CB: Group Music Video

Planning

Response to Black Keys music videos

·     Close relationship established between the band duo, both of them appear in their music videos.

·    The metanarrative seems to be the artists telling the history of their friendship and how long they have known each other. For example, in the music video Tighten Up(2010).

·     Lots of CUs are implemented in order for the audience to connect with the artists and develop a sense of their star image.

·    Husky tone of voice when singing which helps to represent the duo as being a part of the rock genre.

·     Locations – church, playground

·     Actors which feature within their music videos are very active in the performance they give. For example, in ‘Tighten Up’ (2010), the two young boys start fighting and in ‘Lonely Boy’ (2011), a man appears dancing throughout the entire video.

·    The relationship between lyrics and visuals is amplified, in the way that the actors if not the artists sing in time with the lyrics.

·     Slightly saturated lighting within ‘Little Black Submarines’ (2011) to give the performance a detached feel and soulful feel to the audience.

Production




Evaluation

In order to make our music video amplified, we incorporated a meta-narrative that told the story of a school boy in love with a girl. We established this concept by deconstructing the lyrics in the part of the song we were dedicated, including “waiting” and “lonely boy” which made the love struck visuals in our video fit the narrative fuzz idea perfectly. Due to limited group members of 4 people, we decided to base our video within a detention room to create realism and hide the fact that we only had few actors to work with. To challenge stereotypical conventions of the indie rock genre which ‘The Black Keys’ is categorised in, we added a modern take by locating our production within a classroom. The negotiated reading of this could be that most indie rock music videos are situated in places that are easily accessible such as studios, cities and parks. Therefore by shooting our footage in a school, we communicated that we are accessing locations which to many are inaccessible because of the security and protection of children.

To maintain a contemporary theme throughout our music video, we incorporated many different camera angles that made the performance relatable to an audience. We used angles from the front, side and back in an attempt to engage the audience into being a part of the world of the narrative. For example, when Jack (our boy in love) passes the ‘love’ note to Amelia, an angle from behind is shown which not only displays the note being passed, but a view of the front of the classroom also as a blurred background. As a result of using varying angles, we were able to establish a rapport with the audience in getting them to feel an emotional attachment to the lyrics and visuals. Additionally, when isolating specific actors within the video, we manipulated the rule of thirds to place the actor being focused on in the eye line of the audience. This is because the audiences eye is naturally draw to the corners of the camera frame, emphasising the facial expression and emotions of the character. Furthermore, in constructing a music video similar to those that are shown on TV music channels such as 4 Music, we added a fast cutting rate to make the performance look edgy. We did this by cutting pieces of footage on the timeline using the cutting tool in adobe premiere and speeding up some of the shots using the time speed icon. When choosing costumes that actors were to wear within the video, we considered our concept first before deciding to wear school uniform. As we were given this task to complete in school, the group found it easier if we were to stay in our school attire, with costumes being very limited in the media department.

In completing the group task, I was able to confidently apply the content from the camera to adobe premiere and edit it. I was also able to develop my skills from last year further, by adding visuals from a video to a music track, fitting the actions in time with the music.