First Pitch

Richard Dyer says that Pop Promo Videos are "the explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist's "image" as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption."

We pitched out idea to Luke Gilchrist who is our film teacher and also executive producer of our music video. I put forward my idea (listed below) which Luke i felt responded well to. He did talk over some of the practalities such as having a rave requires too many extras which we may not be able to handle. I subsequently ironed out the rave and i feel that my pitch is better off because of it.

As a group i think we subvert this as the artist is trying to promote his music, not his image, because throughout the video the artist's face is never seen. In modern contemporary music, it is not about promotion of the music, record companies are trying to sell artists as the product, and this shows through music videos. In terms of editing and shot selection my group is going to imitate mainstream media, because we are going to use an extensive number of shots, all different types and from different angles, and when it comes to editing, we will use many short shots in a high ratio. We intend to imitate recurring thematic elements and specific iconography because there are several narrative-like structures that centre around our performance aspect. However, our pop video does use continuity editing, because in my own opinion discontinuity editing would not work with our video because it would take away from the narrative. In terms of editing we are very conformist, because our shots will be cut tightly to the beat of the track. In terms of Special Effects, we will not be using blue screen or animation, but we will be using in camera effects and lighting. Our music video is intended to be high impact as is it meant to be remembered. And i think that it is memorable. Various Images of memorable artists of the same genre. All Faceless.
THE BLOODY BEETROOTS (myspace.com/thebloodybeetroots)

DAFT PUNK (daftpunk.com)

Research and Development

Currently we are in the R&D stage of our product, we have collectively met as a group a few times, where we have discussed ideas for the project and so far we have agreed that the remix of a song called Black Gloves by The Bloody Beetroots (Originally by Goose) set to the video featuring a DJ, Real Moments the world wants to forget, and the kids with spray-paint (detailed in The Five Stages of Production). The idea was combination of my original idea and another girls idea. The idea for the Real Life moments was when we were told our idea lacked substance and motivation. We also had the idea that maybe we could zoom out from someone's eye at the end, when there is a nuclear explosion, to reveal the world as a boy sees it, or as nothing but a dream.

When first thinking about my original idea i watched the video for Stress by Justice, the video for One More Time by Daft Punk and the video for Declaration of War by Hadouken!

My first idea for a music video was for a song called Therapy by Relient K. The music video opens with the intro to the song playing as their is a shot of the sun through the trees. The camera then pans to the band who are playing in an open field under a large tree. The band is a stereotypical five piece band that would all be wearing bland colours, to emphasise the beauty that is around them which is the subject of the song. The other part of the video depicts people making their way through the field in order to watch the band play. The video closes with the song playing to the audience in the dark under candlelight.

My second idea was a music video for a song called Painting Flowers by All Time Low. The music videos opens with a focus pull onto the band. The main aspect of the video is special effects, as the video is shot entirely in the same style as seen here:

Except instead of the car, the video would be shot with nothing just the band with leads visible playing their hearts out. The second aspect of the video is, in the same style, a shot of a man in a back to front cap and a bandana covering his face, spray painting an abstract flower onto a wall. The third aspect of the video is for the video closes. it closes with a close up of a beautiful girl with red lipstick on, when the camera finally reaches her face. It is revealed that she is crying.

My third idea was for a song called Killing In The Name which is a remix of a previous christmas number one single and it is instantly recognisable to anyone who keeps up with modern music. It basically depicted a 17 year old playing music in a mind tunnel on his decks. This part would change up with various different lighting. The second part depicted a gang running around spray painting the artist's name onto the walls of a popular area. The video would end with a shot moving to the beat of the song, finally showing a stencil of the artist's name.

All in all my pitch went well as it was chosen to be combined with another idea and then built on. I felt that my teacher reacted well to it other than the obvious lack of motivation for these anarchic events, which was subsequently sorted out. the group chose to combine my idea with a girl in my group who had thought up a rave with an "End of the World" motif. All in all, in think we have made a lot of progress and i think that we chosen an idea that is simple and effective.

Declaration of War by Hadouken!

The Five Stages of Production

Research

My pop video is aimed at 16-24 year old males, because it features violence, anti-conformity and vandalism. Also the video features people of that age group, which my cause more 16-24 year olds to relate to this. The video will appeal to fans of Justice, The Bloody Beetroots and Daft Punk, because they have all made videos in a similar style to the one i wish to make. Our video feature 16-24 year olds at a rave with an "End of the World" vibe to it. This mood will be created by intertwining existing archive footage of events that the world wishes to forget. Along with these two elements there will be people that are a part of a gang, they all wear white masks, spray painting the artist's name onto walls in densely populated areas. Again creating "the cool" for the artist.

Development

This video in its entirety is very doable. It features next to no special effects, and how everyone in the gang is wearing a mask means that people's faces wont matter, just their shape. Our video will take most of the day to shoot. The shots with the DJ can be done in the studio as it gives us the highest amount of control for the lighting and sounds etc. However, the gang/riot scenes need to be done in the dark in a busy area. (i.e. Guildford Town Car Park). Our treatment again is simple, the story depicts an uprising of sorts before the world kills itself. This story line is interlaced with shots the artist at his decks being light and shot dynamically from several different angles. The storyboard and animatic will have to be very detailed because the song does not feature lyrics, so we will have to be very detailed in the timing of the shots. As far as casting goes, we already have the DJ signed on, we have yet to camera test him, and the kids that run around tagging the streets with the artist's name can more or less be anyone.

Pre-Production

On the day we will have a full call sheet, this will detail everything that could possibly go wrong during the actual shoot day. We will list timings for every actor for they need to be around, we will list the props that each actor needs, if any, and for what scenes they will need them. We will list all the props that we have, and finally all the wardrobe that needs to be brought and worn at different times. This will also detail all the equipment we will need to have on set. This accounts in our case for the DJ decks and various lighting. Stereotypically, the call sheet would include lyrics to the song, but because our song has no lyrics, there will be no lyrics page. The call sheet will also include the completed storyboard, as previously mentioned, an entire cast list, locations with permission to shoot in these locations.

Production

This will literally be all our shooting, getting all the shots we need in order to be able to edit our project to be fast paced.

Post-Production

This is where we would use Final Cut Pro and After FX in order to achieve a good finished product. My group personally will probably not use After FX because it is largely unnecessary for us to use it.

Pop Video Brief 2010

THE BRIEF

You have to create

• THREE MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTS
• TO ESTABLISH THE IMAGE AND BRAND OF YOUR SINGER AND GROUP and
• HELP SELL THE SONG FROM THEIR FIRST ALBUM.

The group or singer must be a NEW GROUP (even if they are doing a copy of an existing song)

The song is a SINGLE from their FIRST ALBUM

The actual products to be produced are:

• THE POP VIDEO
• A DIGIPAK for the ALBUM
• A MAGAZINE ADVERT for the ALBUM.

Audience Feedback

SERINABRAVE - remember the nameLUKAS DRESSLERwoho :Di love youuu XDgreat done...like it very much

justeMExp - best one! aber alle 3 sind gut!uhh. sau gut eiifreu mich schon dich bald wieder im lande zu haben haha (:<33

Our audience feedback is very limited, although we can say that we had an unseen German audience. However we can draw from this is that they enjoyed it.

Evaluation of Post Production

In the preliminary task I felt we used very basic camera shots, we tried to be adventurous with a pan shot. But after shooting and editing our finished product, we used a scissor lift shot, a tracking shot, several pans and many shots that were significantly out of our comfort zone at the time of shooting the preliminary task.

The editing process for doing our preliminary task was very simple and short. We literally put a shot first, and then we cut it directly into another shot. We didn’t even use titles. But we did have to dub over our final cut, because no sound was recorded on the day, due to no fault of ours, which was more advanced than all the other groups. In our finished product, we used animated titles, fades and various sound effects as well as the sound we recorded on the day. Our sequences involve sequences of short cuts leading up to a specific moment, where the tension is imminently cut away, at the same time building more suspense. We are trying to create a mood of tension and suspense, which is reminiscient of the style of the slasher genre.

The ambient sound from our shoot day wasn't really that important in the end as I ended up adding a soundtrack that the audience couldn't hear (non-diegetic), this consisted of drones and various tones, but something else that was integral was how I used sound FX to double up sounds to make sound like real objects, these sounds were however diegetic as the whole point was that the sounds were created by the misdoings of the protagonist. If we ended up shooting the whole film, we would need a dark and ominous score that reflected the style of the film we were trying to do. After all we are trying to build the suspense up to these crucial breaking points we're the tension is cut and the audience are left without a leg to stand on.

We placed the titles of our thriller at the start, as not the change the tension during the build up to the climax of the opening sequence, fast sequences can't have slow titles, so we decided that it would be best if our product only displayed titles at the start.

All of our choices have been chosen to appeal to our audience. The whole point of our thriller is draw in thrill seekers, so hopefully we have rewarded with our opening sequence, the sound and editing reflects our target audience directly as it is for horror junkies, and we edited the sound and edited the whole sequence with this in mind. We want this to appeal to the fans of Saw and Hostel, therefore with having a series of close-ups, POV shots and keeping it in a claustrophobic setting we were able to mkaintain the tension and drama which are a prerequisite for the horror genre.

In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Redrum productions isn’t a currently existing production company, this in itself challenges the forms of conventional media products. The text blurs into separate colors (red, green and blue), then fades out. This evokes a sense of mystery in the watcher, it upholds the reputation in slasher movies of particularly peculiar titles. (e.g. Halloween). Also Redrum is murder spelt backwards which is from the cult horror classic The Shining.

This shot challenges conventions of real media, because unlike the majority of slasher films, the film doesn't open with teenagers having sex, or another teenager babysitting. We are slightly dependant on gore and latex make up, but, unlike most horror flicks, we never actually show a victim being tortured, we merely build the tension to make the audience believe that this is going to happen.

One of the largest factors behind our thriller, unlike films in it's genre, is that we try to lead the audience to false assumptions. For instance in the above shot, we lead the audience to believe that our thriller is going to centre around what is outside the window. We use my soundtrack and some sound FX from soundtrack pro to create this illusion. (The noise idea was from The Blair Witch Project). We challenge the conventions of real media by building tension that isn't heavily relient on a central antagonist. In this shot, we used an exploding lightbulb (the lightbulb doesn't really explode, we created this effect by inserting sound FX and editing the white balance and exposure on shot) to create the tension. Most slasher films revolve around a central antagonist (i.e. Jigsaw from Saw, Freddy Kruger from The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Jason Voorhees from the Friday the Thirteenth franchise and Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise.)

We used this shot, because the room isn't lit, the only light source is from an old torch and this forces the audience to focus on the victims face, and this makes the audience feel sympathy for the victim, because we see a look of anxiety and confusion on his face. We conform to other media products that are already successful in this scene by borrowing from The Blair Witch Project and Kill Bill Vol. 2 which use darkness and sound to create tension.Here we conform with current media conventions witht he over use of gore. This shot merely sets the scene for a room full dead bodies. Many films are overly reliant on this feature (i.e. Saw). We challenge current media by not being overly reliant on this. But we do mix in a bit of gore to create this tension.
This title challenges most media conventions because it isn't overlayed on top of real-time shots. It is merely overlayed on blackness. The title, like the first titles convey a sense of mystery, and seeing as this is the final shot of the opening sequence, it begs the question to the audience as to what happens after the titles.