Casting

We decided to use ourselves as the cast after weighing up the pros and cons of doing this. We established that it is much harder producing a schedule to film with someone outside the group than it is to do with someone in the group. As there are four members of the group we could use ourselves as we did not need that many people to film. We benefitted from both people in the group and the performance having a indie like look about them which suits the genre of the song.

We used one person from outside our group for the band performance. His timetable was similar to ours so when we needed to film he was available. He also had a certain look about him which suited the music video.

The female and male in the storyline fitted the kind of couple we wanted to portray.

We have decided to cast the following people (Adam, Callum and Tom) for the band performance parts of the song because they fit the profile for members of a indie band which we are looking for.

Adam - A member of group 1 was the bongo player in the band perfomance part of the video. Callum - A member of group 1 was the lead singer in the band perfomance part of the video.
Tom - Not a member of group 1, was the ukelele player in the band perfomance part of the video.

Hannah - A member of group 1 was the female in the story part of the video.
James - A member of group 1 was the male in the story part of the video.

Shooting Schedule

We ended up shooting a lot of our footage across many days.

Wednesday 23rd February - We started filming the lips for the chorus. We needed as many people as we could and didn't run out of time during this session, only people.

Friday 25th February - We recruited more people to sing the line in the chorus. We managed to get all the footage of the lips on the greenscreen on this date.

Wednesday 2nd March - Filmed the stop motion in the park of the male and female character. We also started on the stop motion at the bridge.

Tuesday 8th March - First day filming at the steps. We got three verses done but when we looked at the footage there were some mistakes that we needed to correct.

Wednesday 9th March - Filmed the stop motion of the male and female on the bridge. By here we had everything in the park filmed.

Wednesday 16th March - We corrected the mistakes we made on the first trip and finished the last verse. We also filmed the spinning, umbrellas and the wave.

Props and Equipment List

Props

Ukelele - Used as an instrument in the band performance.

Bongo drums - Used as an instrument in the band performance.

Umbrella - Used as a transition to get to the chorus.

Equipment

Tripod x2 - We used a tripod for all of our shots as we required the footage to be still.

Camera x2 - To shoot the footage.
USB lead - Transfer the footage from the camera to the Mac.
Mac - Put our footage on and make our final product.
Final Cut Express - Edit and sequence our music video.

Costumes - We thought about the costumes carefully. The band wore clothes like polos and checkered shirts and jeans to suit the genre of indie. The female wore a vintage themed look along with the male.

Car - transport the equipment.
Green screen - To edit the background colour for the chorus.
Lyrics - The song is quite fast and not as clear on the most so we needed a lyric sheet.

Locations List

Steps

We found these steps in an old primary school that James went too. On our recce of the location we realised we would have to film during the children's lesson time as it would be noisy at break and lunchtimes. The location was easy to get to and although it required advanced booking it fitted with our schedule.

Bridge

This was at a park called the Grange where we filmed the scene with the female and male character. It was a quiet place during the day so filming went well at this location without many issues. This provided good scenery as a backdrop for the shot.

Park

This was the same park as where we filmed the scene on the bridge. It was cold as it was in autumn but we did not need to stay out for too long.

Storyboards

Target Audience Description

Within our music video my group and I took time in the decisions toward the target audience information the genre of the video affects what gender/age of people it appeals to. The sub-genre of the film further restricts who the film appeals too, for example, a song by someone from the 80’s or before is more associated with adults where as a new modern band or solo artists video would tend to appeal more so to a younger audience.

Our music video is intended to be aimed at teenagers, whom are a fan of bands etc. Our music video reflects our target audience, as the people performing in it are young adults who the audience can idolize and relate too. There is no main storyline that runs throughout the video, which is better for teenagers as they may not pay attention throughout, unlike an older person. Nothing in the video is being taken too seriously, and the bright colours being used in the video. The name ‘Paper Crayons’ also reflects the light-hearted interpretation infused into our video.

The small narrative that runs through the video was purposely chosen as a typical scenario that teenagers might experience. The target audience is not completely just based around teenagers, as adults would most likely have experienced a break up too, causing them to relate to the video.

Gender wise, we hope for both genders to relate to the video. Males would idolize the band, whereas females would be attracted to the band. By using both genders point of views with the small narrative that runs through, our video relates to both genders. The girl and the boy in the video, will represent our target audience, as they are both obvious teenagers. The style chosen in the video was specific to what we feel our target audience would be wearing.

Media grouping for our target audience would consist of films that our target audience may be fond of may be along the lines of Juno and Whip it. These two are both relative to teenagers, and like our video both are not too serious, but do carry emotions throughout both.

TV shows: Skins, Misfits, Scrubs, Inbetweeners and Balls Of Steel.

Other Music: Arcade Fire, Mystery Jets, Darwin Deez and Two Doors Cinema Club.

Questionnaire

Conventions of Music Videos

General conventions

Some kind of narrative going on.

Band or artist shown a lot throughout.

Looking directly at the camera, like it’s a person.

A lot of attention to lighting and the mise en scene.

Some kind of choreography.

The pace of the editing fits the pace of the song, clean cuts.

Authentic looking lip syncing.

Strong use of editing and after effects, normally in montage.

Main character is the singer.

Metal genre conventions

Highly performance based, from previous gigs.

A lot of shots of the crowd.

Fast paced editing to reflect the speed of the song.

Focus on the whole band but more on the lead singer, close ups of them all to put them all in the music video.

Attention to clothing, normally what they wear in day to day life, stereotypical metal look.

Cross cutting between a smaller narrative.

Lighting is often very dark.

Pop genre conventions

Interesting location, attention to lighting, make it have a happier feel.

Lots of focus on the singer/group.

Lots of things going on onscreen.

Highly edited music in sync with lips but sounds unrealistic.

Dance routines with many females/males depending on gender of singer.

Artist changes costumes a lot, very typical 'in' clothing.

Just the artist without any instruments as they do not normally play their own instruments.

Camera work like zooms and close ups showing the artists face and their expressions.

Indie genre conventions

Attention to costumes, polos, plimsoles, check shirts, jeans etc, very casual.

Enquire some band performance, sometimes for the whole thing but sometimes mixed with a narrative.

Band often play in the narrative, lead singer is main character.

The video is often very random and do not follow the lyrics.

Editing is quite fast paced to match the music.

The colour and feel of the music video differs according to the song.

Effects and transitions used here and there.

Song Choice and Lyrics

We decided to make our music video on the song 'A Punk' by Vampire Weekend. When thinking of song choices this is one of the ones that came up and it stood out the most. After looking at the lyrics we immediately came up with some possible ideas and our current idea branched of the initial ones.




















Our idea for the song is to have a band performance thought the song with visual representation that relate to specific lines of the song. Throughout the song we will use a lot of cut to fit with the fast pace of the music.

After filming our band performance we discovered that the performance doesn't work visually in the gaps between the verses where the tempo is much slower, therefore we are going to add in a narrative which will be our interpretation of the lyrics. The narrative will be about a break up in a relationship and the reactions after, however to make this different the whole event will occur backwards.

Original Idea

The original idea for our music video was to use the meaning of the song, which is about a cancer patient in a leading cancer hospital in America called Sloan Kettering, which is mentioned in the song. Our idea was to show the mental battle of the cancer patient as a physical battle through her fight with cancer.

Our idea was to show the cancer patient moving thought two lines of people, who were having a battle across her path. We decide to use confetti, balloons, party poppers and silly string as the weapons for the battle. In the first verse we decided to represent the cancer patient at their worst in the battle against cancer therefore we decide to put her in a wheelchair, in the second verse she would be walking with a drip in a hospital gown, in the third verse she would be in the hospital gown and in the final verse she would be wearing her own clothes after winning her battle with cancer.

Unfortunately, we were unable to follow through with this idea because we were unable to get enough people to create our battle scene, whilst filming we realised we needed around 60 people at least to form the battle which we then decide was unrealistic to attempt to try and create. Although we did film some shots for these scenes we decided we couldn't use them because we had too few people to make the shots look realistic. As the battle scene was the main storyline behind the whole video we decide that we were unable to re-film this idea due to the problems we found with our first attempt.

Goodwin's Analysis

Goodwin’s Analysis and How It Will Incorporate Into our Music Video

Andrew Goodwin writing in ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ (Routledge 1992)

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band).

The genre characteristics of the Indie genre are something that is fun and lighthearted. Even though the lyrics of the song can be seen in a serious, sad manner the actual music of the song is entirely different with a generally upbeat, happy tempo. Therefore, our music video will demonstrate a more fun side with the theme of bright colors that will be present throughout most of the video.

We will challenge the genre characteristics of the Indie music genre by including a narrative which shows a girl who slaps a boy which offers a slightly more serious meaning to the music video, incorporating our interpretation of the lyrics.

2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (Illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).

We are not going to have much of a relationship between lyrics and visuals as we are going to concentrate more on the relationship between the music and the visuals. However, the narrative part of our video will be about our interpretation of the lyrics.

3. There is a relationship between music and visuals (Illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).

Within our music video there is a relationship between the music and the visuals. During the verses of the song where it is upbeat with lots of drumbeats we will have lots of cuts so the footage looks choppy and correlates with the drumbeats of the song.

Furthermore, during the instrumental in the song we will slow the footage, which matches with the change in tempo of the song.

The continued use of colours throughout the music video amplifies the generally upbeat tempo and the happy mood of the music and also creates a link between the band performance and the narrative. However, we will include in the chorus of the song the ‘flashing lights’ that contradicts with the slower tempo of the song, we feel this will work really well and it is probably the only place in the song where a contradiction between the music and visuals would work.

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs, which recur across their work (a visual style).

Because of the Indie/Rock genre there is a band performance that runs throughout all the verses. The motif of our band will most probably be of a colourful/fun nature as we will have lots of colour throughout our music video and the with the band name being Paper Crayons the colourful theme will almost certainly recur across their work.

5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

The only ‘voyeuristic’ treatment of the female body will be in the chorus when the screen is split up into four. The close up of several females lips will be used which will be a reference to the notion of looking at the female body.

6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV programmers, other music videos etc).

The intertextuality we are referencing comes from a 30H3! Music video, which is called My First Kiss. For the lyrics “ ’Ay ‘Ay ‘Ay ‘Ay, ‘Ay ‘Ay ‘Ay” we will film the lips of different people on different coloured backgrounds.

Our band performance is an intertextual reference to music videos from the indie/rock genre as most use a band performance thus we will have an intertextual reference to that specific genre.

The last intertextual reference within our music video is from the White Stripes – The Hardest Button to Button music video. They use stop motion throughout their music video and they portray the band going on ‘a journey’. Instead of showing the band going on a journey we will include a short narrative story within the music and show a journey of a girl and a boy after they have broken up.