Explanation of A2 Course

 

copyright

The examiner's report

“For music video, permission should be sought from the artist for use of the audio track.’ Where this rule was breached, centres either didn’t comment on the use of found material, or acknowledged its use but did not reflect it in the marks allocated. In these cases significant adjustments were made to construction marks which potentially jeopardised the order of merit in a centre, thereby affecting the outcomes for those candidates who had followed the requirements of the Specification; such a situation may also result in all work being returned to the centre for remarking.”

Music Video Styles

Genre

A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, marked by a distinctive style, form or content.

Looking At Your Grades

Music - Piracy

Digital technology has had a huge impact on music videos. However, it has also created a serious large scale issue of music piracy.

Monitoring service MusicMetric has analysed over the past 3 years a massive increase of illegal downloads. It has found that people have been illegally downloading music by using BitTorrent, The Pirate Bay and other similar sites. 

The data collected by the site shows that Ed Sheeran was the most illegally downloaded singer in 2012, with his album clocking over 8 million illegal downloads in towns and cities across the UK.

 

In 2012, UK Government ordered internet providers to block BitTorrent directory and The Pirate Bay to prevent users from visiting these illegal downloading sites. But, there are alternative ways to get around the blocking measure so people would still be able to access the site, such as apps on smartphones and other websites, so the issue cannot be solved effectively and still exists today.

 

The report by MusicMetric has had a massive impact on the music industry, as the nature of piracy is on such a huge scale it is hard to track the full extent of the issue.

Genre of Music

Genre means classifying a text according to its content and style as well as its structure and way of production. From all various media, pop music most depends on genre. It also includes the most varied genres of texts. People always invent, cross and revisit genres, and categorisation important for the fans and producers. Some of these categorisations contain a complex set of definitions that are strongly enforced by aficionados (for example the sub genres of house).

Generalising, most music can be divided into these categories:

• Pop
• Classical
• Dance/Techno
• R&B
• Hip-Hop/Rap
• Rock
• Metal
• Country
• Jazz
• Blues
• Reggae

Each of them contains a variety of sub-genres, as well as hybrids and mash-ups. However, each of them has specific characteristics (instruments used for melody, rhythm, lyrics and vocals), and can be connected with other things, such as fashion, hair and lifestyle. Each genre has specific ways of institutional support, including performance venues (e.g. nightclubs), radio stations, record shops, festivals and magazines.

Image is crucial for music genre, and an artist's look categorises them before they start performing. For an artist or band to truly fulfil a genre category, they must be represented visually, on records, photos and music videos.

Looks can be as generic as sound: it is hard to differentiate between many hip hop videos, all showing baggily dressed homeboys sitting on porches or outside houses in a generic 'hood, swinging their arms and grinning at the booty passing by. Or maybe driving slowly in big old open-topped cars around a generic 'hood, swinging their arms and waving at the booty they pass by. Similarly, all girl or all boy groups go for videos in a warehouse, or other similar setting, showing them dancing in formation. If the look works, wear it.

Adele, whose music is inspired by classic pop styles of the 1960s and 1970s, is often photographed wearing classic or retro clothing that connects her with her role models Aretha Franklin or Dusty Springfield and makes her seem a serious, soulful artiste in old school mode. Lady Sovereign, on the other hand, identifies with her genre of music through an outsize baseball cap, weird sunglasses and neon colours.

As well as publishing overall sales figures, the Billboard chart is divided into more than 43 different music genre categories.

• Billboard Magazine Music Chart

Genre has always been a cornerstone of music business because customers often dedicate themselves to a certain style of music (eg hiphop, R'n'B) and are not interested in buying outside of it. Go into your local HMV and look at how it is organised along genre. Although many artists resent being categorised into a particular genre in this way, there is no doubt that retailers and customers rely genre to make their choices. Online music streaming services (like Pandora or Spotify) take into account your past genre choices in order to keep playing you new music that you may be interested in buying.

Grading of Music Videos

Below is  Slideshare, that tells us how our coursework is graded. This is helpful because it allows me to know what I must include in my posts.

A2 levels from ellymellish

A2 Deadlines

Below is a Scribd document that includes all of my deadlines.

A2 Lesson Plans

Media Dictionary

Below is a Scribd document that includes all the media terminology that I should include in my posts and essays.

Media Dictionary

How a Music Video is Made

The stages are usually as follows:

1.    The record label, artist and their management agree what to release as a single.

2.    The video commissioner makes a shortlist of possible directors that suit the style of the idea. The director’s are usually affiliated to particular production companies that specialise in music videos.

3.    The director provides a treatment to the video commissioner.

4.    The director develops the idea into a storyboard once the idea is approved.

5.    Heads of department are booked eg director of photography (DOP or often called cameraman), art direct, costume, location manager etc

6.    The sets are built.

7.    The shoot (usually lasts up to 2 days).

8.    The editor produces a rough cut in approximately 3 days.

9.    Viewing of the rough cut by the director and management to allow for alterations (which is another reason why you get audience feedback to allow for alterations to your own product)

10. Changes are agreed and made before special effects are added.

11. On-line video made in the edit (polished version from rough cut) 

12. Video is passed to record label for release.

The key institutional players in all this are the record company and the video production company (who makes the video). 

The Record Company

Sign up the band or artist, paying them in advance to cover the cost of releasing a single including marketing costs, such as the music video, which is ultimately funded by the sales of the music. The record company employs a video commissioner to develop the brief for the video, budget and deadlines and sends it to the company/director along with the recording of the song. 

The Video Production Company

Represents a director within a particular territory eg the Oil Factory production company represent the director Spike Jonze. The company acts as an agent on behalf of the director, seeking work for them and negotiating with the client. Unlike an agent, the production company also produces (makes) the video and takes a fee for this. Individual directors are unlikely to have the finances or resources to pitch for a job so the production companies do this and the costs are recuperated once the video has been made and paid for. The director used to take 10% but this is often no longer the case and making a living from promos as a director has become increasingly difficult.

The Director

Listens to the track, looks at the lyrics and any other material, such as previous videos by the same band and outlines a proposal. 

If the commissioner/record company likes the idea, they usually hold a meeting with the director that sometimes includes the artist. The treatment might be amended or simply agreed and the next stage occurs which is the budgeting.

Budgeting

This is done by the producer and approved by the head of production and then submitted to the client. Once agreed a contract is signed.

With the recent economic downturn available budgets have been considerably reduced and the requirements of multiple signatures from those in charge of big institutions such as Sony, to agree to the funding, hasn’t helped.

Shooting

Can take about five days to prepare for compared with two shooting days (think how long you spend on research and planning compared with Construction and you get the general idea of the standard ratio). A shoot on location might be less complicated than shooting on a set, which has to be built and pre-lit, often in a short space of time. Shooting days can be very long, often starting at 7am and finishing at 1am the next morning. This was certainly the case when I did videos for Morcheeba and the Lightning Seeds. The benefit was that overtime was paid.

Editing

The editor must have a clear idea of what the director is after and have access to the storyboard if required. Editing is divided into two – off-line or roughcut, which takes up to four days and then shown for approval to the director and management company and then on-line edit, where effects are added and the material is produced to broadcast standard. The time taken for this varies on the requirements of the video. On-line edits are usually done by a different editor to the rough cut edit and are based in a post production facilities house that own systems such as Flame and Inferno to create the special effects.

This information above comes from Pete Fraser who works at the BFI.

Making Your Music Video

Below is a guide given to us by our teacher on how to make our own music video.

Guide to Shooting

You must have a CD player with you which can clearly be picked up by the camera mic (record and check this before starting shoot), remember the in-built camera mic doesn’t have a very good range. If you intend to shoot using a long lens to do a long shot then I recommend you use the professional 416 mic that we have in school. Shoot the performance from at least three different angles AT LEAST ONCE ALL THE WAY THROUGH, although ideally you would do it three times all the way through from different angles to allow greater flexibility in the edit. These aren’t the only shots you’ll do, they are simply your base tracks.

You will need to buy your own memory card.

Editing

Be sure to create footage folders and premiere pro edit folders and that the computer has been set up to always save to your edit folders. Make sure you also back up your work on the school hard drive (see me if you are unsure of this) as it is YOUR responsibility to look after your own footage and to always save it on the HD as GCSE students use these computers as well.

Lip Syncing and Editing

Don’t import all footage, just the items you are sure you need. Save the items on the memory stick to your own computers or keep hold of the memory stick. Make sure other students can access your work at all times if it is group work.

Once you have deleted the most obvious ‘excess’ footage you need to line up material for lip syncing. Do your base track first (main track) and then work from there. It is possible to magnify the audio track and match up sound waves by going in close to a single frame with a ‘marker’. This can be time consuming but is essential to creating an effective piece. 

It is important to be ruthless in the edit as the tighter the cuts the more powerful the piece, no split ends please! Effects can be useful to disguise problems, but if the problems are too great I will expect you to re-shoot sections as part of the standard process of filmmaking. 

Use your storyboard during the edit to guide you. Sometimes it is better (as is the industry practice) not to have the director edit but someone else as this ensures objectivity. Editing is the stage of construction that will take the longest. A minimum of 10 hours will be needed. 

Screenings and Feedback

It is essential that you embed the rough cuts of your video at least twice to show its developmental stages (as you would in the industry) and get feedback from your target audience (as you would in the industry, except it would be the viewpoint of the director and media institution’s feedback).  Questions to be asked could include:

·      What genre do you think it is?

·      Why?

·      What sense did you make of it?

·      Why do you think certain decisions were made (provide examples of decisions)?

·      What impression did you get from the artist?

·      Was the artist appropriate to the genre?

·      Was the mise en scene appropriate to the genre?

·      Did the video remind them of any other media texts (intertextuality)?

Now summarise the feedback you got. Do you agree with it? If not, why not? How will you change some aspects of the video to conform to the feedback given?

See me about an organised screening in the library for your target audience. Yopu could film the reaction to the video and the feedback to it as well to embed on your blog. You don’t necessarily have to do questionnaires, but whatever you decide to do it is essential to summarise the feedback and evaluate your thoughts on it. For your second feedback session on the improved rough cut I would recommend a different means to representing the information. You could even use Survey Monkey and other on-line tools to help get the general public to view the video and comment on it.

Assessment

Be sure to work to the levels for construction as provided at the start of the course to ensure you meet all requirements and work to the highest possible standard.

The history of music videos

definition of a music video

Definition of a music video


A film or video rendition of a recorded song, often showing the musicians performing or showing images that illustrate the lyrics or the mood of the song.
Hence Goodwin’s quote: "Music video is not primarily a commodity form but a promotional one."

Audit- Post-production

We covered the audio in the final opening title sequence due to the wind which blurred the sound of the speaking and made the opening sequence sound awful, however it still looked good and you would never notice that there was meant to be speaking in the sequence. 

When editing, we used Adobe Pro X. This helped us because it meant that we could have a more professional look to video. For example I was able to expand the timeline to get the timing perfect between the video and the music by making slight adjustments. This also allowed us to add in title pages for the actors in our clip.

In order to make our opening title sequence use more real media conventions, We created a production company to put at the start of our sequence. I did this using Adobe Pro X to create the logo, this was three letters together to spell 'JCB', which is the initials of myself (Jamie Cameron Backler). Creating this allowed our sequence to appear more professional by having an production company and although it was quite basic, still showed the skill of creativity and how we used real conventions.

Audit- Research and planning

Research and planning was the starting point for my AS coursework. After the course, I realised just how important this stage was in order to create a successful opening title sequence. Research was necessary in order to gain some background knowledge to opening title sequences, such as, learning about the history, conventional features, representations and of course the 4 key elements of production (camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene). We also got to learn which titles and the orders they needed to be in when they appear on screen.

When creating a new media text, it is vital to plan what you are to do in detail in order to make things run smoother and avoid confusion. There were only 2 people in our group and we were noth allocated jobs to do in terms of pre-production work. The jobs to be undertaken were:

• Shot List
• Location Recce
• Character Development
• Risk Assessment
• Filming Schedule
• Storyboard
• Treatment/Log-Line
• Timeline of Credits
• Equipment and Props List

As you can see there were 9 total jobs and therefore each of took responsibility for 4 tasks and we did 1 task together, meaning that roles were equally distributed, enabling us to work well as a group and as efficiently as possible.

Audit- Creativity

During my preliminary task and the final opening title sequence I used many types of digital technology in order to help me create my media production. I used a Canon Legria for my preliminary task. It captured HD and had a built in microphone which only picked up basic sounds, so this was not suitable for our actual opening title sequence. 

This camera helped me to understand the basic concept of how to use the cameras settings to produce the best image. This helped me when moving onto the Canon 700D which used a lot more complicated setup, however this made the camera more professional to use than the Legria.

In terms of editing, we used software's such as Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro X, this was a big advantage because it meant that we could make our overall product more aesthetically appealing for example I could make the timeline on the project bigger to get the correct position meaning that I could cut the shots in specific areas making my overall project more specific and tidy.

independent research

The Videographers Guide Ep. 1 - The Music Video from HYPEBEAST on Vimeo.

1. Why use promo's?

Promo's can be created by anyone and they can be posted on social media sites, such as, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, to promote their work to millions of people. Promos can also go viral and take over social network sites, making unknown artists get recognition and become mainstream, for example Justin Bieber (a pop artist) used to be independent and wasn't signed to a label and released his music on YouTube. After being recognised by Usher and he secured a deal and released 'Baby' which is a unique music video which is what he was mostly known for. He is know a global star and extremely popular in all continents of the world.

    

  2. Relevance of promos now and who makes them? Big bands or independents?

Promo's can literally be made by anyone who has a camera and has a good idea, according to Trish Sie "In a way it is the greatest time for a music video because on one side of the coin you probably can't make a living doing it but on the other side of the coin its open to anybody who wants to give it a shot''. This suggests that anyone can make a promo, however, whether it is successful or not is completely unknown.

Promos for big bands tend to go more mainstream and have more shares and views on social network sites such as YouTube, however they are made both by mainstream artists such as Maroon 5, Lil Wayne, Chris brown but also independent artists such as grime artist JME.

  3. Well known promo directors – who are they and what makes their promos good?

Rick Codero is an award winning promo director, he is most known for using unusual, non traditional shooting methods in his work. He has worked with YouTube prodigy D-Pryde who is most known for doing covers on YouTube.

What makes Rick Codero's promo's good as that they're are very much so different to the conventional music video that is seen a lot in today's society. His unique work sets a standard and can be familiarised with, for example after looking at his wide range of music promos I can now identify his unique style and familiarise it with his other pieces of work.

  4. MTV VS Viral?

MTV is a 24 hour general entertainment channel which is mostly known for broadcasting music videos on TV. It's target audience is mainly young adults and teenagers. MTV is known for showing successful music videos from artists that have already been established. 

However new media has meant that now viral videos are becoming more popular, artists are finding it easier to get established due to the power of new media. For example, Rebecca Black created a music video called 'Friday' which received over 10 million views in just under a month on 'YouTube' this shows that to be successful in the music industry you can go big just by internet popularity and recognition.

 6. Advantages of promos for sales/profit.

One of the main advantages of promos for sales and profit is that it is open to everybody, as long as you have a camera you can share your videos all over the world, therefore if someone has a great music video idea and releases it on a new media site such as YouTube, it could possibly go viral. An example of this is an YouTuber KSI, who released 'Lamborghini', the video itself is currently on 21 million views and downloaded by thousands of people on iTunes, this has gained him some recognition in the music industry. He is also now a very recognised person across the world from his YouTube videos.

 7. Future of promos.

Nobody can predict the future of promos, as there is always new platforms to release music videos. There will never be 1 dominant way of sharing promo's with the world as there is so many different ways of doing so.