Editing to the beat

This was a task set to us, to allow us to practice our editing skills by matching the cuts to the beat of the song. this task can also be considered research as it shows us what tools we can use to further our work such as using black and white or effecting the speed the clip plays at.

There are other things you can edit about the video such as cropping the frame or changing its size and adding effects.

These screen shots show what i am describing, such as the options for cropping and how you can add several clips to the same frame.

You can also see that in order to make editing easier, i have locked the audio track in place so that i don't accidentally move it out of sync. Regrettably i did not manage to edit the entire length of the track as i spent far too much time trying out different effects.however this task has definitely been useful for me as i now know what i can add to my music video to make it more effective.

Song Lyrics

Here I have gathered the lyrics for our song: "A Song About A Girl"

I was just a boy
Now i'm a man (hehe!)
I hate this town
This deadbeat town
But everything i do
I do it all for you
and everything you say makes my pain and sadness go -

This is a song about a girl
This is a song about her long blonde hair
This is a song about the way she stares at me
In my American Apparel underwear
Na, na, na, naa
Na, na, na, naa       (X2)

Parents are mad
Don't understand
They think i'm bad and all
Don't give a fuck at all
You're the reason why
I feel like I can fly
You're the reason why i just don't care at all

This is a song about a girl
This is a song about her long blonde hair
This is a song about the way she stares at me
In my American Apparel underwear
Na, na, na, naa
Na, na, na, naa       (X2)

This is a song about a girl
This is a song about her long blonde hair
This is a song about the way she stares at me
In my American Apparel underwear...

This is a song about a girl
This is a song about her long blonde hair
This is a song about the way she stares at me
In my American Apparel underwear!

Na, na, na, naa
Na, na, na, naa       (X2)

This is a song about a girl
This is a song about her long blonde hair
This is a song about the way she stares at me
In my American Apparel underwear

This is a song about a girl!
This is a song about a girl!
I think she's rad and all
I wanna fuck her all the time...

...This is a song about a girl

Information about the artist

Luke Cutforth:
Luke rose to fame on YouTube. He wrote A Song About A Girl with Patty Walters and the recorded version is sang by him. His influences for writing this song were typical pop punk bands like Blink-182, Green Day, etc.

Patty Walters:

Patty was/is also a YouTuber, but he was recognised with his generic pop punk band 'As It Is' which rose to fame earlier this year.'As It Is' recently have gone viral in the alternative music industry. He stars in A Song About A Girl dressed as a typical  girl and also plays some instruments in it.

Music Video-Added Value

Take on me was originally released with out a music video in 1984 and it bombed in the charts but then a year later it was released with this music video and is now number 3 in the best music video of all time, the music video was produced by director Steve Baron it took 3 months and over 1400 drawings to create. The video itself is stop motion animation mixed with an overall cinematic cutting to the band shots every so often. This has made it such a memorable music video.

 

Originally this music video was supposed to be a multitude of shots taken all over France showing Sinead walking around and singing, some of the original shots are still involved in the video, however when filming the close up of Sinead singing she started to cry as some of the lyrics reminded her that her mother had passed away and the director of the video thought this was moving enough to make the whole video, despite spending so much money to film in France, this saddening act is what has brought fame to this music video

Initial Ideas

The idea for our video based off of "A song about a girl" is for Michal to be madly in love with Sam who is dressed in drag and that Michal is confessing his feeling for her/him through the words of the song.

We want to film in a variety of romantic settings to make the scenes more realistic such as a beach front and a park, but we will also need some band shots so that the video fits into the genre.

What we want is for our work to fit into the genre of pop-punk in as most of a professional way we can through the use of camerawork, editing and mise-en-scene.

Mood Board

Here is the mood board we have created to show what the genre of our music is and different things related to the genre that we can use when it comes to creating our music video.
this mood shows the basics of whats in a pop-punk music video such as dyed hair and the props and clothing.

Audience Research

We asked a group of people to look at the song we have picked and we asked them several questions so we can see if the song fits and how others feel about it.

Here is some feedback:

1. without too much thinking give three words that come to mind after hearing this song? there is no right or wrong answer, we want your first impression/emotional response.

a) Fun

b) Parody

c) Cliche

a)i)Comical
b)i)Funny
c)i)Silly

a)ii)Funny
b)ii)Silly
c)ii)Cliche

2.Which other artist(s) does this music remind you of?

a) Busted

3. What are this/these artist's music videos like? what would you expect to see in their music videos?

a) Parody

a)i)Comical

a)ii)Cliche

4.How would you describe the mood of this song?
a) Happy

a)i) Comical

a)ii)Silly

5. If the song was a color what color would it be?
a) Neon yellow

a)i) Pink

a)ii)Light Blue

6. What pictures does the song create in your mind?
a) Guitars
b)Gimmicks
c) Girls

a)i) Cliche's
b)i) Fan-girls

7. What narrative do you imagine with this song?
a) A comical romance

a)i) A silly story

After getting this information back we can see that our song is still viable and we can use this information to further how we create our music video

Contacting the artist.

Carly contacted the artist of our song on twitter asking him if it would be okay to use his song for our coursework and here you can see that he has replied and given his consent.

Deconstructing music videos

"You've had a bad day" - Daniel Powter 

This music video is heavily performance based and features the artist a lot in the video cutting back to him singing and playing the piano frequently. The whole video links back to the title and line in the song "You've had a bad day" the video can feel a little depressing at times showing the man and woman having a multitude of bad days with waking up early and working. A large amount of people can probably sympathise with this feeling which makes the song much more relatable.

This video also links back to a set line and bases the entire video on it "Shut up and drive" this video also focuses a lot on Rihanna's body as opposed to the cars that the song first appears to be about  you listen to the lyrics and watch the video you realize cars are not what she is talking about however the setting and costume and props lead you to believe she is talking about cars.

Music Video Styles

Music Videos can have many different styles that work with the song to bring added effects to the viewer.

Parody:

The first i am going to look at are Parodies:



This is a parody of smells like teen spirit by Nirvana, the video is satire and looks to mock the original video and group the video imitates the original but with some obvious differences.

Animation:

Animation for music videos can help convey things that are harder to see or use from real life, this may include CGI (Computer Generated Images) or stop motion for a surrealistic effect.

This is the music video for Blue by Eiffel 65, it uses a lot of CGI to show aliens which are blue, tying into the lyrics, this is something that would be harder to create without the use of animation, the alien world and species give this an otherworldly feel (pun intended)

Intertextual

This is the video for Take on me by a-ha, it is intertextual as it contains a mix of styles, it includes animation and also narrative by telling a short story.

Pastiche

This is the video for Last Friday Night by Katy perry, it is a pastiche music video as the rise-en-scene shows us it is set in an older time than when it was actually created, this also adds a story into the video.

Narrative

This is the video for From the inside by Linkin Park, is is a narrative video as it tells us a story while the music is playing but it also goes back to the group every so often.

Cinematic

This is the video for Common People by pulp, this is a cinematic video as we are just watching something quite like a short film with the lyrics acting as the story backing it up.