Style for our promo

We created this video in order to shows answers for the following questions:
'What will your video include?'
'What style will your video be?'
'What inspirations have you had for your video?'
'Will you subvert/adhere to any theories?'

By creating this stop motion video it helped us to convey our ideas in a more imaginative way. We made it by taking lots of photographs and adding to it each time so the words would grow and the two of us would move around. It was also useful as we plan to use the stop motion animation technique in our video, and this gave us the chance to practise this and learn about how to make it work successfully.

As we are aiming to create a popular styled promotional video but with a number of different features to it, we naturally have had a lot of inspiration from other videos and media. One of these was Gotye’s video for ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’. This was because we felt that there was an element to the song that was like ours, and this was how it begins with only one or two instruments, but it becomes more powerful and louder as the song goes on. This meant that we looked at the video for the song to see how they approached this style. We liked how the artists were seen in just one room and had strange face paint on. In the video, paint builds up across the walls and goes onto the bodies of the performers. We found this very creative and thus were keen to use face paint to make the performance of an artist more interesting than just seeing their face as they sing. For the chorus of our chosen song, the lyrics are ‘underneath my skin, as the ink settles in’. Therefore the idea of paint building up and spreading across someone’s skin could be linked to the lyrics. Similar to this is the Marina and the Diamonds video ‘I’m Not a Robot’. There are different shots with the singer wearing various extravagant make-up styles.

 

We were also inspired by Adele’s video for ‘Rolling in the Deep’. We liked the idea of the video alternating from the performer on their own, to lots of other shots of varying length that showed simple actions; glasses of water vibrating, somebody drumming, someone dancing on a floor covered in white powder, plates being smashed etc. We think that the song we have chosen would not lend itself well to a video with a linear narrative. Instead we think a better approach would be similar to this video as it has performance but also a whole range of other occurrences that link to the lyrics and the tone of the song.

 

Stop motion is another idea that we have had for the video. An example of when this technique has been used very successfully is Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’. Throughout the whole video we see the singer’s head, and around it stop motion has been used to animate lots of objects that link to the lyrics. For instance, as he says ‘You could have a steam train’ a track is built around his head and a toy train starts to move around it. We think using stop motion is another way of keeping the video interesting and would challenge us to use more skills. As the song uses only two instruments it gives a simplistic feeling and we think that stop motion would be very suitable for this as it is quite a simple technique itself. For the part of our chosen song when the lyrics are ‘underneath my skin, as the ink settles in’, we thought we could use stop motion here because it could show ink spreading across someone’s body or down their face.

Even though the video is slightly dated now, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is never the less an inspiration for us as it uses multiple effects to maintain interest throughout the promo. The way it uses many effects suits our plan to have lots of different goings-on.










The Mumford and Sons video ‘Whispers in the Dark’ is another video that uses an effect that we think could work well for our own video. It splits the screen into quarters to see different parts of a narrative. An idea for using this in our promo is that it could show the various instruments being played, or the different parts of the rhythm. This links in with another idea because it could show four sets of lips and using an effect to put them all in different colours. This is similar to the art of Andy Warhol, as he would show the same picture in different colours four times. It would sort of be in homage to his work. 

Quite like ‘Rolling in the Deep’, we like how the video for ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ uses a combination of performance and lots of events that are symbolic of the lyrics. It is a very unusual and melodramatic video but we like the theatricality as it makes the video quite majestic.

Style of Music video

 

Our chosen track is 'Ink Settles In' by Andrea Storm Kaden. It fits into the popular/acoustic genre as it only uses an acoustic guitar.  This song follows a stereotypical pop song- it about someone breaking her heart and it sinking in that the break up is real. So, we are going to create a popular music video, as this will fit best with style and lyrics of the song. However, we do want to create something new and original so we won’t be having a narrative and the performer won’t be dressed in a sexual way. We plan to have a theme in a video created from the lyrics of the song ‘Ask the ink settles in’- we are going to be using a lot paint to represent this.   By doing this it will create a montage like video, which will help to keep the music video interesting and engaging for the audience.

The music video will have performance in it, as this is key element to the song. We will use a normal looking girl who becomes more distressed and angry as the song goes on (as this fits with the flow of the song).  Our female actors will also mime the acoustic guitar in the song, as this will help to make the music video look more realistic.

During the song we also plan to have a small section that is stop-take animation.  We really want to push our skills to the highest standard possible and using stop-take animation is a good way to do this.  Also by doing this it is another way of keeping the music video original and entertaining to watch.  We want to either use plasticine models or drawing, depending on what is available and works best with the music video.

Conventions of popular music video  

A popular music video will have a theme that runs throughout. The things shown within the shots will be related to one another, often they relate to the lyrics of the song or the artist. This theme is often quite easy to recognise as it means the audience don’t have to think too much about what happening and just enjoy it.

The editing in a popular will be very fast pace, showing a number of different things in a short space of time. This is done to keep the audience engaged and interested in the music video, as this helps to boost sales. Often in these types of music videos, there is so much going on that when an audience member watches it more than one, they will notices different things.

The artist of the song will always appear in a popular music video, whether it is in a narrative or in a performance. They are often made to look glamour’s and not like a normal person. This is done so that they can become more mainstream and famous.

Any props, lighting, costumes and location do depend of the theme of the music video. The theme is depends on what artistic route the artist wants to take. It is important that the mise-en-scene and lighting helps to create a certain mood and relates to the theme of the video. 

Theory

A media theory that relates well to our music video is one created by Julia Kristeva. She said 'any text is the absorption and the transformation of another'. This means that every media text is just another copy of something that be done before.  This is true to an extent with our music video. Although impressionism music videos are about being original, within our montage style video, there will be things that has been done before that we have taken inspiration from other videos. However, with our music video we also will be purposely doing things that have not been done before to be original and unique. So our music video will be a mixture of this theory and something completely different.