Sia The Greatest Music Video

As part of my research stage i have looked at Sia' new music video for 'The Greatest', it is dedicated the victims of the pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June. There were a total of 49 dancers in this video to represent the 49 lives lost that evening. This music is a very powerful and meaningful video.

The video starts of with Maddie Ziegler crying and whipping paint down her face, this could represent war paint as though she is going into battle. The way that they have used a medium close up and then slowly zoomed in really brings out the emotions in Maddies face. Then the clip cuts to little children lying on the floor which represents all the people that had died in the shooting. The way that they have used low key lighting and all the colour has been taken out of the shot shows how cynical the mass shooting was. I really like the way that they have used the low key lighting and this is what i want to use for my music video to create a dark atmosphere.

As the clip goes on it cuts to a long shot image of the children trapped in a cellar, this could represent that there was no escape from the shooting showing that they were trapped. I like the way that they have a main character(Maddie Ziegler) and they are all looking at her. Then all the characters come to life all following the footsteps of Maddie Ziegler.

 As they break out from the cellar they all start dancing in unison which is very powerful because they were all in their together. Its very theatrical dancing with lots of big facial expressions, for my music video i want to take this idea and want to use in terms of their being two groups of dancers one group dark and the other light trying to help the main character.

 I really like the idea of all the dancers surrounding the main character and then the main character is spinning. I want to use this in my video to signify the main character spiralling out of control.

 This image shows the blood splattered on the wall behind which shows that people have died, i think in my music video i want to take the idea of that the main character had a dramatic medium close up and makes some very theatrical facial expressions like they do in Sia' music video.

 Furthermore i really want to play with the lighting when i make my music video and very much like the idea of the red and the free/blue like in these two shots. i think that it makes it more theatrical which is what I'm going for.

As they have done in this music video started with the single character and ending with the single character crying thats how i want to start and end mine. I think that this makes it more powerful and this will help show that my video is of a nightmare, which is all in the brain. 

Overall Sia' music video is very effective it gets the message across, i want to take some ideas from this in order to create mine. I think that the idea for Sia' video is very emotional and the shots and facial expression throughout the videos really reflect that it was a tragic event. 

Bastille Oblivion Music Video Reveiw

As i have decided to do a music video for my main product this year i went onto youtube and look at lots of different music videos. The first video i looked at was Bastille's Oblivion music video. I really liked the way that they put this video together i think its very clever and i have taken some inspiration from this video which i will use in my music video.

The video starts of with Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner looking at old photos/trophies, from this it suggests that she has possibly lost someone close to her maybe her brother/dad. I like this over the shoulder shot it establishes where she is and it gives you a feel of what the video is about.

I really like the title in this shot they have made the transition of the title coming in very slick like the style of the font. I love the way that they white writing really contrasts the black of the sky. Another thing that i like from this shot is that it makes it look like someones following here, this could suggest someone is still there to help her. The lighting in this section of the video is high key in terms of the flood lights but its also low key lighting as its pitch black. 

This shot is a medium shot this helps to show the characters body language and facial expressions. As Sophie Turner starts to sing it really surprises you as its a male band playing and singing yet a female is miming it. It messes with your mind a bit at the beginning as it just doesn't look right but as the video goes on you get used to it and don't notice it. I think in my video i want to use this idea of having a women miming a mans song. 

This extreme close up is used to show the nerves and the facial expression on her face. I think that in a music video like this the extreme close up is key to making it good because it makes it more sensitive and shows the feelings of the character more.

Here is puts the song into context and shows more where she is, from this you can see she is linked somehow to the car sport and these are the spectators watching them.

After i watched the video i typed into google what the meaning of the video and the song was and these are the results i got back from my research.

What am I expecting from A2 Media Studies?

I think that A2 Media Studies is going so much different and better, I think that from AS my skills have developed I am now more knowledgeable in using the Premiere Pro software. This means that it wouldn't take me as long to do the simpler parts of editing and this allows me to take time doing the more difficult parts of the editing making them look really good. It also means that I have more time to experiment with other ways of editing and effects to see what looks best.



This year I am expecting my knowledge to expand and I think that I am going to spend more time on getting the mise en scene and costumes correct to create the right feel. I think that this is a key section that I didn't really focus on last year. I think that I will also spend more time getting to know how to get good shots because last year I was in a group I didn't do any of the filming, this year I can understand more about the camera and what each camera angle can imply.

21st June 2016- Response To The Brief

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the band;
  
• a digipak for the album’s release;
  
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak. 
  

Above is the brief that I have been given to do this year, I really like the idea of the brief and it allows me to be more creative. I have chosen to do a music video because I am working on my own I think that it allows me to be more creative with the editing, and the filming and this means I don't have to worry about sound.

AS Coursework Review

Practical Task
In AS we did 3 practical tasks the first one that we did was the copy of a music video. We used a camera phone in order to create this piece, I learnt a lot from this task. The first thing that I learnt was that its a lot harder than you think you have to get the same length shots as the other video and the same angle need to be used and as this was at the beginning of the year we hadn't learnt much about camera angles. Also I learnt that its hard to do all the work by yourself as i worked on my own i found it time consuming and difficult to do the film and the editing for the short clip.Whilst i was editing the videos i found it difficult to get used to the programme and found it hard to use and it took me a lot longer to edit than i wanted it too. Furthermore I learnt that you need to record a lot more footage than you think so that if when you put it onto the computer it doesn't look good you have a backup video that you can use. From my copy i wish that i could redo it as the attention to mise en scene wasn't very good and the scenery didn't look anything like what it did in the video. Below is my copy of Ed Sheerens Bloodstream


The next task that i did was the prelim task from what i leant from the copy task i used that and made the prelim a lot better, first of all i worked with Chloe this allowed me to have more time to edit and not to stress to much about the work load. We used a samsung pro 816 in order to film our piece, this provided a much better quality of video and you could really see the difference between the phone camera and the camera we used this time. Also from our copy to our prelim we had to plan more how we did wanted the film to be because we had to make the film from scratch so we had to plan each scene. From this we started to create our short film, i found out that the planning is very important and it makes it a lot easier for you to create a film because this way you can show the actors as well which means that they will understand it more and understand what we wanted them to do. I think that our planning process for this short film could have been better we did do some but we could have made it more in detail so that it was clearer and we knew it was defiantly going to work. Another thing that we learnt when we made our prelim task was that the editing would be a lot harder as we wanted the character to speak and when i uploaded the videos to the computer the sound wasn't very good or clear, we could have gone back and re filmed it with a microphone or we could have re recored their voices and put it over the top. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to do either of those, so next time if we have speech we need to make sure we leave time to re film or use a microphone when filming.



Finally we went on to our final piece this took a long time but it turned out really well in the end. First of all we had to start to plan it i thought that our overall planning wasn't very organised as we didn't make a full story bored and we were just generating ideas but not actually writing them down and trying them out to see if they would work. I think that if we were to do the planning stage again I would make sure a couple of storyboards got done so that when we went to the location of the film we knew exactly what we were doing and how we wanted it to look. We did planning for where we wanted it to be as we went around and took photos of possible locations and saw which ones where the best to create the atmosphere we wanted. Another area that we didn't really consider that much was costumes, the actors came in ordinary clothes which is ok for what we wanted them for, as we wanted to portray them as 2 average teenagers. We did tell them that they need a back bag to make it as though they have just come from school/friends house and they are walking home in the dark. I think that if I were to do the costumes again I would make a Pinterest page of ideas and then generated a good costume idea. I think that overall for our second video made from scratch I don't think it went that badly and because we choose horror as the genre it was easier to make and didn't take as much planning because as long as you have the right lighting and the sound you'll be alright.

13 June 2016- The First Lesson

For our first lesson we just had an overview of what the year was going to be about. We found out that for our main task we could either do a short film or a music video, so we took this information and watched a few music videos and short film and discussed what we liked about them and what we would change on them. Here are some images of us watching sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel.

Feedback from sledgehammer

-Unique

-eye catching

-bold

-fun

-their isn't a clear narrative or the narrative is abstract

I really liked the way that its very random as it keeps the audience watching and keeps them hooked. 

We spoke about that its hard to keep an audience interested in a music video, so the planning is very key and so it the initial feedback.

We then went on to watching some student short films we watched a dark comedy, at first it was very dark and you didn't think with the story line that they chose they'd be able to add comedy to it, but it was well thought out and worked really well. It really showed the amount of planning that they must have put into the video as they had to see if the comedy would work but it was super. It was very interesting to see that genre of short film as you don't see it around that much. Below is the short film that we watch it was a very good quality film.

Welcome To My A2 Work

So here is where I will write and make post and upload them to show what stages I'm at throughout the process of my A2 media course. This blog will teach me a lot of new skills and I will be reflecting on my practical work and writing about what I've learnt throughout the journey of my A2 experience. I'm really looking forward to making a new video and learnt more things about the editing programme.

Few Facts About Me:
1. Favourite film of 2016: Deadpool
I really enjoyed the way that they had put Deadpool together, I thought that it was very funny and really fitted in with the marvel franchise. I think that the way that marvel catches the eyes of the viewers is spectacular and as all marvel films do they make the audience leave the cinema wanting to see more.
2. Favourite music video of 2016: Sorry- Justin Bieber
I love the music video for this song because its so bright and colourful that it catches the eye of the viewer. Although the music video doesn't go along the same lines as the lyrics, the editing on the beat makes up for that and the way that the dancers are dancing along to the beat of the music is really good and eye catching. I think the way that they have used the plan white background to contrast all the different colours of their clothes is very clever as it makes it stand out more.
3. Favourite TV series: Game Of Thrones
So as Game Of Thrones turned on to its 6th season, we all were getting ready to see what happened next, and some of the scenes that we saw in season 6 where very much unexpected. I'm speaking on behalf of all the viewers when I say the seen with Hodor and the story behind it all caught all the viewers in amazement and made a very sad ending to the life of the character. But after doing some research of the character that plays Hodor (Kristian Nairn) I found out that he is actually a DJ which is a very different career from acting.