M3

Conventions

The song that I am making a music video for is "I cant believe that you're in love with me."  This is a song by Billie holiday, a jazz musician and singer from the early 20th century.  I chose this song because I have always been interested in jazz and I like Billie Holiday's music.  In my proposal I said that I wanted to make a music video that reflects the codes, conventions and the genre of the song so the video can be very appealing to the target audience and also so the client gets exactly what they want.

Originally when planning out what the video was going to be like, I had the options of making many different types of videos, one of which being a performance video which is a video that has a story in it with actors and and a full crew.  This would have been a good idea to do but because of the current covid pandemic this would have been impossible to do.  The same is with a narrative music video where the lyrics tell the story, this would have also been a good idea to do as the lyrics of this songs does in a way tell a story of this person surprised that this other person is in love with them.   Originally I wanted to make a video like this and i even got a team to do this with me and act for me.  But this idea was short lived because of the pandemic getting worse so i had to improvise and make a concept video.  A concept video is a video that fits with the codes, conventions and genre of the artist and song but they are based on a single concept/idea, they are normally unusual and a lot harder to film but in this case it would be a lot easier to film than the other concepts (because if I would have done the other concepts i would have breached covid rules and guidelines).  The concept i had was a video mainly based in places with a high abundance of nature such as Ilkley Moor and Middleton woods and would only have one actor in it.  This is because in my area at the time there was a two people rule and all urban areas where very restricted and so i had to go for remote places in the area where there wasn't other people walking around.  The concept had no story but would have codes and conventions of the artist and the song because of the meanings that nature and a single person can make.  It represents loneliness,  love, loss, purity and corruption in the way that i made my music video.  This is because i have also made the video in black and white for half of the video.  I wanted to show some feelings of loneliness because I wanted there to be some contrast of emotions to grip the audience in a way to overall make a better video.

Now of course in jazz there are curtain conventions you will have to meet if you want to make a jazz music video that is successful in the jazz community and that is appealing to the target audience.  For example a jazz video will have completely different conventions to a hip hop music video.  One of the conventions of jazz music videos is the fact that most of them are in black and white such as "He's funny that way" by Andrea Motis.  This is because jazz is a moderately old genre dating back to the late 19th century and early 20th century and the first jazz music videos where made in black and white so there is a kind of nostalgia in the way that these music videos in the modern day are shown.  So in my video i have made half of my music video in black and white and it suddenly goes into colour when the lyrics start this is because as i am making a concept music video it's going to add new styles that most jazz music videos don't involve.  Another convention of the jazz is that there is normally no story being shown in the video, this is because in some ways there is no story being told in a full context in the lyrics or that the fact jazz is a bit too old for music videos.  I have stuck to this convention by not showing a story but i have done it a bit differently with the fact that there is actual footage of a mysterious story with one character and a hell of a lot of nature.  I have done this because i actually want to make this video interesting and watchable as normally a jazz music video is just the band playing the music instead of an actual story or narrative.  In my video i have shot many different shots of a character and many shots of nature.  Some examples of shots i have taken are long shots, mid shots,  establishing wide shots and wide shots.  In the few jazz music videos there are, they use a variety of shots and so this is an example of how my music video fits with some of the conventions.  Jazz musicians use a bunch of different shots because it can really show the audience the emotion of all characters and places and how they can effect the audience and the way they see everything.  

The concept of my music video is to show how nature is beautiful in every single way but also how humanity is beautiful as well as when the video goes into colour there are more urban areas shown.  In the video as a whole though I mainly filmed natural areas of beauty like seen below.  I wanted to show that nature and humanity are beautiful because of how there is so much negativity in the world right now and a lot of people blame humanity fully and think the world will be better off without us all so the ideas and conventions of my music video are positive and happy feeling like most jazz songs but my song also has some deeper meanings to it and shows that nothing is perfect with the way that it is but overall we should be happy with ourselves.

As I had issues with filming with another person there are a few scenes where there are people in it.

Mise-en-scene

Here is a mid shot of actor Hattie Kelly who is wearing colourful clothes to stand out against the green background to show the impact of humanity,  but it is bittersweet as she looks around and admires nature around her.  She may be facing away from the camera but the mid shot shows more detail of her relaxing in nature. 

Here is a shot from my video of the skyline of Ilkley in black and white. It is at the start of my music video and is the establishing shot.  You can see that it is in black and white and that is because the majority of jazz music videos are in black and white, not only because they are very old but also because it is done that way deliberately.  I have took inspiration from most music videos of the genre and have made the first half the music video in black and white but have taken my own path when it comes to when turning to colour.  Most artist go to colour during the instrumental but I have decided to change it to when the lyrics start.  This meets the conventions of jazz and Billie Holiday as it adds nostalgia and contrast to the music like Billie Holiday’s many different songs.

To ensure that I meet all codes and conventions of jazz I have looked to the ‘Uses and Gratification Theory’ or U&G theory for short.  The U&G Theory is a theory that shows how and why people search for particular media to satisfy particular needs like how an elderly man may want to listen to jazz as it gives him the feeling of nostalgia which satisfies him.

This is my full finished video as well to prove the points before of how I met the conventions of jazz and of Billie Holiday songs.