Diary entry 11: Finishing filming!!!

Yesterday Sophie and I finished filming the last part of our music video, and from what we've seen of the footage we are hopeful that it will come out well. We filmed the opening sequence of me (the main character) getting into the car and driving away; just in case, we filmed it numerous times with different shots to enable us to chose the right one. Now that all the filming is done we have to edit, create our website and do the animatic story board.  

Grain of voice and Synaesthesia

Synaesthesia is a condition where you can picture the sounds of the music in your mind while a song is playing. For example, you could see a shape or image in your mind which you associate with the song and as each beat plays you see a shape. An example of this is the video below: 

Grain of voice is when an artist has a unique voice that cant be compared to anyone else's, Goodwin described this as like a fingerprint. There voice is so unique that there isn't anyone else in the world that has the same voice as them. Two examples of well known artists that have this are Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston.  This helps create there star image as their voice is so distinct. 

Diary entry 10: Filming performance shots

During our double media lesson's today, my partner and I thought we should use this time appropriately and go and film our performance shots. We chose Kingston as our performance location, as it is an easy location to get to and it has loads of great places where we can film, such as the riverside, bridges, fields and a high street. We managed to get all of our performance shots done, including the guitar in some of the scenes and used a range of various locations. I think this time the filming went really well, because the weather was really good and we played the song in the background so I was singing in time.   

Diary entry 9: Editing Brighton footage

Today in our media lesson, Sophie and I started to upload and edit our footage from Brighton to imovie. We looked through the shots we had taken and were happy with the result. However when it came to the performance shots of me (the main character) in the field singing it was raining when it wasn't in the other shots. However, this could be seen as an artistic representation of the sadness of the song. Furthermore, my singing wasn't in sync with the music and we didn't have enough time to use a broader variety of shots because of the weather. As a result, were going to film more performance scenes in Kingston on Wednesday and this time have the song playing out loud as a prompt, in order for me to keep in time with the music. 

Diary entry 8: Filming in Brighton

Today me and my partner Sophie drove down to Brighton to film the main narrative part of our music video. We came across a couple of problems, for instance the weather was very bad and rainy at the beginning of our filming, the wind was very strong for must of our filming and the car broke down leaving us with a shorter amount of time. Given all of this, we still managed to get all of our narrative shots done and took some location pictures. All in all it was a very good day for filming and we got a lot done, even though the weather was awful and we had scarce time.  

Diary entry 7: Editing

Today my partner and I began to edit our opening sequence to our official music video. We decided to stick with the original idea of the first shot being a mid shot of the main character in the bath with makeup smudged across her face and her eyes closed. Followed by another shot of a close up of her face while she opens her eyes and the camera slowly zooms out as the music comes in. Luckily we did practice shots before hand and filmed a lot of shots to choose from, which made it easier for us to pick the perfect one that fits with the music. We considered having the bath shots before the music came and having it in black and white but then decided we would change it later and see what looks best. In addition, we managed to edit and complete our group discussion video but had difficulties uploading it to our group blog.  

History of our chosen artist/band-Paper Aeroplanes

Paper Aeroplanes are a are Welsh pop band which formed in 2009. They were formerly part of Cardiff-based band Halflight. Richard Llewellyn and Sarah Howells, from Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire respectively, make music that has been compared to Fleetwood Mac, Suzanne Vega, The Sundays, Lisa Loeb and The Cranberries. The BBC described them as "a west coast, easy-riding, folkish indie with a pop sensibility", and The Guardian as "disarming, breezy pop that's tinged with melancholy". Llewellyn was also formerly a member of Cartoon, while Howells was part of rock/riot girl band Jylt. At the end of 2008 they joined forces with the Autonomy Music Group. In January 2009 they worked with John Reynolds (Sinéad O'Connor, Andrea Corr) on two singles that were taken from their album The Day We Ran Into the Sea, which was released in 2010, and described by the BBC's Adam Walton as "'pop' music: brilliantly crafted and stoked from a bruised heart's embers".BBC Radio Wales described it as "the finest radio album to come out of Wales since Rockferry".

The band have featured on Bob Harris's BBC Radio 2 show, being interviewed by Harris and performing a live session. They have also recorded a live video session for the BBC.

Immediately prior to the release of their album We Are Ghosts in March 2011, the band used local independent coffee shops to publicise their music. A limited edition 4-track CD was produced and these were given away at each of 12 of the band's favorite cafe's, in exchange for the purchase of food at the venue. In this way the cafe's also benefited from the publicity.

Below is a link to there official myspace website:

http://www.myspace.com/paperaeroplanes

Research on costumes, makeup and shot types

As I was researching music videos on YouTube and TV music channels I noticed that there were a vast range of different costumes and makeup in each video. In some cases it depended on the genre, for instance if it was a heavy metal or rock song the makeup and outfits would be quite dark using mainly pastel colours. Where as, in pop or hip hop music videos the makeup and costumes would be bright, revealing and sometimes extravagant. When focusing on camera shots, I noticed that all of them had many closeups, this is used to form the connection between the viewer and the artist. However, there are a lot of jump cuts used in pop videos and also change there costume and makeup more than other genres. 

This is an example of a pop music video with a lot of makeup, costumes and even CGI. As you can see it is set in the future and they've used a lot of makeup for the futuristic/alien look.

  
This is another example of a pop video with a lot of makeup instead of costumes. This is not the conventional image of pop music video's instead it is more unique and arty. 

This is a conventional pop music video as it has a variety of different settings, makeup, costumes and camera shots. This music video is mostly focusing on voyeurism.

Diary entry 6: beginning filming

Today my partner and I started to film the opening sequence of our music video and the establishing shot. The scene is of the main character in the bath fully clothed staring up at the camera. We decided this should be our opening shot because it intrigues the audience as to why there's a girl lying in the bath fully clothed and encourages them to continue watching. Additionally we began planning our makeup ideas, band name, and logo for our CD cover which we then uploaded to the group blog. Yesterday we also managed to film our discussion for locations, props etc. Which we will be editing and uploading tomorrow along with editing the opening sequence to  our music video.    

Preliminary Task

Music video that influenced our work

This music video really influenced my partner and I given the fact that it has so many great ideas which could apply to our official music video. Even though the two songs are indefinably different from each other and both have two completely separate meanings. The visuals are still very similar and whilst we were watching the video it had an impact on us, therefore we want to create the same impact in our official music video.  

Other music videos/songs from Paper Aeroplanes

From watching these music videos and listening to there songs it gave us some ideas to what we should use in our official music video and what conventional styles would help create the right  atmosphere in our video.

Music genre styles and conventions

Pop music

Pop is the largest selling genre today.It signifies any music that is commercially produced, with the sole intention of selling more records and reaching a larger audience as possible. Pop music is mainly targeted at teenagers and young youths, though many people associate pop music with the genre of rock, this can be argued. The use of various electronic devices is also widespread in this genre, but this is a very different genre, vis-a-vis trance, which also heavily utilizes electronic sounds. Pop videos tend to use special effects and bright colours, to give a feel good feel, but have the widest range of music video styles with in this genre and can vary between narrative, performance and mixed. This makes it hard to set a list of forms and conventions for this genre as a whole. However, music videos usually have a lot of jump cuts.

County music

Country music is one of the oldest genres of music to date. It originated in the 1920s in Southern parts of the US, and it has slowly spread to all parts of the world. Country music is the most popular genre throughout the United States and often wins Grammy awards over the majority of other genres that we would consider 'mainstream'. The defining characteristic of country music is an acoustic guitar, with just the vocals of the singer to accompany it. Country music has changed over the years, adopting a more modern style, mixing with other genres in order to attract a larger and more diverse audience. 

Hip hop and Rap music

The primary focus of Hip Hop is on beatboxing and DJ scratching. Rap music is another subset of this genre, and it revolves around the artist rapping to a fixed beat. Though this genre evolved in the ghettos of the United States, today it has spread to mainstream culture all around the world, and has become a multi million dollar industry. This genre of hip hop songs started involving more and more people during the 1970s. You tend to find a mixture of narrative and performance based music videos for Hip Hop and Rap. The majority of music videos for this style tend to be set in a lower class area, on the streets. You find a wide range of different settings and styles for these genres however they are predominantly set in lower class areas.

Artists tend to feature within their own videos.

Rock music

Rock music came around in the 1960’s, it evolved as a subset of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, classical and folk music, these have been around since the 1940’s. Primary focus in rock music is on the electric guitar and the many solos that can be created with it. Also the bass guitar and drums are highly in focus. The popularity of Rock music had led to combination of rock with various other genres.
Rock music is something that is omnipresent in all cultural references today, and it is no secret that we associate rock musicians with a rebellious lifestyle, substance abuse and huge fan bases all around the world. Rock videos usually display the band performing on stage, have uneasy camera movements, dark colours, and wide use of special effects. 

Reggae music

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.
Reggae is based on a rhythmic style characterized by accents on the off-beat, known as the 'skank'. Reggae is normally slower than both ska and rocksteady. Reggae usually accents the second and fourth beat in each bar, with the rhythm guitar also either emphasising the third beat or holding the chord on the second beat until the fourth is played. It is mainly this "third beat", its speed and the use of complex bass lines that differentiated reggae from rocksteady, although later styles incorporated these innovations separately. It is unusual to find a reggae genre music video with a narrative, however it is becoming more common as pop is mixing with reggae, for example, Rihanna is known to cover various genres of music from R'n'b to pop, electric dance and her song 'man down' is influenced heavily by reggae and has a narrative storyline. Locations tend to be set in jamaica, and they are usually cheerful music videos with bright colours and dancing. 

Diary entry 5: Planning ideas

Today me and Sophie have picked the song that we will be using for our official music video. (Lost- Paper Aeroplanes). We've come up with some ideas for the storyline and for the shot types we could use. Also, we spent our media lesson researching on Youtube different music videos that inspire us and we can get ideas from.