The style of the video
We used both narrative and performance in our music video but it was dominantly performance which can be seen in the screenshot above of a band member playing guitar. With the use of mise en scene we adapted the style of our video to give it a vintage/old school look, to do this we used warm colours for example, as shown above, red, orange and brown. This colour scheme links to the mexican influence of our song and music video. The performance aspect of our music video is a popular theme, however we added a slight twist to it by giving it a old school and mexican feel.
Setting/Location
This location complies with conventions because it is very similar to 'Deathproof' the movie which features a music video of the song we chose, we chose a similar setting of the bar, with a performance of a band rather than the one of the girl alone. The image above is a screenshot of the opening of our music video, it has been used as an establishing shot. The setting/location we chose has a dance floor, a bar and a stage which was perfect, as this is also what you would see in the 'Deathproof' version of our music video.
Costumes and props
Here we used red lipstick for the main girl, Julide. She used this prop in the music video, as shown in the shot of her applying the lipstick. Red lipstick represents someone who is sexy and feminine i.e. Marilyn Monroe. By using the red lipstick, we have represented our main girl as someone who could be seen as a sex icon. Using a beautiful girl, we aimed to show the idea of how 'sex sells' which is a common convention in the music industry, especially in the music videos for their promotional value. For example, Beyonce's video of 'Single Ladies' is very simple, as she is basically using herself as a sex icon to sell. We also added a black lace hand fan (screenshot below) in order to give the music video its Hispanic feel.
Camerawork
The screenshot above shows the main girl, Julide's legs as she is walking towards the band. With the camera we panned the shot downwards as she walked past the camera. Julide has enviable legs, which helps heighten her sexual lure, so we thought we'd capture shots of her legs to emphasize this. After I panned the shot down to her shoes, i travelled back up the body to her hips before she starts dancing towards our lead singer, Dan. The fact that Julide is a model helps us to conform to the ideology of what you'd see as a leading lady in a music video. There's a specific look which people in the music and modeling industry look for and expect. We used certain shots to highlight these idea's and qualities that Julide and the usual cast members of a music video share.
Editing - consider use of lip synching /edited to the beat
The people we got to be in our band learnt the song on guitar and learnt the lyrics which helped a lot because it meant that when they were playing they actually knew what they were doing and it shows. They had huge enthusiasm especially Dan, the lead singer seen in the screenshot above. Dan lip synced the song with passion and excellent acting, this made the music feel more believable. Majority of music videos have lip synching and require the artist or cast to act considerably well or the music video would look unrealistic, we believe that our music video has the right feel to it to make the capture the audience.
We made sure that the music video is cut to the beat, this is a main convention of music videos of today. In the screenshot above, the band are jumping with their instruments to the beat which is something we see bands do a lot when the beat drops or changes suddenly. This part of the music video shown above is quite fast and upbeat, for this reason we asked the band members to jump at this bit.
Any other techniques used
Edited Version
Above, is the 'flipped' version of a shot we used in our music video because we thought it worked better; It would not have made sense otherwise, as the direction of the character walking onto the shot would not be consistent with the previous shot. We made this simple change to keep the continuity going.
Special effects
We used various special effects in our music video such as fade in and fade out, lighting and on screen text. One concept which is seen in music videos as a convention is on screen credits at the beginning which include, the name of the song, the band name, director and record label name which we made up. We also applied fade in and fade out using the IMovie editing software to make our music video look neater at the beginning and ending.
Performance
This was the main aspect of our music along with the narrative, we showed the performance throughout the video with the band players playing their various instruments and lip synching. These are conventions of music videos and have been applied very professionally to the music video through precise editing to make our music video look realistic.
How the video suggests the music genre of the track
Our music video which is under the genre of Soul/R'n'b of the 1960s has been reconstructed to be aimed at a modern audience of all ages to present time. It conveys a combination of retro and old school feel which is shown in the colours and mise en scene, the bar being slightly old fashioned and latino. These are the various ideas we came up with to convey a soulful and mexican feel to the Soul/R'n'b genre, to make our music video look unique yet still follow the criteria in order to reach a wider audience of 16+.
How does your video reflect research done into the style of the artists other videos?
There isn't a music video for "Down in Mexico" but it was featured in the 2007 Quentin Tarantino action thriller film "Deathproof" where the sequence featured is actually a music video in itself. We used a 'honky tonk' type bar (a small bar where music is played in Mexico) similar to the bar used in the film.
The image below is a screenshot from the sequence where "Down in Mexico" is featured in the movie "Deathproof"
The bar, as shown in the screen shot above, is quite similar to the one we used , in a sense that the colours, look and feel of it is very retro and latino.
No comments:
Post a Comment