oppressed.
Timeline: The music video was 2nd of october 2007 and went on to earn two platinum record in the US that year.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBjQ9tuuTJQ
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Music Video: Conventions
Song #1: Stan
Artist: Eminem feat. Dido
Convention Breakdown: The music video’s convention is a cross between a narrative and an morbidly ironic parody. The video opens with Dido gatting up to see her boyfriend, “Stan” (Eminem) as he is trying to dye his hair. She repeatedly bangs on the door to get his attention, the idea is that their relationship is strained. She speaks about him taking something too far before the backing track comes in. a brief cut to the “Real” eminem shows him answering fan mail any from the aforementioned stan. It is insinuated through the narrative that Stan was an obsessed fan of Eminem who was doing anything to get his attention. The fourth quarter of the song has eminem trying to reach out to the troubled young man only to find out he had driven himself and his pregnant girlfriend into a lake, committing a murder suicide
Points of interest:The events and narrative portrayed in the music video mirror the real life death of Eminem fan Stanley Mitchell who killed himself and his girlfriend in a fit of rage on a rainy night. It is morbidly ironic as only in death he was immortalized as the muse for what many think of as Eminem’s greatest song.
Timeline: The Video was released on November 21st, 2000, the song and video are regarded by many as Eminem's Magnum opus with also being his second best selling song behind lose yourself, in the following years “Stan” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a term to describe an overzealous fan due to the issues both the song and video highlighted.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMhN-hfMtY
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Music Video: Styles
Song #2: Dirty Dianna
Artist: Michael Jackson
Breakdown: The music video is a cross between an “As-Live” style music video and a narrative. it begins with Micheal’s standard 30+ second intro on stage, an object of note is the colour scheme of Blue, white, red and black. this was due to Micheal still being under contract with Pepsi Cola at the time of the concert so he had to adhere to their colour scheme. the opening cord of the song coincides with the titular “Dirty Diana” making her way towards to concert from a dingy ally, Diana is never actually scene outside of silhouette. Cutting to the beat is used in order to cut back and forth between the stage and Diana making her way towards the concert, lulls in the vocals and tempo are most often than not accompanied with shots of Diana. the final shots are of Micheal walking off stage and seeing Diana’s Silhouette in his car.
Timeline: the “As-Live” part of the music video was filmed during the “Bad” tour at Madison Square Gardens in 1988 while the scenes involving Diana were filmed afterwords. The video won the"Number-One Video in the World" at the second World Music Awards held on April 14, 1989
https://youtu.be/yUi_S6YWjZw
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Music Video: Styles
Song #1: Thriller
Artist: Michael Jackson
Breakdown: The music video has a narrative style starting with Michael and his girlfriend walking home from a movie theater and being set upon by pedestrians of a flesh eating disposition. Michael eventually joins their ranks and it kicks off into a dance routine. Like most of Jackson’s music videos it is cut to the beat of the song but this coupled with the zombie-like dance moves by the dancers put the viewer in mind of a 50’s horror movie. Parts are filmed in soft focus for different reasons. The movie part at the start to differentiate it from the rest of the video in its sense of tone. The second time is when the corpses rise from their deathly vocation to add a sense of mystery. Finally in terms of Mise-en-scene, Michaels clothes seem to decay when he “Zombifies”, this added to Vincent Price's haunting narration instills a sense of dread that is then put in juxtaposition to the rest of the songs tone.
The true genius of the song is the editing in conjunction with Vincent Price’s narration as it’s words and cuts are something taken right from a cliché horror movie; but that is what makes it so well done. With a good narration and a few jump cuts and some soft focus turns it from a music video into a believable horror. I personally got a “An American Werewolf in London” vibe and that is a good thing.
Timeline: The video was filmed over the course of 8 weeks in 1982 before being released in 1983. it had a budget of $500,000 which remained the most expensive music video ever produced for many years. the video was nominated for six Grammy’s at the 1984 event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA
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Music Videos: Purpose
Song #2: Uprising
Artist: Muse
Breakdown:
The band performs through a shrunken town in the back of an old, toy truck, with a ignited fuse following behind. At times, they are also seen performing inside a trailer, which appears to be exploding. Through the window of a shop, the band at one point looks at TVs with demonic teddy bears on the screens; Matt smashes the shop window and TVs with his guitar. At the end of the video, a group of teddy bears, similarly-looking to the teddy bears seen on the TVs, rise up from the ground and start destroying the miniature city, only to all fall down at the climax of the video. The video uses forced perspective make the viewer think the city is full sized when in reality it is toy sized. The video also pays homage to the movie Ghostbusters as the “Giant Teddies” are supposed to be the stand ins for the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. The video is somewhat interpretive so Mise-en-scene serves no true purpose in the context of the video, you are supposed to come up with your own ideas from listening to the song.
Timeline: The video was released on the 4th of August 2009. Muse asked the directing collective Hydra to direct and produce the video. the video won the "Best Special Effects" in the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8
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Music Videos: Purpose
Song #1: Party Rock Anthem
Artist: LMFAO
Breakdown: The music video is a parody of 28 days later and is told in the style of a story, the editing is composed of sharp cutting to the beat for the upbeat rhythm of the song. The dancers in the video are dressed in clothes that adds to the Mise-en-scene within the scene as the main focus of the songs story is that of “zombified” people being hit by the music and dancing. Like the music is some demonic puppet master. The video also includes many pop-culture references.For example: the survivor who runs into the two artists is dressed as Luis from the zombie video game “Left 4 Dead”.When the lyrics talk about “Lead in our zeppelin” the camera cuts to a hospital, which appears similar to the cover of Led Zeppelin's 1975 album Physical Graffiti The songs upbeat tune coupled with the dance moves encourage it to be danced to, preferably at parties. the purpose was twofold; firstly publicizing the song as a party song to inspire people to buy or listen to it in an effort to boost sales. secondly to commercially boost the products shown throughout by showing them in a good light. i.e. beats by Dre
Timeline: The music video was released on March 8, 2011 and was produced by the two members of LMFAO. it won won the "Best Video" award at the 7th annual edition of the Trl Awards. the Melbourne Shuffle (the song shown during the video) went on to become a staple of all of LMFAO’s brand identity due to its popularity following the videos release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8
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