Props List for Prelim

For our preliminary task we will require the following props and costumes:

- We will require very few props as it is in one simple setting but we will need some costumes to mimic what Jessie J looks like:

- White top
- Gold necklace 
- Black wig 

Who You Are - Jessie J: Lyrics

An essential part of any music video is establishing some kind of relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. This song in particular is much more about emphasising the lyrics as they are deep and have a meaningful and inspiring message. Jessie J clearly wanted people to focus on the meaning of her lyrics rather than being distracted by unrelated visuals.

Here are the lyrics below:

Jessie J - Who You Are

I stare at my reflection in the mirror

Storyboard for Prelim

This is the storyboard we created for our preliminary task which will make it easier to film.

New Prelim Video

After a lot of thought and discussion and a lot of analysis of Pink's Don't Let Me Get Me video, we have decided as a group that it is too challenging to complete in just over a week. After making this decision, we began to search for simpler videos that didn't require some of the more challenging editing techniques that were in Pink's video. We found a few but many required large groups of people who would be hard to gather in such a short amount of time. Finally, we found Jessie J's Who You Are video and decided to use this. This video is much simpler and has a slower pace. I believe this will be more beneficial for us as it allows us to work on our lip-synching skills and work with a green screen.

Here is the video below:

Recce Shots for Prelim

This images are of the locations we are going to film our Prelim task at:

1st Scene: Back playground. (Picture on the left)
- This is to try and recreate the scene shown in the picture above.

2nd Scene: Media classroom. 

- This is to recreate the classroom scene.

3rd Scene: Link corridor 

4th Scene: Toilets in Platt building.

Luckily, all the scenes in this video are settings that we are able to recreate in school. 

Style - Taylor Swift: 30 Second Analysis

This task involved us each individually choosing a music video and us analysing the first thirty seconds. I chose Style by Taylor Swift as it is quite a visually appealing music with lots of cuts and transitions within the first 30 seconds. 

Below the whole music video can be seen:

I made a powerpoint to analyse the first 30 seconds of the video by screenshotting each shot - there were 19 different cuts in the first 30 seconds.




I learned a lot from this task. Firstly, how much work goes into not only making but editing the videos. I learned that much footage must be lost in the process and how many locations you have to film in. It made me realise how much time I am going to have to allocate to editing during the preliminary task and the actual task.

Dry The River class task - reflection

For this task, we listened to a song called No Rest by Dry The River without the visuals. We then, in groups, had to identify different elements of the song including the genre, the artist and their style, the target audience, the lyrics and the pace.

We then had to come up with a potential narrative, setting, costume, camera shots and how the visuals would match the lyrics. We shared our answers with the rest of the class and then watched the actual music video.

Below is the music video:



Genre: Indie Rock
Artist (band or solo) and their style: A band with a lead singer - quite unique.
Target audience: Not people who are into pop/chart music. Probably a more mature, niche audience with a unique music taste.
Lyrics: It appeared to be an angry, yet passionate love song.
Pace: It was very slow at first, but then picks up a little bit but still not very fast. It seemed to get faster as the emotions got stronger.

Potential Narrative:
- We thought it would be more narrative based than performance. We didn't think it would be filmed at a concert if there was performance but instead in a isolated space with just the band playing. We thought there could be a bit of narrative involving a couple who are not played by any of the band members.

Potential Setting:
- A plain black or white setting with band playing in front.
- Normal everyday setting for couples video.

Potential Costume:
- Dark colours but normal clothes - nothing too abstract.
- Maybe a bit scruffy
- Main singer stand out a little bit more than the rest - brighter t-shirt?

Camera Shots:
- A lot of close-ups of lead singer
- Establishing shots of whole band

Visuals to Match Visuals:
- Jump cuts to scenes of couples - starts off happy but gradually turns bad.

Other groups idea:
- Set in a Medieval castle with lead singer as King. Wants to be with Queen but she keeps rejecting him. In the end she kills him which related to the lyrics "bleed out".

What it was actually like:
- The video only had one setting, all of the band appeared to be laying on stones and it was not clear at first who was the lead. The video seems to be linked to the four elements: fire, water, earth and wind. They look quite scruffy but are dressed in ordinary clothes. The pace of the video is relatively slow at the beginning (which matches the pace of the song) and then speeds up but there is not a lot of cuts. The video contains a kind of distorted narrative as there appears to be a story but it is hard to work out - they seem to be more in pain/desperate as the video goes on. There is little performance, apart from lip synching which increases the verisimilitude. There is a reference to the lyrics as there are some birds in the video - although it is not made particularly clear why they are present.