The Pitch

This is the pitch we took part in to share our ideas about the music video we are going to produce on our song of choice, Madeon - Finale. From the advice of music video director Frank Maloney Maloney Maloney Jr., we need to focus our attention to our audience; who they directly are and how to target them with the music video.

One page pitch

As part of our preparation for making our music video, we have been assigned to make a one page pitch and present it to a 'music video director'. We needed to include the song, genre and audience as main features; plus the synopsis of the music video. Below is the one page we used as notes for the pitch.

Vevo case study

We have chosen to do a company case study on Vevo to help understand the distribution of music videos further.
Resources - Vevo - Wikipedia

Preliminary task - Sound Remedy & Savoy 'Leaving You'

The preliminary task was to create a one minute music video from a song of our choice. We chose 'Leaving You' as it was from a genre we enjoyed and had some initial ideas about how to create the music video. The story is about a young man trying to find his true self, shown by the different jackets. We focused heavily on editing rather than shot types as it was understood that the genre of the song, Drum and Bass, was known for many editing techniques such as quick cuts and audio matches. We also took more footage than what was needed, which proved to be helpful during the end stages of editing when we could use the extra footage we had to lengthen out the video.
However, the video needed many improvements. Many of the shots were out of sync with the audio due to a lack of time and trying to match up two different singers to sing at the same time proved to be rather difficult. Another issue was that the narrative was initially different as well, originally involving the male searching for a female rather than himself. This was due to a lack of planning of film times and can easily be improved on if we chose to include outside influence in our video again. Finally there was camera quality difference in some shots due to different cameras being used, making the work look quite unprofessional. This can be organised better by making sure the same camera is used each time.




We then had create a website for our band and a way to promote our music video. The website we chose to use was Weebly. The website creator was simple and easy to use, but ultimately lack control without a subscription fee; resulting in a lacklustre website. It was enough for this task, we will definitely use a different website creator for the main task. Savoy & Sound Remedy Website




The CD cover was the final part of our task, creating one for the single we made the music video for. The art shows the protagonist of the video on one side, but an empty space on the other; showing he is looking for something. The CD I am pleased to say was a large success. While there were multiple sizing issues with the use of Photoshop, the art was successful in showing the house-like style of the song with bold font. The font was interesting to work with, especially with the positioning of it.

Textual Analysis 7 - Katy Perry 'California Girls'.

Katy Perry – California Gurls from 09robebr

Best music videos and CD covers

One of the music videos that I have looked at that is highly regarded as one of the best music videos is 'Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun'.



The music video is described by NME as 'One of the classic WTF? vids'. This I agree with, as it uses a lot of weird distortion editing techniques which matches the dark nature of the song about the apocalypse. The editing, (for its time) is quite effective and supports the nature of the song as a whole, as well as having visuals matching lyrics at times with 'shoes' and 'youth'. The shot choices also match the creepiness of the song, constantly changing in angles and characters in the town shown.


NME 10-1 of Greatest Music Videos




Another song that was highly regarded was 'Nirvana - Heart-Shaped Box'.

This music video uses very simple green screen effects and costume to display a religious message, going between good and bad. While it didn't personally make sense to me, I understood the Jesus reference and I presume that the young girl represents innocence; though I am not quite sure. There are a lot of close-up shots of the lead singer, especially when he says, 'Hey. Wait.' However there are a lot of blurred shots of the artist as well, which could infer he is unsure about his standpoint on religion.

NME 30-21 of Greatest Music Videos

When looking at the greatest music videos, I found one that I personally thought was interesting, and that is 'AC DC - Back in Black'.

The CD cover was the first made after their lead singer Bob Scott died. It is filled with depression and sadness, despite it appearing to be simply for visual purposes. It is very simple and effective, standing out easily from many with little to nothing but the name of the band and the album name.

 

Another CD cover that is highly regarded is 'Queen - Queen II'.

This CD cover has Queen with their most recognised image on the cover of this from the music video. This immediately shows who the band are and what to expect; Queen still incredibly popular at the time of this albums' release.

Greatest CD covers

Music Video Director - Hype Williams

I have made an evernote post on the music video director, Hype Williams, and his style of videos.

Music Video Director - Hype Williams