BFI Trip!

This week we visited the British Film Insitute for a conference about music video making. The day was very informative and I especially found Pete's top tips for music video making very helpful. Video director Jake Wynne also came to talk about the videos he has directed over the years and how he went from editing videos to directing them. It was inspiring and interesting to listen to his stories behind the music videos he showed us.

Vlog of us before we went in:

Real Music Video Inspirations

The opening shots of  Example's video 'Kickstarts' inspired the idea for our opening shots of our music video. The video begins with feet tapping and then more feet are included and goes into a split screen. We were also going do a split screen however we have decided that it would look better with out it.

Bastille's video for 'Pompeii' uses a range of locations and shot types such as establishing shots to show each new location. This has inspired us as we want to use different locations and lots of different shots of them as this will be a good visual aspect.

Practise Filming: Intro

We have been practising the opening shots for our video to see if our ideas work. We were successful in doing the foot tapping to the beat however we would like to perfect the compositon of the shots so we plan to re-shoot these again.

New Storyboards

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My group has come up with some new storyboards for the opening  shots of the video. We plan to shoot these sometime this week or next week.

'Star Quality Theory'

Richard Dyer presents the idea that viewers' experience of a film is heavily influenced by the perception of its stars and that stars are not real people but images. His theory is broken down into 5 parts:
1. The making of a star - Dyer insists that if a star has a lasting significances they will not be forgotten if not then they will be forgotten in a few years after raising to fame.
2. Constructions- The star is built for the audience and not the person, labels can decided which looks and style they want their artist to have which will make them appealing and popular.
3.Audience and Institutions- Stars are made for making money and instutions models the stars image around the target audience.
4. Hegemony (cultural beliefs)- The audience are able to relate to the star as they share what the star experiences i.e. through social networking sites.
5. Character and Personalities- The star starts out as a 'real' human but in institution they are transformed so they can provide an image of their time and culture.

Star example
Since the song we have chosen is by a pop/alternative rock band the band Maroon 5 is a good example as they are a band of the same genre.

Maroon 5's popular song 'Moves Like Jagger' was the debut single for their album 'Overexposed'

Their album  'Overexposed' is colourful and eyecatching which suggests that the songs on the album will be fun and energetic appealing to a lot of young audiences as well as their long term audiences.

To promote their album the group toured and performed another popular single from the album 'Payphone' on the Late Show with David Lettterman and the lead singer had an interview on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The next day the group went on the Today Show
and performed 4 songs from their album.

2014 album  cover  - appeals to an younger audience

2008 album cover - appeals to an older audience

Adam Levine (lead singer) in the media

Magazine



                                           
Instagram

DailyMail article

Early Images and Changing Star Image

This picture of the band taken in 2002 differs from the previous picture taken in 2014 as Adam is not in the middle of this picture- giving every group member an identity however in all of their recent pictures Adam is placed in the middle because he has become the group's 'star' and the rest of the members play subordinate roles.

Maroon 5 has changed over the years in terms of interviews also in the 2002 interview the lead singer Adam is seen with another band member Jesse however in the 2014 interview he appears solo showing that he is the main and important band member that holds 'star quality' and the most popularity and therefore is the only member that needs to attend interviews. Also in the 2002 interview Adam and Jesse are asked questions mainly about their music; their sound, influences, recent music videos etc however in the 2014 interview the interviewer focuses on his personality and gets him to play a game which shows that now he has become a bigger star he is presented as an entertainer and not just a musician.


Controversy

 Recently the band have been criticised for their controversial video for their song 'Animals'.

Our band brand
Just like Maroon 5 we may adopt the idea of having  a main 'star' who is the face of the band and use them to be the brand of our band. This may be more effective as the 'favourite' band member will already be given to the audience and as Dyer's idea suggests we can construct our star to appeal to our target audience like Adam Levine.
Additionally like Maroon 5's album cover 'Overexposed' which is colourful and vibrant we may also make our album cover colourful as well because we want to appeal to young teens to young adults around the ages of 14 to 22.

Voyeurism

The idea of voyeurism comes from the neurologist Sigmund Freud and it originally refers to erotic pleasure gained by looking at a sexual object. There are many types of voyeurism such as intra-intra-diegetic gaze, this is when the person depicted watches themselves. Jhene Aiko's music video for 'Mirrors' is an example of intra-intra-diegetic gaze because the artist looks at her self in the mirror during the video and towards the end of it she looks down at herself in a broken mirror to symbolise her brokenness and perhaps confusion with who she really is. I thought this music video is really powerful in terms of using the iconography of the mirror and how that represents the person being depicted, this could be an idea my group uses in our video.

New ending for our music video

The ending we have decided to do for our video is that instead of the protagonist looking at magazines and posters that reveal his sexuality, he will have a picture of the double date and he will fold over the two girls leaving himself and the other guy in the picture. This will reveal his sexuality with him actually saying it or showing it to reflect that it is still something he tries to hide.

Slight idea change

After re-thinking and brainstorming we decided to change our original idea of the protagonist going on dates with multiple girls who are models. Instead we have decided that he will only go on a date with one girl who is not a model but just a girl he has been seeing and at the end he will go on a double date with this girl and their friends and it will subtly be revealed that the protagonist is gay.

This is part of the storyboard of our original idea:

Brainstorming Ideas for Band Brand

Today we brainstormed ideas for the name of our band by playing the random name generator game and each of us wrote down words and passed them along then revealed them to each other. This was quite useful in helping us come up with variations of possible names although a lot of them were very random. We haven't come up with a name yet but we plan to try using an online name generator as well.