Target Audience

My target audience is a teenage to adult age range. This is because they are able to watch and understand the more age appropriate content such as gore, strong language and dark imagery, without any consequences. As well as appealing to just an adult audience, my project will appeal to a slightly narrower audience - the heavy metal community. This is a group of people who like and listen to heavy metal, read the magazines, watch the music videos and go to the gigs/concerts.

The more extreme 'metalheads' would dress like the man in the image to the left; however not many do in comparison to the more 'normal' ones such as Jack, the boy who plays the main character in my production. I have not got an image of him but he can be seen in the final production throughout.

These heavy metal fans like the heavy music and enjoy the stylistic conventions of everything metal such as violent and gory themes, dark lyrics in songs and high contrasts between colours and imagery of a rather bold nature.

(This image was taken from http://metalheadguys.info/)

Locations - The Woods

I chose to film a large section of my music video in the woods - this is because it was not only the best place to make and record a fire but it was also very dark, eerie and the shadows caused a lot of high contrast lighting which is always good for making music videos and emphasising visual effects. These pictues below show the areas of the wood in which I filmed; however these were taken during the day so that you can see the detail better than the twilight shots I filmed in my production.

Editing

Due to some unforeseen weather conditions (despite constant forecast checking) I have been delaid by a considerable time; and consequently my video is suffering from this and has had to be shortened and been modified to allow huge changes. I could not film the fire parts very well, due to heavy snow fall and continuity errors, so I have had to replace sections, change sections and make allowances which will change the way my work pans out in the end. I will have title slides put in, more cutaways and I will loose the majority of my plot line.

Other than this huge issue, the rest of my project has gone well. The editing is starting to take shape and I am pleased with some of the effects that I have been able to use and produce on the software available.

Intertextuality and Borrowed Ideas

There are a few times in my production where I have used some imagery or ideas that have been taken from other places. Some are brief and some are quite obvious:
- I took the name (overlaid with fire) Mr. B. Breegs from an Iron Maiden album cover where the name Benjamin Breeg is written on a grave stone. (see big picture below.)

Iron Maiden -- The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg

-There are various posters, art work (on hoody) and visual representations of television, heavy metal and seemingly quite random characters. For example, the Teletubbies make an appearance along with Bob the Builder, King Kong and some other characters that you may have seen on television.

All of the ideas used have been placed to entertain the intended audience and it may be that only heavy metal fans will notice these references or will find them funny.

Costume Thoughts (before & after)

Before: I was thinking about what to make Jack (the character in the video) wear throughout it, so I let him decide how he wants to come across to the viewers - this seemed like a bold decision to me but it made sense because I knew that his sense of style is typical of the video's genre and that if he felt more comfortable in what he was wearing then he would do a petter and more confident performance.

After: He chose to wear all black (jeans, shirt, shoes, etc) and a 'heavy metal' hoody with the Iron Maiden artwork on the front (similar to the one in the picture to the left). This outfit seems appropriate enough when considering the genre and the music.

Filming Log

My First Film Shoot

The first shoot I did involved the lip syncing, the shots within the flat and the woods/fire shots. This was okay but it proved hard as Jack did not learn the lyrics before hand as I has asked and he could not stop laughing. The lighting was also a problem because there was very little natural light in the room and no room for spotlights, so we had to make do with normal, tungsten, house lights; this did not produce the high contrast imagery that I wanted. The shots in the flat went well and I got them all done on time as I had planned but the lighting again was an issue as if I had used the lights in the hallway shots, it would not have matched the bedroom shots; so I was stuck with no interesting lighting.

The footage of Jack walking through the woods got shot well and within the first few takes, but I had serious issues when trying to get some video of the flames on the fire because the wood was all damp and the fire would not catch. This set me back - majorly!

My Second Shoot

My Second Shoot was the guitar parts. I had to film myself play these pieces within my bedroom, so it was herd to get the lighting, angles and focus exactly right because it is impossible to be in front of the camera and behind it simultaneously; but I think they went well. I used a strobe light which I bought online a few weeks prior to filming; this gave the video a faster paced, metal theme which is an expected convention of this genre of music video.

My Third Shoot

This shoot was an attempt to recapture some of the failed shots from my first shoot. I had a little bit more luck with the lip syncing and my unreliable lead actor but the fire still would not work - and after looking at the weather forecast, I realised that I would have to change my plans by a great deal because there was lots of snow on the way; so I made the fire in my back garden and used only extreme close ups and shots which did not give away location changes. At this stage, my video was starting to look a lot less like my storyboard.

My Final Shoot

This final shoot was just cutaways and pick-ups such as the writing and the drums. This all went well once I had got a technical issue with the camera sorted out - this was where the camera kept picking up big black lines across my footage and rendering it useless and causing me to re-film.

Feedback notes

You need to have a variation of different shots for a music video
You need some sort of narrative…even if it’s very simple
Consider using a variation of effects and transition to give a flare to the material
You need to edit the footage using timing and pace
Create quick edits to create tension
Make sure the sound is linked in with the footage.

How To Improve The Ending

After my feedback, I reviewed it and picked up on the biggest point given, that my ending isn't as strong as it could have been. So I threw some ideas about with Mrs Allison (my teacher) and have decided that I should leave the plot with some sort of cliffhanger or some sort of dark and rather ominous ending; for example, I could have him looking back over maps or making some sort of homemade bomb.

Also, instead of him throwing images of houses of parliament on the fire, i will have him throwing a political front page/newspaper on the fire as it links back to the shot at the table.

Feedback on Animatic

I showed my animatic to some members of my class, including teachers and I got the following feedback.

My animatic is slightly out of time with the song, this is because I was editing to the shot lengths (correct to the nearest second) but this is not the way to go about doing this, as I need to edit to the beat. I will ensure that I do this properly for my actual video.

Also, I need to think more about the lighting necessary for the high contrast images that I require. I will need to do this by using strong, white lighting.

I need to make my shots fast and use lots of visual effects in order to make some of the longer shots more effective and to keep the viewers attention.

I also need to make sure that the audience are aware of the plot, as some of the fire shots come before the shots where the main character builds the fire. upon reflection, this will be my biggest issue but i will overcome it.

This is my ANIMATIC

Storyboard for my Production

Storyboard for Polarized by Carcass

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My Props List

In The Woods:
Sticks
Fire
Paper
Bag
Lighter
Yellow Pages
Flower
Shirt (unwanted)
Log
Pictures of politics
Necklace (sweets one maybe?)

Band Shots:
Guitar (& Pick)
Drums
Microphone

In The House:
Remote
News Paper
Television
Cigarettes
Can
Door
Bag
Drawers of stuff
Shoes
Sofa
Table

My Shot List

In The Woods:
LS – Enters the wood. Jump Cuts
XLS – Pan. Establishment shot
XLS – Walks away from cam. Jumps again
LS – arrives at fire site
LS – Puts bag down & opens it
CU – bag open & pulls paper out
TS – tracking through woods, to man
LA – screws up paper. Throws it to floor
XLS – builds up fire – paper and twigs
LA – throws more sticks on fire
CU – fire unlit – put logs on it
LS – puts more logs on fire…
XCU – …to face – lip synch (CARE)
LS – guy lights fire
CA – fire catching
LS – takes seat on log to wait for flames
MS – sits in wood (in thought) X2
XLS – stands next to large fire
CU – yellow pages – flicks pages
CU – looks up to camera
POV – pictures of politics
CU – praying next to fire
XCU – puts flower on fire
MS – puts shirt on fire
LS – walks away from fire – jump cuts
LS > XCU – sits on log – zoom to smirk/side smile
360 – rotate around fire – jumps cuts?
XLS – gets up from log & walks off
OS – walks off & leaves fire burning
TMS – tracking medium through woods – jump cuts
XLS - leave gate from woods
XCU – fire shots (X11)
XCU – bruning flower
XCU – mentioned props on fire

Band Shots:
XCU – guitar (X4)
XCU – Drums (X2) – Crash (X1)
XCU - Lip Synch (first lyrics) (CAUSE-zoom in on mouth)(don’t want…p)(tell me…you wear)(just don’t… careeee)(don’t believe… what you…)(don’t… days)(I just don’t care!)(polarized!)
CU – profile. Lip synch
LS - drummer

In The House:
CU – chap face (X4)
MS – behind table with remote & paper
XCU – picks up remote
OS – turns on news
CU – tv says news
CU – angry/confused look on face
CU - Rummaging through drawers (X5)
MS – puts things in bag
XCU – picks up shoes
OSTS – over shoulder tracking - goes out of door
LS – out of door with bag
XLS – walks down road & kicks can
CU – gets out a cigarette
XCU – crushes & drops cigarette
LS – goes in door
MS – sits down behind table again
CU – smile on his face
MS – behind table
LS – gets up & walk out of shot
LS – lays on sofa to sleep

Random Shots & Cutaways:
XCU - Name on paper
XCU - Paper headline (political)
XCU – roughly drawn pentagram (rotate?)
N/A – Black to white fade (X2)
N/A – plain white

Production Schedule

This is the production schedule for my project. I should stick to this religiously, so as not to fall behind too much. The dates along the top are the weeks and the tasks are those which need to be completed. I have colour coordinated it into pre-production, production and post production. The week of the 25th is half term; so all work done will have to be done in my own time.

Analysis of Professional Product - Sadistic Magician by Municipal Waste

This music video is for a song by Municipal Waste; they are an American ‘Thrash Metal’ band and are on the ‘Earache Records’ label. The video was produced by ‘The Vault LA’ and was directed by Jeff Speed. It was made and released in mid-2008; which is quite quick considering.

It is strongly recognisable as a genre product because it has most, if not all of the expected features from a music video of this genre; heavy music, images of the band playing, a weak narrative and some strong themes. It is defiantly a heavy metal video because the band are dressing in black with chains and studs, are playing guitars and are acting really over the top . It is these hints which would give the genre of the music away, were it played with no sound.

As far as I can tell (I cannot find the exact narrative for the video) the band arrive at a power station to ‘fix the reactor’ and end up playing metal instead; therefore causing slime to fill the water works, smoke to fill the sky and causing havoc in the power plant. This is what is often referred to as ‘Slime-horror’ and is rarely used in music videos as it can look cheap and dated. The band is introduced at the start of the video with the aid of some diagetic sound; dialogue and sound effects, which is fairly rare in music videos. An example of a music video where diagetic sound is used too much (in my opinion) is Iron Maiden’s new video ‘The Final Frontier’.

The visual style of the video is, as I mentioned above, typical of the genre; untidy, aggressive men with guitars and black clothing, dancing around all over the place and shouting lyrics and causing havoc. There are scenes of violence and aggression. This all comes across in the camera shots used; ‘in-your-face’ camera shots and close-ups are used to show aggression, where long shots are used to show the dress style and the detail in each shot. These shots are cut between very quickly to keep the pace of the music in balance with the pace of the video. The shots are dimly lit and use a lot of naturalistic, low key lighting.

The band comes across as being trouble-making, aggressive people who do not do as they are told; this is common for bands of this genre to try to be and Municipal Waste have done this well. The workers all come across as being quite ‘on-the-job’ and just there to work ‘by-the-book’.

After searching the internet for reviews, I could not find a negative one about this video, as it completely appeals so everyone whom likes this type of music. I found only positive comments on video sharing sites such as YouTube and the target audience has been reached successfully. I could not find any professional reviews of this video. This music video is successful at hitting its target audience because it has all of the necessary elements to a music video of this genre; it has footage of the band playing, deathly/scary scenes and is filmed using an aggressive filming style.

Pitch Feedback...

The creative criticism which most people provided was that there was a lack of imagery, a lack of persuasion (that it would be a good idea to film this), a lack of influences and a poor narrative.

I then added a few images to my presentation, added some more stylistic influences and changed the narrative of the music video slightly; from a maniac protester walking down a road to burn something, to a pyromaniac building a fire.

Polarized by Carcass

This is the pitch for my music video; I produced it and presented it in front of the class in an attempt to get some feedback on it. Then, from the feedback I have been given, I have made a few amendments. The feedback will be posted in the next post.

Polarized by Carcass

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A2 Skills Development

Welcome To A2 Media!

In small groups (or pairs) we made some summer themed music videos in order to practise and learn the skills and techniques used in the making of music videos, in case we decided to make one; I worked with a fellow classmate, Aj Watson.

At this stage, I we have finished our music videos to a satisfactory standard and have learnt much about the production of such media. I have decided that the lip synching will be the biggest issue that I will have and have encountered. However, I have worked out how to get around this problem.

My team member recorded the majority of the footage and I edited most of it. This left me with the problem of having too little footage to cut to and from, hence there is a lot of random footage of trees and dinosaurs. Therefore, I decided to work on my final piece on my own, so I know exactly what I am going to do.

Evaluation of Lab Rats with Xanthe Young

The video of our evaluation is on Xanthe Young's blog

Analysis Of The Opening Sequence Of Silence of the Lambs

Analysis of professional film opening.

Analysis Of The Opening Sequence Of

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