In terms of pre-production, our pop video took a considerable amount of time and planning to pull off, we were optimistic with our pitch and final proposal but, in my opinion, this is why our pop promo turned out as well as it did. The shoot day would have been a mess had it not been for our good organization; we went into the studio the day before and made the set for the performance element of our video, this consisted of a plain white backdrop and a rack of rapidly changing lights, we also had two moving lights on either side of the DJ, to provide another lighting effect.
On the day itself we shot in the studio from 9:00 to about 13:00. We ran through the song a large number of times, we did run the song over a couple of times so the DJ could practice his performance and get a feel for the song. We shot the DJ performing from a number of different angles and incorporating a large number of movements. In this element of the music video Leo Faulks and I manned the camera and Tamara Middleton and Millie Freeman were in charge of playback and making sure that everything on set was perfect, this included the lighting, and making sure the performer was doing what he was meant to be doing and that he was on set when we needed him.
On the camera, myself and Leo had to make sure the levels were all okay and that we got all the shots we needed, this consisted various movement shots, including panning and tracking shots. We tried to shoot the DJ from a slightly lower angle, a hero shot, to promote his status and to give him a heroic lift from the rest of the video, which depicts gang initiations and violence.
We used JVC 500 HD cameras, with a tripod and tracking, but we didn’t need to use any blondes or redheads neither on set nor on location, because we found the natural light sufficient. With the tracking shots, we shot the whole song four times the first time we shot left to right tracking at different speeds. Then the second time we did the opposite, and so the same for tracking to the front and the back.
The only real problems we had were in pre-production, where we were denied to access to our first and second locations unless we could have the “necessary” health precautions, which in the council’s eyes was an ambulance and a fire truck, which would have cost money that we didn’t have. A slight problem that we really had on the day was from the weather, we were due to shoot exterior shots after 13:00, but we waited for a short while for the rain to slow a bit. Luckily it slowed down at about 13:30, and we were able to manage until it completely stopped with only a few umbrellas.
We did make a few mistakes on the day when we failed to white balance correctly and choose an appropriate shutter speed on location. This rendered about twenty of the two hundred shots redundant. But we corrected this problem once we had realised that this was occurring and the remainder of the shots we had were artistic and well thought out. In the studio we did have a minor issue with playback as the CD with our track on it didn’t work in the CD player, but this problem was quickly solved when I fetched my laptop, which we connected to the sound system through the auxiliary/phono input.
One of the shots the really worked was of the DJ, it was during the middle of the song, and the DJ was on the hot point (using the rule of thirds) in the top right hand corner, the DJ decks occupied the bottom two hot points and the upper left hot point led the eye away fro the DJ, because the flashing lights caused an effect of the white background which synced perfectly with the melody of the song. We used this shot in our final cut at the exact point in which we shot it because it works just so perfectly.
Another shot that really worked was shot on location, it was shot from a slightly canted angle, with the camera being handheld, giving the shot an edgy realistic feel. The shot depicted the ultimate climactic battle between the two gangs, with one gang threatening with the use of flares. The shot worked so well because the camera’s movement is similar to that of a heartbeat. The main focus of the shot is a lit handheld flare, which occupies the uppermost right hand hot point. The best part of the shot in my opinion is the debris and smoke, which partially obscures the other characters, and adds a mysterious element to the shot. Other than the botched white balance shots mentioned earlier, there weren’t many bad shots. There was one however that didn’t work, were a gang member was meant to appear prolific and intimidating, but instead they had a grin that really fit with the mise-en-scene.
Overall the day went really well, we stuck to out plans very well, and although the final product didn’t follow our storyboards closely. I felt that the final product was of an excellent quality. We did follow the basic structure but we also filmed many shots that weren’t originally scripted, and I felt the inherent spur of the moment shots we incorporated worked very well indeed. It was these shots that made our pop video what it was in the end, and it was these shots that made our pop an exceptional final product.
.As a collective, we must understand that the pop video is only one strand of an often multimedia campaign. Multimedia campaigns often include Television, Radio, Newspapers, Magazines, Internet and Shopping Malls. The pop video naturally fits into the Television aspect of this campaign, and along with this there is often a “Making the Video” special aired to go with pop videos. In radio, the DJ’s are sometimes bribed to play an excess of a certain record. In newspapers there are often square advertisements that depict an artist’s new record or a tour supporting the record, this would be the same in magazines, also there might be a featurette with a “Meet the Band” style article, attempting to bring the band down to earth. The Internet is a limitless resource, and through this there are websites such as MySpace (
Music Videos serve more than one purpose; they serve as a method of promotion for an artist, promoting an artist and usually their album; they create, adapt, and feed star images; it entertains as a product in its own right; and last but not least it reinforces, adapts or undermines the meanings of a song. Music videos often include four basic elements; performance; narrative; thematic; and symbolic. My video should serve to do all of these things, the content of the video focuses more so on the performance and narrative than the thematic and the symbolic. It many respects the music video is becoming defunct and irrelevant. This is largely down to peer2peer sharing on the Internet through websites like Limewire (http://www.limewire.com) and BearShare (http://www.bearshare.com), and how music television (MTV, VH1, VIVA etc.) (
