Music video theory

What have we learnt about music videos so far

we have learnt from Andrew Goodwin's theory that a music video is simply an extension of the lyrics. this means that music videos have to build off of both the theme of the song and of the story that is being told. a good music video should always match the pace and the feel of the music. It should also use the lyrics of the song to construct some sort of narrative. we have also learnt a lot about the editing process, such as how to use markers to get music and video perfectly in sync.

how are music videos edited differently than other forms of media

in my experience, music videos are much faster paced than other forms of media, this is mainly due to the fact that the video must keep in time with the music and so the pace depends on the speed of the song. the other reason for this type of media having to be edited much

narrative structure

With the same song, we were tasked with making a music video that conveyed a certain narrative. we were given the narrative of somebody being followed.



we then merged this with our lip-syncing task to  make our final music video.

lip syncing skills and challenges

During the course of the lip syncing we faced difficulties in almost every role that we filled and we also found out exactly what skills each role needed.

Performing 

for the performance it definitely helped to actually sing the lyrics rather than just mime them, we also found that much exaggerated mouth movements made it easier to synchronise with the music. Enthusiasm also seemed to be a very important factor to making the video interesting to watch and to make sure that you did not look stiff.

learning the words and singing them in time with the music proved difficult as this was not a song that I was familiar with the song that had been chosen for us.

Filming

for the filming, all the skills that we really needed were how to position the camera to get a decent shot and how to keep everything in focus. we did have a bit of trouble with things going through the backgrounds of our shots though which meant we had to start over.

Editing

getting the video and the audio to sync up took quite a few different skills, we had to know all of the different features of the software that we were using, such as: clip markers, clip cutting, and controlling separate audio and video tracks. we had some difficulty finding usable material in the time that we had as we had filmed the length of the entire song six times. our other problem was making sure that the clips were absolutely in sync.

Directing

the skills that we needed for directing were just how to plan out our shots and how we would position the actors within them. the problem with this was that the only lighting that we had to work with was natural and so we had a more limited selection of shots that we could do whilst still being able to make out the actors mouth movements.

Location

in terms of the location all we had to do was find somewhere that fit the theme of the song, in this case quite a colourful upbeat location, which also offered opportunities for different and interesting shots. we had to take time in our production to make sure that there was nothing ugly or out of place in the background of our shots.

Syncing

this was by far the most difficult part of the project as we had to make sure that the music was exactly in sync with our mouth movements. this was made even more difficult to do as we were not singing in time with the music quite a bit during the filming, this meant we had to isolate the bits that were sung properly and then try to sync them up.

Composition and framing

for this we needed to know all of the composition and framing techniques, which were: symmetry, colour, negative space, perspective and depth of field. we had some trouble implementing these as we were more focused on getting the words in sync and getting shots where we could see the mouth movements clearly and allow the actors to move around to the music.