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Digital Media Productions
Music video
What are music videos?
A music video is a short film or video created for artistic or advertising reasons that combines visuals from a song with the music. They can have many different forms and styles, but they usually have four essential characteristics in common:
1. It uses visuals to generate visuals that go well with the music, music videos employ a variety of video production techniques, such as live-action filming, animation, special effects, and editing. These visuals could show the words and ideas of the song literally, portray abstract ideas, or tell whole separate stories.
2. It follows the song as the music video's major motivator even as the images take center stage. The listener's experience is enhanced when the images frequently correspond with the rhythm, pace, and mood of the music.
3. For advertising reasons, music videos are mostly used as a promotional tool to raise awareness of music and performers. They can be included in physical releases, streamed online, or shown on music television stations. Their visual presence may draw in listeners, make songs more popular, and/or enhance an artist's reputation.
4. Creative expression in the music videos may be creative ventures unto themselves, even outside of their promotional role. By providing a place for experimentation with storyline, graphics, and technical techniques, they allow filmmakers and artists to push the frontiers of the medium.
There are millions of music videos on the internet, from home-made low budget to big professional multi-million pound music videos. Here are a couple music videos that I think will help me find my final idea for my own music video.
I am a big fan of artists like Yeat and Destroy Lonely, and in my opinion their music video styles are incredible because they're both ground-breaking different from the average and also both different from each other. They help inspire me a lot not only on this music video project but also when shooting outside of University.
Research:
The first video is "how u feel?" by Destroy Lonely. The video starts out with a few shots of the exterior of a house. The house has a Georgian Style to it making the video look more dark and vintage. Then the intro title is presented in a very orange/red color which works perfectly with the shots in the music video as the video progresses as the interior of the house is mostly presented having red blinds, carpets and couches thus using the color of the intro title as foreshadowing. To me the intro seemed very important and I have decided to make a quick word document where I have all the ideas written down to make sure I don't forget them. As the video progresses it seems as it somehow is action packed without much movement from the main focus, the artist Destroy Lonely. He seems to just be walking on standing still in shots which create a sense of power. He seems more powerful than others because in the shot where the girl throws knifes at the board and then gets all of them in the middle but once Destroy Lonely gets in the same spot the girl missess all of them meaning he cannot get hurt due to its power.
Next video I have picked is the music video for Yeat's song " Poppin". The one thing I loved about the music video was how they used colorful cars to lighten the background. The one thing I will definitely try out from this music video is using still shots more with the main focus on the person in front of the camera. This makes me think the transitions between the shots will be really good as still shots are quite easy to transition between than moving shots.
Research 2: Demographics, Camera angles, planning and storyline
According to spotify's last year's statistics, hip-hop (the genre I will use for my music video) sits in at 6th place in popularity in the US and UK. Rap/Hip-Hop is most popular with young adults averaging the ages of 18 to 24. According to Tiktok, in the UK the Rap genre jumped from 2nd to 1st place in popularity in 2021.
After this demographical research I have found exactly what I wanted. My target audience; 18 to 24 year olds, mostly consisting of a male audience are my perfect match. Knowing this I have to take in consideration a lot more about the music video like, what will keep them interested, what will attract them to click on it in the first place. All of this can be found by researching what the most popular trends for young male adults are on tiktok.
Doing this method I have found out that streetwear fashion, archive japanese brands and dark posts are the most trendy against men around that age which is perfect as this was my first idea about the music video, making it dark with not much light or quality as if it was shot by people who do not know how to use a camera.
My camera angles will most likely constist of medium close up, medium long shot and a low angle shot to give it more of a different perspective as not many people shoot from ground up
Storyline and camera angles:
After looking at the music videos I have researched I have found some camera angles and locations around the uni campus that would perfectly go with them. I have found a balcony to record towards hence creating a lowangle long shot, and the classroom wall that contains grafitti on it for a cool backdrop. Finding the locations was quite tricky as there aren't many locations close to university where we could go back to store the equipment rented at.
The plan now was to go and shoot after every lesson at least for a couple hours and get exactly the shots in the storyline.
Peer Review:
After presenting my plan to my peers and showing them the storyline and real life locations, they all have said that the plan sounded perfect and couldn't go wrong. During filming there were a couple complications where people would end up arguing about why exactly the light is in a certain poistion or the way the backdrop and key lights are put but that would be solved quickly and in the end we managed to shoot everything we wanted. Below I have linked the music video after I have edited it myself and of course with the help of the others in my team.
The music video:
Camera angles in film:
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