Music video essay

I'm going to be discussing the career and art style of Michel Gondry, a famous music video director. I have chosen three music videos to discuss his art style by, which are Daft Punk - Around The World, The White Stripes - The Hardest Button To Button and Kylie Minogue - Come Into My World. Michel Gondry is established because he has directed for famous artists and has also won awards for feature films such as "The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" which won the most critically acclaimed film of the year.

The music video for The White Stripes - The Hardest Button To Button likes to use repetition consistently in this music video. When there is a beat in the song the drum would replicate right next to the original and this would keep going until there wasn't enough room in the shot. This would also happen with the guitar but not as frequently. This makes the video light hearted and entertaining rather than dark and endearing. This also means that the colour scheme uses very light colours like red and green. He likes to use natural lighting to his advantage in this music video because most of it was shot outside. When they were in the train station the lighting and colour seemed fairly dark. This helped to bring out the brightness of the red in her drum kit. The cameras were usually very far away and rarely close up. The closest the camera gets is a medium shot. There was a lot of editing because of the repetition of the drum kit, guitar and amps. This made the music video fairly fast paced. This music video was performance based because you it showed the band playing throughout all of it and the band playing was the main subject of the video. This music video appeals to it's audience because it shows the band playing and that is what they want and expect to see. The target audience is 18-21 year olds who are most likely students with low income and usually male.

The next music video is Kylie Minogue - Come Into My World which uses repetition like in The White Stripes - The Hardest Button To Button but it uses repetition in a different way. The camera would pan around a street and then the second time it would have the same but overlapped with another one. This happened four or five times. This theme is similar with The Hardest Button To Button because it is also playful and light hearted. The colour scheme was also similar to The Hardest Button To Button because it used a fairly light colours but it doesn't have the red that stands out. The lighting is really similar because they both use the natural light to their advantage as much as possible, which gives it a very natural feel to reflect the scene. The lighting doesn't change because the music video is on the same street throughout the music video. The camera pans around the street while going up close to Kylie but then pulling away. The location is a big difference between the music videos. In Kylie Minogue's music video it uses the one location throughout the whole video. With The White Stripes music video they switch between locations and sometimes they revert back to a location. There is some editing involved to make the clones but the music video looks like it was shot in one take. Therefore this music video had a very casual feel to it rather than The White Stripes music video. This music video was narrative based because it followed Kylie Minogue around will she was singing. The video uses clones to make the video entertaining, which is also the main premise of this music video. The music video also has a link to the lyrics. This music video appeals to Kylie Minogue and pop fans because it displays Kylie which is the main thing that attracts that kind of audience. Kylies audience is predominately female teenagers who are in education and listen to artists similar to Kylie Minogue.

The final music video is Daft Punk - Around The World which also uses repetition just like the other two. The Kylie Minogue song was more similar to Daft Punk than The White Stripes. The music video would use repetition without needing to edit to use repetition. They would dance in a sequence and they would repeat it a few times then switch the focus to another group of dancers then do the same. This happened throughout the music video. The colour scheme was very different to the other music videos. The colour of the background was very dark, while the costume colours were predominately very bright. This allowed for the audience to have more focus on the dancers. The lighting in this music video complemented the colour scheme as it kept the background dark and the dancers bright. The is also another difference to the other two music videos which is that Daft Punk didn't use natural light in the music video. The location is similar to Kylie Minogue in the fact that it used only one location although Daft Punk's music video was not outside. The only editing involved was when they had to switch shot/angle. This meant the editing style was slow and which means it was similar to the Kylie Minogue music video. This music video is concept based because it is the video has no link to the lyrics or song although, it can be argued that there is a link. This appeals to the audience as it is similar to a music video already done by this artist which means the fans will like this one as well. The audience is 15-21 males who are students and unemployed.

The main link between these three videos is that they all use repetition but they differ in the way they use it. Personally, I enjoyed all three music videos but this may be affected by the fact that I am in the target audience. The music videos are very entertaining but they are kind of expected. They are very efficient at promoting the artist and the music tracks complement the videos very well.

Young Guns - You are not

I am analysing the music video "You are not" by Young Guns. The genre is rock. The music video does not apply the general characteristic's of a rock video, as it does not show the band playing but follows a narrative.

The lyrics at the end resemble the actions he is taking. Near the end the lyrics say "you are not a diamond, you are not a shining star" when he was stabbing his ex's new boyfriend out of jealousy. The link is that both the visual and lyrics make them seem imperfect.

The action all happens when the song is at the chorus and when the music slows down there are mainly shots of him just walking seeming calm. When the music video got exciting there was emphasis that it was mainly the guitar playing, which sounded very serious. This is showed when he says "you are not a diamond, you are not a shining star" and stabs the man.

This video did not feature any close-ups of the artist as the genre would expect. They tried to sell this track by putting a narrative story for the music video. The singer of the band is the main protagonist in this music video and the guitar player plays an extra in this music video. This band would usually have the band playing for the music video, which shows how unconventional this video was for a rock band.     The shot choices are also a lot different to what they normally use. They would choose high angle shots but they didn't take that approach in this music video.

They don't use voyeurism in this music video. There are no aspects of this film which show the notion of looking. I think they chose this so that the audience could focus entirely on the plot rather than distracting visuals.

The idea of having a music video done backwards has been done before in Coldplay's music video "The Scientist". Although The Scientist was released first I think that they didn't want to duplicate Coldplay's music video.

This music video is purely concept based as it follows a plot but doesn't fully link with the lyrics of the song. You can argue that it is partly performance based as there is a part when the guitar player plays guitar in the street but it is a part of the plot.

Overall, I think that this music video has a very unique idea of having a music video entirely backwards.

Treatment for music video

The main idea for this music video is that we follow our main protagonist, while he is enjoying his life for a day. This day will consist of a teenage student walking around his town. We was going to take an artistic response when choosing the shots so that the music video attains the audience's visual interest, for example we were going to use the sunset to our advantage. There will also be a scene by the beach which we think will turn out really good. There is also a transition that lasts thirty seconds which is shown in the research, that we thought would be a strong thing to use.

We don't have to buy or hire any equipment because we own everything we need such as camera, tripod etc. The location was free to use as it is a public area. We didn't use any props in this music video so it we don't have to spend money. For travel David could use his weekly card, that he uses for college, so he won't have to spend money on travel. Jemma lives near the location so it will also be free for her. We have planned to eat before and after at our homes so that will be free. We're not staying there so there is no need to book accommodation. This means that the overall budget needed for this film £0. The crew  and actors are doing this for free. We also don't have to pay to use the location we want to use.

For this film we are using one actor which is also Jemma's friend Jack Baxter. David is in a section of this music video. There are no extras needed for this video. The music we used for this music video is played by Polite Fiction and Audiodile who's music is on creative commons so i don't have to pay for the rights. We don't have to pay for the talent in the show.

The production crew consists of David and Jemma. David does the Directing, Cinematography, Storyboarding, Treatment, Editing, Contingency and Ideas. Jemma does the Producing, Lighting, Proposal, Location Scouting and Costume Design.

There aren't many problems with contingency. Everything we are using costs nothing so if prices change for things we need there is no problem because we already own it. If equipment breakdown during shoot we have backup dates incase so we can fix it and reshoot on one of the backup dates. This also applies if there are severe weather conditions. We have no client so we don't have to worry about the client changing their mind.

We took several approaches to finding research such as taking a survey from a group which is our target audience, comparing our ideas to those that have been done before and comparing locations. We took a survey using our class, who are an example of who our target audience is, to tell us which song and idea we could use. This was done via padlet which can be seen here. For comparing our ideas with music videos which have been down in a similar idea for our music video we found BAD BOY - BIGBANG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qnV55LUFVM. We were going to approach the planning and shooting with this music video in mind, so to stop us from doing the mistakes they did and use some of the good points they did. For example we thought of sung the way they transitioned from person to person. When we were location scouting we thought of places that would be easily and financially efficient to travel to. We decided it would be best to film in Shoebury because it is free to travel too for us and has some beautiful scenery.

Seaworld video and evaluation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wGhrG6rMIo&feature=youtu.be


I have learnt how to efficiently edit a series of clips. I can now name most things on final cut pro. I have know nearly all of the shortcuts. I have learnt all of the settings to export.