Planning: Further Research

To inspire our designing process we needed to research the genre of rock music to understand the codes and conventions that we could convert or subvert in our own project.

However, I didn't want to simply research music videos that are similar in style and themes as our chosen song Paramore - but instead wanted to delve deeper through researching several elements of the genre and how the construction of mise en scene can translate across media-platforms.

I decided to research several different advertisement campaigns for different musicians, but the one documented below is for 'St. Vincent'- a band that performs songs of the rock-genre - the genre we've chosen; researching their recent album campaign that shows how a band promotes themselves through related yet varied media forms. Through this extensive research, I've found that each band's promotion is similar in it's execution and I've listed below the common elements that I've found in all of them explained through 'St. Vincent's recent campaign.

• 'Singles' and their accompanying Music Videos

 One of the most important aspects of promoting a new album is releasing a set of 'Singles' to be made for individual purchase. Recently the impact of releasing 'singles' has somewhat dwindled with the popularity of downloads increasing - however the system has adapted by paving the way for more extravagant and expensive music videos that accompany each single in an attempt to capture the millions that form the audience of Internet sites such as Youtube and Television channels such as MTV and Kerrang!. This element is essential in promotion - below is a print screen image that stresses the importance of  making a promotional music video.

Above, a print screen from video-sharing website YouTube, shows how a music video can advertise across media forms; in the video's description it informs the audience of the following: links to the artists official website; a link to purchase the song on iTunes; a link to the nearest venue that the artist is performing at and finally, a link to the Television show (if any) that the song has been featured on.

I went on to find out about how other media-platforms make use of existing media products despite them being a different form of medium; 

• Print Media: Magazine advertisements promote  the newest 'Single' and Album - New Media
• Touring: Including areas of advertisement in Print Media
• Website: Including social-networking links

This exploration of the synergy of media-platforms that help promote a music-video or further, a new-music campaign, helped me understand what I needed to achieve when constructing my ancillary and main tasks.

Research: Paramore

It was essential to research existing media products, such as Paramore's own music video and CD packs to ensure that we were discovering codes and conventions of the the products and genre, so that we could apply them to our own media products in an attempt to appeal to our target audience.

(Above and below) Stills from the official 'Misery Business' music video

(Below) The 'Misery Business' CD single

(Below) Stills from the official 'Misery Business' music video

(Below) Stills from the official 'Misery Business' music video

Planning: Song Choice

The choice of song for our music video is:

 Band: Paramore Song: Misery Business

A brief history of the song:
The track was the lead single from their second studio album 'Riot!' and the video produced to promote its release was nominated for the 'Best Video' award at the Kerrang! Awards 2007, an awards ceremony spawned by the popular music magazine aimed at a teenage demographic. It was featured on the soundtracks to an array of videogames including the sport genre's 'NHL 08', the action-adventure 'Saint's Row 2' as well as being featured as a playable song within the music franchises of 'Guitar Hero', 'Rock Band' and 'Lips'. The fact the song is featured on both a sport and an action-adventure videogame reflects it's uptempo nature, while it's playablity in the music franchise shows its popularity; the music video of 'Misery Business' - shown below - has (as of 15/11/2011) fifty-one million views on the global broadcasting website YouTube.

Planning: Our Music Video's Pitch

To ensure we were headed in the right direction, we had to pitch our idea to our class. By producing a lengthy pitch to explain why we had chosen our particular song, it allowed us to review the progress we had made so far, as well as making us review our decisions - had we made the right ones?

(Above) A recorded version of my group presenting the 'pitch' for our music video idea

Indeed, we entered the pitch with two song ideas, 'The Only Exception' and 'Misery Business', both by the band Paramore. This meant by speaking to our class about the reasons we could do either of our choices as our final song, we could clearly see the positive and negatives aspects of both of the songs.

Although it seemed a difficult decision intitially, we carefully constructed an argument for each video idea and through discussion we then concluded that 'Misery Business' was the clear choice; here's our ideas for each:

Paramore's 'Misery Business':

 + Short, fast cuts; this allows plenty of scope for complicated editing - add zooms, pans, and increase the speed of shots to create movement and therefore speed.

+ Strong narrative: themes of jealousy, competition and lust allow for a variety of possible scenarious.

+ Music involes a full band; musically,  the song is contructed using a conventional band of the rock genre, (vocalist, two electric guitarists - lead and rhythm, bass guitarist and drummer), thus allowing us the oppurtunity for exciting band shots; having a band consisting of five members allows not only shots of intereaction between musicians, but also shots of different instruments - giving us areas of inspiration in itself - a point-of-view shot with a camera attached to the guitar's neck; an extreme close -up of an amp being switched on and many other ideas.

(Above) Annotated notes on the lyrics from 'Misery Business'

Paramore's 'The Only Exception':

+Long, slow shots; the majority of editing would focus on slow zooms.

+ Strong narrative: With love being the only theme, it narrows our inspiration for a narrative although due to the universatality of love it still has plenty of scope.

+ Band Shots: these would consist of a vocalist and an acoustic guitar, usually a two shot; an oppurtunity to be simple yet effective.

(Above) Annotated notes on the lyrics from 'The Only Exception'

Evidently, despite being produced by the same band, there is in fact a stark contrast in the style of these two songs; one upbeat and fast, whilst the other slow and romantic. With the evaluation of each, we decided that the slower 'The Only Exception' could potentially be overlong and slightly tedious - simple bands shots of just a vocalist and acoustic guitarist coupled with the difficult task of avoiding becoming too predictable and 'cheesy' when dealing with a romantic narrative. However, 'Misery Business', with it's fast tempo allowing complicated editing, it's lyrics involving themes like jealousy - that allow a narrative to have a clear yet more exciting cycle of equilibrium - as well as giving us the full potential to include a variety of instruments, meant that 'Misery Business' was our clear winner, and so became our choice for our music video.

Planning: Organisation

Through past projects in Media, I've learnt that organisation is a key aspect to not only the planning, but the overall success of a project. Leaving things to the last minute can lead to rushed decisions and to avoid this, my group decided to create a schedule to ensure work was produced by deadline dates that we had made ourselves. Personally, this really made me keep focus; by setting our own deadlines within the group we had given ourselves both independence and responsibility. Below is our schedule:

Research: Beginning of the Project

After deciding our aim was to produce a music video, we begun discussing the important task of choosing which song was to be our soundtrack.

We begun with researching the current products on the market to see what was successful in terms of an entertaining video and what wasn't.

Our choice of genre was then narrowed down to the following four: Pop, Rock, Indie and R n' B. These genres in our opinion offered the most entertaining and popular videos on the market and we constructed mood boards to analyse each.

Indie: We found this genre to harbour many videos that contained just clips of the band, with little-to-no narrative. These bands ranged form simple acoustic songs, therefore featuring little instrumentation, to more complicated full-band tracks, adding in synthezisers and other less conventional sounds to create layers of music.

 Rock: Conventional of the majority of the rock videos we watched was to have a narrative, usually featuring the bands themselves, as well as shots of the band in a different setting, usually just a simple room with a certain theme.

 R 'n' B: These videos were more complicated than the others in that their instrumentation relied heavily on electronically-produced sounds as well as usually featuring several actors performing dance routines.

Pop: A focus on the artist themselves is the usual convention of the pop video's we looked at - the pop star themselves being an icon and of interest to the viewer, whether simply singing, or performing a dance routine.

By narrowing our focus down to just these four genres, we felt we had a variety of themes, styles and instrumentation to play with in our choosing of the song.

After researching the music video, we each chose our own choice of five songs each, before narrowing them down to just two. These two songs were 'The Only Exception' and 'Misery Business', both by the rock band Paramore.

A Preliminary Task - Trinity School Open Day Video.

Posted above is the video I produced for the preliminary task.

Working within groups of four, our aim was to take a particular aspect of the school and produce a short clip detailing it - in our case, we chose the school's annual Presentation Day and Prom.

Over the course of the task, I was introduced to the editing software 'Premier Pro' - although unfamilar at first, I was soon able to edit clips, add transitions, and sync music appropriately to the clip. I also found this preliminary task useful in that it helped me become part of a group; one member of my group was already familiar with the Premier Pro software and so I realised how being in a group can benefit each other through having a range of skill-sets represented.

Producing the clip also allowed the group and myself to be exposed to filming - we challanged ourselves by trying to use a variety of shots throughout from what we had captured; I particularly liked the reverse-zoom on an extreme close-up of a balloon within the prom hall - I felt this acted as more than just a simple shot, almost serving as an enigma code in that the screen zooms out from the balloon to reveal the dancers and lights that are surrounding it.

Overall, this task proved vital in helping me adjust to the new software and camera equipment, as well as refining my group-work skills.