Evaluation Questions : Q4

Evaluation Questions: Q3

Evaluation Questions : Q2

Evaluation Questions: Q1

Music Video Final Cut + Summary Of Changes + Filming Process

Thank God I Don't Believe In God

Douglas Loscalzo's A-level music video production.

Written and sung by Accidental Hero.

The video above is the final cut of my music video. I've made subtle changes in transition-music synchronization, and edited the color toning of certain scenes. This is alongside other small changes and various general polish.

I'm pleased with my music video production. The area I am happiest with is the colour theme that is present throughout the song; stumbling onto the vivid orange look when experimenting with some of the video editing options, I was immediately hooked by the idea of having this colour present throughout my music video as part of a theme - a unique style that would allow my music video to grab the viewers attention and set itself apart from other videos as far as its aesthetic is concerned. Using the same method that allowed me to create the orange colour filter, I created several filters that are tied to different areas of the song, like the rapid guitar strumming scenes in my video - these scenes are red with heavy silhouette definition -

The variance in colour toning allowed me to better separate different scenes so that their contents can be more easily understood or more appreciated. These changes in colour tone also increased the diversity of scenes that appeared in my music video - or at least, gave the illusion of diversity. Regardless, I understood that I needed to maintain audience interest; varying colour toning was one of the key factors in achieving this as my music video is intended to be heavily stylized.

The Filming Process

One of the most challenging issues throughout this process was the choice of filming location, and indeed its maintenance and access in some cases; My initial vision involved the priest character singing on a stage behind an alter/lectern. At first I intended to include shots of him addressing the people sitting below him, but it quickly became apparent that I didn't have enough step-in actors that would have been available when I needed them. The area I wanted to film in was not private and could not be booked; It was therefore subject to change when I wasn't filming there (Scenery items that were a vital part of my miss en scene were moved on occasion, i.e. religious items. Even the chairs below the stage were moved frequently, so often I found myself asking for help in placing 50 or so chairs in a room at set positions in order to retain continuity).

These difficulties led into making a number of simplifications that ultimately changed the nature of my video. With regards to the stage scenes, I decided to have the camera only recording everything within the frame created by the outline of the surrounding curtains.
This allowed me effectively maintain my area of filming with minimum interference from its use by other people, as the scene was relatively simple to construct but nonetheless effective. The act of eliminating the lower half of the room from my music video's footage reduced my work load and thus allowed me to work more efficiently when time was of the essence.

Moving away from the indoors scenes of my music video, I felt that the field scenes were an effective change in scenery and increased the diversity of shot locations of my music video. It was here that I feel I filmed most effectively, gathering all the footage I needed for the rest of my music video in one filming session.



From past experiences from earlier filming sessions prior to these scenes, I had realized that the most effective way to film and the most lucrative with regards to editable footage, was filming and acting out the entire song several times with the camera at varying stationary positions with the actors doing different things each time; For example, with one run of the song, the priest is holding a guitar. In another, he is not. In both however, he is acting as if he is still singing; this enables me to pick and choose from a massive variety of footage, with all of it tending to the same point and thus being easily interchangeable. Essentially, I had the same lyrics sung by the priest several times, with him acting/doing something different each time so that I could select the most contextually appealing footage.

I found the filming process for my A2 music video to be far more extensive than my AS-level thriller opening sequence. The focus on detail and mise en scene was particularly acute this year, and I found my self filming and re-filming on several occasions on the account of minute discrepancies in footage, such as items and props that appear out of place, or reduce the carefully crafted veil of production value of my music video. (Indeed, I found myself discarding footage and scene direction entirely for this very reason).

Audience Feedback - Rough Cut

The following feedback was in response to my rough cut music video, shown below:

Pros

• "I like the colour editing; the vivid yellow/orange filter effect is quite striking"
• "You've edited your video in time with the music, the cuts match bursts of pace in the song"
• "The devil-guy in the background looks good. His scenes are quite strange. He matches the weirdness of the song."

Cons

• "Perhaps a little more variety is needed. Not enough strangeness. It needs to be more odd."
• "Lip-syncing is a little off at the beginning."
• "Perhaps some unnecessary zoom-out cutting when the priest is singing beside the cross; it doesn't look as effective as the other parts of the song where you've done this effect."

Suggestions

• "I think some form of spanish dancing would go well with this song. Have you thought about adding some form of dance act in your video?" - I agree, and I like this idea. I will certainly look to arrange some form of dance act in my video.

Music Video Rough Cut

The Following is the rough cut production of my music video. 

I'm happy with my production so far. I feel as if only minor tweaks and changes need to be made; lip-syncing issues must be addressed, and perhaps an additional scene should be added to the final music video to add more variety to the video. 

My Rough Cut and Goodwin's Theory

With regards to Goodwin's theory on music videos, my music video conforms to many of his predictions; most obvious of all is the direct link between the main actor's singing and the lyrics of the song - no conventions are broken in this respect, as we can see that the lyrics of the song are coming directly from the main actor's mouth on-screen. There's a contradictory link between the visual content and the lyrics when considering the character direction, but a link nonetheless; in my music video we see a priest singing about his gratitude to God for "not believing in God". Having a priest sing this is clearly ironic, and it is because these two concepts contradict each other it is therefore yet another compliance with Goodwin's theory on music videos, where the visual content of a music video will usually relate to or directly contradict the lyrics heard.

My music video contains a high degree of focus on the main artist; this is another item of Goodwin's predictions, where the main artist is often focused upon to better create/push the artist/band's brand identity so that the consumer can immediately distinguish the brand from other artists of similar genre.  In my music video we see several close-up shots of the main singer and artist; his identity is clearly established and is focused upon.

There's a naturally eccentric nature to the song; I've attempted to reflect this through my music video's direction.This I believe, coupled with my choice of having a rural setting and acoustic guitar appear in my music video, has me conform to the typical imagery of the folk-indie-country music genre. This is yet another prediction of Goodwin's - the theory that most music videos usually display their music genre through their direction as a means of being more easily received by consumers who enjoy the respective genre of music. 

Editing Process

As an example of one of the colour schemes that feature in my music video, the image on the left is a picture taken from the raw video footage of my project; I have applied various post processing effects to give the image its distinct, vivid amber coloring.

Using this example image, I will provide a walkthrough on the processes involved in this kind of post production, providing evidence on how I developed the final image and theme that is present throughout my music video.

When filming the raw footage, I knew that if I intended to apply video effects later during the editing process, I needed a good filming location. What I mean by this is excellent lighting and a great deal of discernible difference in detail between the actors in the video and their respective surroundings.

In the picture we can see that the black clothing of the two actors contrasts greatly with the bleak, washed-out background. This provided an excellent editing opportunity, where the colour editing I applied allowed for the two actors to form an effective, stylized silhouette.

Applying Colour Filters

 On the left here is the original footage. We can see that the colour toning of this footage is completely natural.







To make the scene more interesting and visually appealing, I applied colour filters to strengthen the blue tones of the footage.

To balance the lighting, I increased the red gain and green gain in the video to ensure that only the darker areas of the footage took on the increased blue shades. 

On the left we can see the video effects editor for iMovie, where I can adjust the visual elements of the selected footage. Located at the bottom of the overlaying display are the colour editing options, and we can see that I've adjusted them to give the colour tones shown in the image above. Also in the video effects editor, are contrast and brightness options. I adjusted these sliders to emphasize darker lines and shapes, creating a more stylized look about the video.

This kind of lighting adjustment can add to the production value of my project, albeit just an aesthetic buff.

Lip-Syncing

Forming a significant part of the editing process, ensuring that the footage observed matched the song heard was of the upmost importance. I found the process of lip-syncing to be a challenge at first, discovering some of the difficulties in using the iMovie program to create a music video; Often as was the case, an alteration to visual footage, however slight, has a knock-on effect for the entire music video and the synchronization between visuals and sound. I had to take care, therefore, when trimming/adding footage into my music video; for every second that I removed, I had to add back in somewhere else in the music video to ensure all remained synchronized.

With regards to aligning visual footage to each individual word of the song, while I filmed the raw footage I ensured that the priest was miming along to the song as it was played off-screen; by doing this, I was able to effectively lip-sync by matching the first word for each part of edited footage to its respective lyric in the song. I did this on the volume wave level, looking for small changes in volume that indicated a syllable was being spoken:

As you can see, the soundtrack's volume display (the audio segment represented by the green bar) aligns to the footage's sound (the audio segment that is represented by the blue bar). These telltale jumps in sound on the visual display correspond to the words and individual syllables that are being spoken by the soundtrack's singer. To synchronize the visual miming with the audible song therefore, I aligned these rises in pitch/sound to match the song and the footage's progression through the music.


I applied this method to the transitions to my music video also, where a strum of the guitar will be synchronized with a cut, adding a sense of clear pace to the music video.

The Pre-Production and Production of Music Videos

Today's music video standard is relatively high - modern technology allows video content to be viewed by anyone anywhere. It is for this reason that a song's promotion can now rest heavily on its accompanying music video, as this is an area of marketing that is ideal for brand advertisement. It is of the music video producer's best interest therefore to ensure a high quality music video is created for whichever band/artist they invest in. The demand for quality can be so high that some music videos appear to be heavily cinematic with an almost movie-like standard; (Take The Shoes: Time To Dance for example, you'll find an analysis of its director and the music video on my blog).

One of the key ingredients in the making of a music video is its initial direction; an idea or theme from which the details of the music video may later take shape. This idea emerges from a director's interpretation of the song itself. A song's interpretation - it's tone, messages and voice - can determine its genre and therefore its potential visual style. In the early, conceptual stages of pre-production, the director must visualise a music video that caters to his/her own interpretation of the music and the music's wider target audience. Once the project's initial direction has been established, the director and the rest of the crew will begin to scout for possible filming locations and actors that will serve the project's initial vision. Piecing together desired settings, possible character/actor direction and visual style, concept artists working on the project will begin to create concept stills and animatics for the song and in conjunction with the team/s discerning what is and what is not feasible and what will/will not be included in the project. (High budget music video projects will often have an artificial setting provided for them). Once the cinematic direction has been established - a framework of animatics and story boards supporting the established filming locations and character direction - the project will progress to its filming stage. This stage will usually absorb the largest amount of pre-production budget; music videos of genres like pop and R&B will often have expensive set-pieces and high quality filming locations and props, for example. When the appropriate amount of raw footage has been gathered by the team working on the project, the footage is then processed through a lengthy and scrutinous video editing process where the music video begins to take shape and the footage is lip-synched to the song.

The editing process will utilise advanced video editing software such as Adobe's Premier Pro editing software. This stage is pieced together by a team that will work heavily in conjunction with the director to create the music video that was envisaged in the conceptual stages, while working to see what can be improved on and added when reviewing the footage they have. This stage translates raw the footage they have gathered into a high-quality music video production, utilising all of the specialist editing tools and software to hand that ultimately create a production that is very nearly ready for mass media consumption. The editing stage must also work in conjunction with the producer's ideal direction for the artist/band whom the music video concerns; Consistency in the representation of the band/brand/artist must be maintained throughout all of the content the producer is attempting to sell to media consumers.

When the music video has been finalised, it's distribution largely falls into the hands on the producers, who will usually have the music video appear on various media outlets such as youtube and social networking sites. Producers will also make deals with mass multi-media companies such as VEVO, (whose reach can extend across multiple media platforms such as smartphones and TVs), that will promote their music video.