Comsumption post - Twitter

Artists and producers of the songs in today's music charts are not simply made popular by just creating them. Although playing the music on the radio, on music channels and having interviews with the artists shown and heard about the song are very important in advertising their new songs there are also other ways to get word out of new music - one of these ways being Twitter.

People in today's society are brought up to know how to use today's technology to the best of their advantage; and one of the best ways to socialise these days is to use internet chat-rooms and social networking. Twitter statistics have flown through the roof in the past year with the pop-star Rihanna's followers number going up to a staggering 26,292,761! - so what better way for her to get news out of a new song she has released by posting about it on twitter!

Rihanna talks about her new album cover for the song, interviews and lyrics within the song as well as the release of the song.

If we were to produce a real music video for the song 'Love and War' by Rita Ora we would be able to write about it on twitter so that our followers then become curious as to what it is and listen to it on youtube, mtv etc.

'Consumption' Post - Facebook

In todays society more and more people are getting in touch with the extremely popular social networking site 'Facebook'. This site allows people from around the world to communicate and share news with friends and family. Many companies now use Facebook as a way to discuss and advertise their new products.

We have chosen Rita Ora's song 'Love and War' for the base of our music video. Below is a screen grab of Rita Ora which shows a form of advertising and communication for her own album using Facebook. This allows people who see her as an icon can stay connected to all her latest news, exclusive content and music. Facebook allows Rita to get out and share her work in a modern up to date way that fits in with the modern generation such as teenagers and young adults. These days seems to be a necessity to have your own account even if it is a way to get in contact with your friends or family. 

When we upload our Music video, like Rita Ora we can use Facebook as a form of advertising. This would allow us to discuss our media product and get them known in a short space of time. By writing about ideas and latest news, just by keeping in contact will allow it to become more popular and even start the spread with word and mouth.

Micro Element - Mise-en-Scene

Mise-en-scene is basically everything you can see on screen visually. This includes location, props, costume, hair, make-up, props, set design and lighting. Mise-en-scene is important to set a scene to make films more believable of where the scene is set, and suit the location. It also has to suit the narrative, or in this case, the lyrics and mood of the song. For example, with a slow and sad song, there would be hardly any colour and dim lighting to make the place look depressing and drained. A happy mood though would be represented with cluttered props, set an maybe a bigger cast, with bright lights and vibrant colours to create a youthful and uplifiting feel. The mise-en-scene can also represent ideas and messages to communicate with the audience, such as the colour red to connote anger, or fancy props such as chandeliers and golden objects to suggest a person has a rich social status.



The video above is a song called 'Emergency' by Paramore. Their videos have very dull colours and a ruined location where the walls are filthy and decaying to represent the artist as broken and falling apart. The costumes are baggy and loose to show they are down and uncaring, and the lack of colour suits the location and the depressing mood of the song. The band members also have scars and scratches made from make-up to represent them as scarred and hurt about the idea of love being abused by others. A red rose is used as a prop to connote love, of which is thrown to Hayley (the main artist) as if it were nothing important. This represents the idea of love being abused and being taken advantage of.



Compared to Paramore's 'Emergency,' this song is fun, excitable and youthful. The video is about a house party, where many young adults and teenagers are used as cast as they are steroeotyped for partying. In the young generation, there are groups such as the popular crowd, the 'emo's' and the 'dorks/nerds.' The narrative is a very basic one where the main artist Katy Perry is dressed up in typical clothes you would associate with a 'nerd,' such as the braces, big glasses and clothing that is quite baggy and covers most of the body. The mise-en-scene is colourful to connote the youthful energy within the party where there is a lot of dancing and drunken behaviour. The props such as plastic cups and streamers help to set the scene of the party. Katy Perry's nerdy character approaches the party in disgust, but get transformed by the host of the party (Rebecca Black) to fit in with the popular crowd: short skirts, tight fighting clothes, make-up and heels. The outfits are quite casual on the cast to suit teenage fashion that may inspire them on their style.

This shows that mise-en-scene is very important to get messages and the character's/artists identity across to the artist. It also introduces many stereotypes which the audience can identity easily to understand a character better.

Micro Element - Editing in our Music Video

When we have the footage for our film, we will be uploading it to the computer and then editing it together to create our music video. The footage will be edited to the rhythm of the music 'Love and War' so the video flows with the music and represents and illustrates the lyrics to make the song more engaging. 

1) Continuity (Action match) 

This is to make the edited footage fit together by matching movement from one scene to the next. An example could be a person jumping in the air with their face to the camera, then the second shot of their feet, with their feet off the ground and just about to land on the floor to create an illusion of one sequence of action . This will allow our shots to flow together to make the editing smooth and the scene more interesting with different shots of the artist's movement to suit the pace and beat of the song.

2) Shot reverse shot

A shot reverse shot will be used between the artist, and the rapper who is parts of 'Love and War.' While The artist is singing, another shot will go to the man in the video whether he is singing or reacting to the lyrics, and then back to the artist when it comes back to her singing. This makes it easier for the audience to follow who is singing, and to capture reactions from the artist and man as they conflict together about their relationship. 

3) Jump cuts 

Jump cuts can cut out unnecessary footage that will not contribute to representations or illustrations of the song of lyrics. It will also be necessary for the pace and beat of the music to cut up a single bit of footage to the rhythm, as well as creating rapid editing to suit the youthful R'n'B genre.

4) Cross-cutting (cutting between two scenes of action that happen in two different locations. The characters normally meet up at the end)

This will be used between the artist and the male in the video as the scenes change from the artist to the man when they are singing. Eventually they meet at the end to talk about their relationship and make-up. Cross-cutting will allow us to show the audience both sides of the relationship to show that they are both sad and depressed about how the relationship is going. 

5) Slow motion 

This editing feature will highlight important parts of the video to emphasis key moments, which will let the audience appreciate them and analyse their meaning for longer. It will also suit slower parts of the song such as the beginning and the end where the music slowly kicks in, building tension towards the pacey chorus.  

6) 180 degree rule

This rule will make sure that the audience will not get confused to where the artists are placed in a scene or location, so it make the music video more believable and easier to follow; therefore more effective to convey emotional or intellectual ideas from the audience without distracting them with mistakes. 

7) Text (Title, actors, credits) 

This will not really be necessary to introduce the music video, but text may be used in our piece for background images to either emphasis the lyrics or make it clear to the audience what ideas are being raise such as 'love.' 

8) Transitions and effects (dissolve, screen wipe, etc)

For camera footage that does not flow together naturally without transition effects, we will be able to use transitions to fix this by using things such as dissolves to go into the next shot, screen wipes or graphic matches. However, different transitions have different effects, where dissolves are slow and smooth, where screen wipes are quick to suit fast songs. We have also been discussing about using a spilt screen so we can see both the artist and male at the same time to show and compare how they are both reacting to their relationship together. We are also going to use blur near the beginning to represent that the artist is breaking down by making her look like she is fading. It also looks similar to an aftermath of an explosion to reference the war aspect in the song. 

Exhibition Research - Where will your music video be shown?

When researching TV and internet channels that exhibits music videos, we found the above list of media outlets that would be suitable for the music genre we are using for our music video (R'n'B). music channels such as Kerrang would not be suitable as they tend to focus on the rock genre.
Therefore the following music channels could be possible exhibitions to show our own music video.

Youtube:

This is a good form of exhibition as there is a variety of videos as well as genres. By watching Youtube you can be introduced to new genres or songs that you did not intend to watch. Therefore this may give us a wider audience than we first intended.

Viva:

Viva is a music channel, as well as a channel that broadcasts reality tv and mature programmes such as 'South Park' which contains language. This music channel has a mainstream audience of teens and young adults, which is the audience we are aiming to attract with out music video.

4music:

Although 4music does broadcast videos that are related to TV programmes they mainly focus on music including music videos. 4music seems to centralise on the genre of R'n'B and Pop and what is 'hot' in the charts at that period of time.

Kiss:

This music channel is based around R'n'B and pop music, as well as the charts. Our song 'Love and War' is by Rita Ora who is a very famous artist, is associated with these genres, so her songs are suited for this music channel. They also have a radio channel, which means that they can also use radio as well as TV.

MTV:

MTV is mainly aimed at teenagers to young adults. They broadcast a range od reality TV programmes such as '16 and Pregnant' and 'Jersey Shore' as well as music videos that are top in the charts.

Music choice (internet exhibit):

Music choice is a website that has a lot of different genres of songs and music videos which opens up a wider music choice for a wider audience. Our music video can be published here for those who go onto the site for R'n'B music, and whose who also like or look up to Rita Ora. You can create your own playlists of songs on the site when creating an account, acting as a personal music list for people to listen to whenever they are online.

Vh1:

Technology used

Blogger:
To keep on track of the research we have done for shooting our music video we have been used Blogger which is an online blog.
By keeping everything in one blog we are able to see ideas that other members of our group have had whilst at home and in lessons as well as put our own ideas down. It has also been very useful as others in our class and in other classes are using the same online blog so we can look at theirs for inspiration for or blog, music video and ideas.
The cons of using this would mainly be that because other students can see it, they could easily copy and paste our blogs and take credit for our ideas, they could claim our music video ideas as their own.

Final Cut:

Once we have filmed our shots for our music video, we will use Final cut to edit everything together. We have already used it to find out how to do a split screen using test footage the Jessica and I filmed during a lesson. It has many options to help us create the effects we would like to put into our video such as slow motion, filters and overlays. This is also where we will be able to match the song with the video shots we have taken and make sure that it is all in-sync and the singer isn't singing a different part to what is actually playing.

The cons of Final Cut would be that if you do not know how to use it and would not be able to create your ideas on the actual screen - it is quite complicated! 

Camera & Tripod:

We are going to be filming all of our video shots with a camera we have been given and to make the shots steady we are going to be using a tripod which can be adjusted to any height so that we can take various different shots. The cons of using these two pieces of equipment is that by using the college's, we have limited use of it and it has to be booked in advance. However, this is also good for our planning as it helps us to create a schedule to that we know what we have and haven't done. 

Different ways of filming

In Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj's video 'Beauty and the Beat' there a few very controversial ways of shooting a music video.
What is most interesting is that it is made to look very unprofessional on purpose by making it look like Justin is filming himself on a handheld camera. We assume that he has used steadycam so that the camera walks along with him:

This brings him back to when he used to film himself singing before he became famous, which shows to his audience and family that he is still the same person, just more grown up and further along in his future. It also brings out his character more, as he is looks like he is having a lot of fun which makes the audience smile because he is laughing a smiling in the video.

Another shot he uses is a frame within a frame shot. On the camera the video shows another camera with him singing on it as if he has recorded it before and is watching it back: 

I find this music video very original. It goes with the lyrics and sound of the music by videoing a party at a theme park and encourages the audience to have as much as they possibly can when this piece of music comes one.