M4

Here is my full finished music video.
 The brief that I was given by my client was to make a music video for the song; “I can’t believe that your in love with me” by Billie Holiday.  In the brief I was given the freedom of making it a narrative, performance based or a concept.  And I went with a concept with nature due to the circumstances.  The brief said that the video must be as long as the song and I must take on specific job roles which both I have done.  The video mustn’t use any copyrighted © material unless I have given its source.  

Did i meet the deadlines?

At the start of the project I stuck to all my deadlines but it all changed when the 3rd wave hit and I hid my head under the sand for a few weeks.  Afterwards though after confronting this, a new deadline was made and I managed to get it done in the time of that one but the tasks afterwards where not made to the deadline because of this set back.

In the making of the video I found non copyrighted footage of nature that I could export to my video which I sooner decided not to use and instead find my own footage.  All footage that is in the video was made and distributed by me.

Technical Settings.

In Media people expect music videos to be at the highest standard The video was exported to be the highest quality at 1080p with a frame rate of 30 but unfortunately blogger couldn’t handle the size so I have used a lower quality op 780p for blogger.

How I tried to meet the brief.

When creating the video I made sure that I would meet all aspects of the brief to please the client.  

This came from going out to make the footage, editing the video and directing it.  While making my video i did my best to ensure all the aspects of the brief where met and to do so i was constantly rereading the brief so i knew that i hadn't breeched any of it.

Setbacks

Of course though there where setbacks and it did not go all well to plan and I hope the client realises this,  due to the 3rd wave of COVID after Christmas it all went to hell and for a while I was without actors and people to help but at the end it was all sorted with the help of a great friend Hattie Kelly.  Who went out of her comfort zone to do this when no one else did and for that I am very grateful.   The music video is still a shadow of what it could’ve been but all is well as it is the best I could do out of the situation honestly.

How I adapted to ensure COVID guidelines

COVID 19 absolutely ruined my ideas of making a music video before but after some time when things settled down I made my music video with some clear guidelines to tackle the spread of the disease.  Here are the guidelines.  The cameraman (me) must wear a face-mask at all times and must stay at least 2 metres away from the actor.  When there isn’t any filming going on the actors must wear a mask as well and stay 2 metres away.  When filming the cameraman will film 2 metres away or more.  These are the guidelines we used and it worked well 

Length of video.

The length of my music video was Two minutes and fifty seconds long and the video is the same length of the song except for a tiny bit at the end when the video fades to black of course. 

Did the visuals represent theme of the song?

When editing the video I made sure that the visuals represented the themes of the song.  What i did to do that was that i changed the image on the time of the beat to add a clean transition.  I also kept half of the visuals in black and white to add greater effect but also to show the age of the song.

Did my video conform to the conventions of the genre?

After making and seeing the entire video I can confidently say that my video did conform with the conventions of the genre.  Most jazz videos don't have a storyline and even though it wasn't intentional to not have one it defiantly conforms with the genre.  Another way my video conformed with the genre was that half of my video was in black and white. I took inspiration from many musicians to do this as it is popular in jazz music videos.  So that is a way that it conforms well with the genre.

How did my video create a positive image of the artist and genre?

My video was a video with a lot of visual nature in it and this is to show the purity of nature and how wonderful it is by showing lovely places in the Ilkley Countryside.  This will overall show Billie Holiday and the genre of jazz in a positive way.

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.

Response to brief

 My Client (BBC) is the main broadcaster for the United Kingdom and is funded by the the Government.  They have tasked me to make and design a Television drama for their third channel called BBC 3.  BBC 3 is a channel targeted at younger viewers from 16 - 30.  This means they will want me to make a television drama targeted at this group.  Even though BBC 3 is targeted for young people there are many different genres of drama that they have to pleasure their audience.  As of looking on the BBC 3 website there are mostly dramas involving mostly young characters like Clique which is based in a university, Class which is based in High school and Our World war which may be be about ww1 but that time in history is known for having soldiers as young as 14 in it but overall it mainly has adults playing in it in there early 20s.

Nowadays BBC has mainly modern day settings which have proven to be popular amongst the target group so it will be beneficial to make a drama based in the modern day and perhaps also in a lesser Urban area than a major city in the south as this will overall cost a lot more than lets say in a Northern Yorkshire town.  To also keep production costs low it may be beneficial to hire lesser and Unknown actors rather than to hire a big, famous actor. 

There are also many legal requirements to making a drama such as using copy righted music for the background, 

Attack the Block

 Attack the Block was made in 2011 and directed by Joe Cornish, with actors starring John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail and Leeon Jones.  The Films genre is a hybrid of Sci-Fi, Horror, Comedy and Action.  Box office Mojo shows us about the financial earnings of the film showing that they made only 6 Million pounds GB. But eventually the company broke even with the production cost and how much they earned because of many factors such as netflix.  

At the start of this we can show the way the film represents the people of South London with a mix of two groups.  Jodie Whittaker's Group which is middle aged, innocent, law abiding and wants to get along with life and also the fact that she is a women and John Boyega's group that are young (15-16), gang orientated and mainly a black boys.  These groups are stereotypes of the real things but later on the film sets on unravelling these stereotypes.  Mise-en-scene has shown us representation of these people.  The music is very tense at the time at the start and becomes more sci fi themed by the end of the intro.

Mise-en-scene is used to represent different groups in this film, for example the boys who just mugged the character played by jodie Whittaker are dressed in puffy coats and overall sports wear clothes with bandanas. 

The Lion King (2019)

The new Lion King movie that was released on the 19th of July 2019 had a massive budget of $260,000,000. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures was the distributor for both the US and the UK.  The movie was advertised in many different areas of the media such as Youtube ads, TV ads on channels and bill boards.  Disney has used synergy such as showing trailers on the disney tv channel.  Disney would have also advertised on Disney+.  Disney made there own products that promoted the lion king such as lipstick branded with the lion King.

Now in everyday life we have the most technologically advanced piece of equipment in the world and you're holding it probably right now.  Its your phone and it has everything on it.  So lets say if you where watching youtube you may have an ad for the Lion King on it.

BBC Research

What is the BBC?

 The British Broadcasting Corporation or BBC for short is the main Broadcaster for the UK which is run by the British Government.  The BBC has many channels such as BBC 1, 2 and 3 and have radio channels such as 1, 2, 3, 4 and many local stations for cities and areas such as BBC Leeds.  The BBC was founded on the 18th of October 1922 which today would make it 98 years old!  The BBC use these mant different channels to target different target groups such as elderly people for radio 3 and young people for radio 1 whereas BBC 1 and Radio 2 are mostly targeted at mostly everyone. 

What is BBC 3?

BBC 3 is a channel run by the BBC that was created on the 9th of February 2003 to replace BBC Choice.  In March 2016 there where many budget cuts to the BBC which caused BBC 3 to be disconnected and moved up to the internet.  But now in 2021 the BBC are bringing back BBC 3 to television!  Right now though BBC 3 is an online sight where you can watch shows and documentaries that are targeted for 16-30 year olds.

What is Television drama? 

 As of right now there are over 500 television dramas that can be shown in the UK,  this shows that they are very popular!  Dramas are a type of fiction story (or sometimes based on real events) that can add suspence to the audience as there is always something needed to be solved in dramas.  

P5

 As I said in P4 my music video is far from what it could of been but here is how I edited it.  I made footage of nature and put them in order.  Shown below is my offline unedited version.  I made this after reviewing all my video rushes in my folder and put them in order of which I liked for example using the establishing shot at the start to make the setting.

When I was filming my video I made sure that the quality of the footage was 1080p and was running at 25 frames per second.  Of course I was filming with my phone and iPad but overall the quality was good and was bearable to watch.  I wanted my video to be 1080p and run at 25fps because the my client made a brief explaining they wanted a high quality video so I wanted to apply a lot to the brief that I could.  I also wanted the audio to be at good quality but unfortunately if I’m doing a cover to a song recorded in the 1930s almost a century ago the audio wouldn’t be the best to be honest.  But it doesn’t mean that the audio is not the best it could be and overall the old style audio brings more nostalgia to the the ears of the target audience I am targeting.  When editing the audio on to the software what I did was receive the audio file that my client provided and had it play over all the muted footage I took.  All the footage I took was muted because I did not have a proper microphone for the outside and overall if it would have been unmuted in the video it would have had a horrible cracking sound over the video that would’ve hurt the ears of the audience.

While editing my video I made some basic editing on how the footage looked and how they changed to other footage.  This can be shown by the fact that the first half of the music video is black and white and when the vocals start it fades quickly into colour. This was part of my original plan for my music video when the instrumental started if we had a band but unfortunately we didn’t due to the unfortunate events of the world. I have also faded footage when they change to different footage but there are times when it it’s a hard change of footage for when the beet changes.   

Here is my fully edited video timeline.  When editing I have used factors such as fading to a different frame, using black and white filters and fading into colour.  I also mainly had sharp transitions between the footage as most jazz music videos have them mainly but I did some times have scenes that would fade from each other to make it more clean.  The black and white filter is a key part of my video and was very helpful to show the mood.  I also edited the transition from bland and white to colour buy cutting the footage in half and making them fade to the other half which is colourised.  I edited this so that it would change as soon as the lyrics started.  I also faded to black at the end which end the video quite nicely.

Post Production Process

After I finished filming the production it then became time to complete the post production process.  What I first did was put all my rough cuts into an order in which I preferred…

… after ordering the rough cuts I muted all of them and then I put the audio of the song over them…

…Then I added the transitions which where mostly clean cuts that occurred on a beat or change in rhythm…

… I also added fade transitions like include when the colour changes.

Conventions

In a music video you would expect there to be a narrative and storyline.  Now this song has a narrative but it doesn’t really have a storyline, now that is mainly because of how everything turned upside down when the second lockdown hit.  So I had to improvise last minute to make a music video.  But overall there aren’t really that many jazz music videos out there and the ones that exist don’t really have storylines either so I made my music video feel like a generic video of the genre.

Symbolic codes

The clear amount of nature that I have used in this video is clearly a lot and this is to show the purity of it and how we need to keep the world with it’s beautiful greenery.

Technical codes

In jazz music, the audio is normally quite old and the quality isn’t normally that good so it wouldn’t make that much of a difference when it came to quality of the audio to make it a generic video.  The audio that I used was made almost a century ago and so the quality is expected to not be that good and obviously not 48kh. 

List of Feedback

Of course one of the main pieces of feedback I got was to add a storyline to my video, now I wish I could’ve beforehand but over all I could not because of the pandemic.  If I able to make this video again I would have given my self more time and more actors to be able to film enough footage to make a storyline that is just like the shooting script but that can only happen when there isn’t a lockdown.

Another piece of feedback I was given was that the audio could be better and indeed it would’ve been better if there wasn’t a lockdown as I would’ve recorded new audio with a jazz band to make it work.  If I was able to make the video again without there being a lockdown I would’ve made new audio to make the audio be at full quality of 48kh.

Software and Tools 

When editing the video there wasn't many softwares available for me to use but there where a few at my disposal such as iMovie and Adobe Rush.  iMovie i have used many times before with the first time when i was 9 years old in primary school so i was familiar with it and how to use it.  There was also Adobe rush which i had never used before however i was familiar with many of their other softwares such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and i was told that it was a lot more professional and in-depth with creating media such as music videos.  Here are some screenshots of how I edited the video including changing the colour and how the image transitions from one to the other.

Above is an example of many different filters you could use with Adobe Rush and you can see how it can affect your media.  This is how I chose the black and white filter for half of my footage all i had to do was pick a filter that suited the footage best and then afterwards i made it fade quickly to footage that had no filter at all to show the natural side of the video.  I will discuss how i did this below under the next screenshot.

Here above is an example of the many different transitions between footage that you could use in a video.  The one highlighted in blue is the fade in transition and i used this one the most in my entire video.  An example of me using this transition is when i changed the footage from black and white to colour in my video.  Instead of using a clean cut transition i used a quick 'fade in' transition in a slice of footage cut in two with tools that i will talk about below.

Here above is the main tool i used the most in Adobe Rush.  It's called the Crop Tool and it helped me a lot to Split footage in two or more so i could change the footage filter from black and white to colour using this tool.  To use it you would tap on the area that you want cutting in half and then in between that you could add a transition and change the filter to adda beautiful transition of colour which i did.

Shown below is an example of the filter changing to colour in the video, this worked out really well.

Strengths review

In my video there are many strength that make it much more than what I could have been.  This is because of the fact that if there wasn’t any editing such as filters, transitions and audio etc. All it would be would be a very boring slideshow of footage.  For example a strength of my video was the transition between black and white to colour.  This is one of the most technical parts of the video and it worked really well.  Shown below is how it works.

Another strength was the many fading transitions in the video.  It really added the flavour to the video that many things didn’t making the video more professional.  Here is an example shown by the screenshots of a transition.  You can also see this is all in black and white to make the audience feel nostalgia of the old times and really makes the video better and fits with the genre and especially to my proposal.