Music Video Concept Three

This band is called The Summer Set.

  For my final initial music video idea I decided to use their song, 'Lightening in a Bottle.

They did not have a music video but they had a similar song called Maybe Tonight:

From their images and their music video, a few words come to mind:

• Young
• Fun
• Colourful
• Natural
• Girls and boys
• Party

They seem to represent a very fun and happy party image, very much for the elder teenage market. With these words and the representation I managed to conjure up another music video idea:

The Band:

I would firstly re-name, the now all boy band, 'Bright Orange Spectacles'.

They would be four elder teenage boys, and their market would be elder teens. They would be attractive to girls and relatable to males.They would have a very festival feel to them, with lots of colours and feathers. 

The Video:

The video would consist of a performance and a light narrative, built up with thematic and symbolic moments.

The performance would be the band playing in different places, for instance on a roof, in a studio with coloured lights and possibly at a concert. 

The narrative consists of the four male band members, and four other attractive girls ( unknown). In each verse, is a different band member and one of the girls flirting or cuddling e.t.c. For example, one could be them at a bonfire together, another in the back of a car chilling or in a field having a picnic.

It would be very light hearted, young, and full of flares colours and dancing. To give a happy feel for audiences. 

Music Video Concept Two

This time I decided to come up with a far more mainstream idea, and create and artist like usher or Robin Thicke. If we these two pictures I have chosen them 
for a specific reason; both stars are surrounded 

by attractive young females. Now we wonder
why this actually is; in fact it is a very clever 
phycological marketing tactic. We can make the
male star as attractive as possible to female audiences, but however this does not always completely work with all females, therefore they use the 'surround with girls' tactic. 





If we analyse this quote about jealousy:








in other words it is saying that when we are jealous or in competition of something, that we love it more. 

I we relate this idea back to our stars, we could say that by surrounding them by girls creates a competition, and sometimes due to this we actually want that person even more as we want to 'win' this competiton. This makes fans like girls even more.

Another way of looking at this a following the crown method. This article explains why people follow crowds:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/4240758/Mental-process-which-explains-why-we-follow-crowds-revealed.html

Linking this back to our star, we could say that if we see these other girls liking the pop star ( by dancing around him and flirting e.t.c.) we will want to fit and like them too, as they represent the masses. The more that we like the artist the more likely we are to buy concert tickets, albums and singles.

My new music video idea is largely based upon this research.

Artist name: Boy Racer

Star Image: very flashy, materialistic, young, flirty, money and women.
( women being the key factor in the music video due to the above research)

Song: Black and Gold by Sam Sparrow. 

Music Video concept:

The video would consist of 5 sections, flashing around from the beat to each one.

1. The artist on a gold armchair with a bottle of champagne
2. artist in a black studio with lots of girls dancing around him, he is wearing a suit
3. A james bond style golden girl, sprayed in gold paint in a black studio 
4. A flashy black car, with him at the wheel, and green screen of the night behind him
5. An attractive girl in a gold dress on a motorbike, and of her leaning forwards as if riding with a fan in her face as if she was going forwards.

Music Video Concept One

 For each initial music video idea, I came up with a star or a band, who would become a product and who could connect to a certain audience. I would then choose a song suitable for my artist that would be appreciated by audiences. I then researched into the actual song's artist/s and how I could incorporate their themes and style (within a certain extent) into my own music video of the song.

My first idea for an artist and track:  

Mark Sinclair.

This is name of my artist because the audience I have chosen is middle-aged males and females. I chose this name because 'Mark' is common for their generation and already sets an expectation.

He would be an older artist someone like peter Gabriel or Eric Clapton. He must seem quite rugged, casual and attractive. Someone females find attractive and males a role model.

The video would consist of two sections. One would be a narrative.

It would start with an older couple arguing (something that the audience can relate to). It would then go back to the start of their relationship (made clear through hair clothes and jewelry, that these are the same people). They may meet through friends and then go on a date. The next section would be the couple, but slightly older, in the next stage of their relationship. For example they could be engaged or pregnant. The final section is a replay of them arguing; however this time the argument is resolved and they are happy together again. This is all very relatable for the audience and has positive ending with a 'feel good factor'.

Also in-between the narrative mark Sinclair will be lip-syncing to the song in a studio. The studio will be a black set with pictures hanging from above on strings to give a reminiscent feel.

Target Audience Research

To explore possible target audiences, we watched three music videos and discussed how they appeal to their target audience, considering how we could use similar ways of appealing to an audience of our choice. 

Beyonce: Blue


All the people who said they liked the video were female, this could be because it has maternal qualities, as it includes lots of children and is a quite intimate style of filming- as if it is a home video. It is also quite gentle and easy to watch, which is generally a more feminine quality. Here we see Beyonce stripped of makeup and with her child, therefore we are seeing her as Beyonce the woman, not the performer.

Kid Cudi: Pursuit of Happiness



This video is celebrating typical hedonistic values, which is a trait often associated with teenagers and young adults. We see everything except him in slow motion, this shot makes implications of drug use, therefore it appeals to the young adults who find the drug culture cool. There is also a sense of living in the moment, with no consequences, which appeals to young adults under the stresses of modern life, as it is something they strive for. 

Avril lavigne: When You're Gone



This appeals to the variety of female fans who have grown up with her, therefore has got older themes of missing people and love, something all females relate to. Women are commonly more understanding of emotions, the close ups on her face are personal and she shows the emotions through her acting.

Rough Cut Feed Back

To try and find what our strengths and weaknesses of our project were we decided to show our music video to some people and get some feedback. We wanted to know if the narrative that we were trying to portray of the music video was easy for everyone to understand. We also wanted to know what were the most popular aspects of our music video and bits that people thought that we should change. Here is some of the feedback that we got:

Evaluation of our Rough Cut

During our rough-cut process we have faced a few issues, one of the main being choosing which shots to use. For example sometimes the artists become out of character and ruin the illusion that they are pop stars. Therefore whilst cutting I had to choose their best performance bits only. Another issue was to do with timing and choosing where to cut; we tried to make it as slick as possible, zooming in and trying to find the correct beat to cut on by listening to the music in slow motion. This was particularly tricky right before the drop in the music, as there are lots of fast beats; we decided it would look good to cut to every single beat. This proved to be difficult and time consuming but in the end it looked professional and slick.

I felt that I was good at picking the correct shots that made the artists look like real pop stars. I also managed to edit very quickly meaning that I had plenty of time to go back over the shots and find mistakes or something that doesn’t quite fit or look right.

I definitely feel that it is relative to our original plans, of course it does not exactly stick to our storyboard, but the concept and scenes we planned are all in the video. The only thing we had to adapt was the speed of the cuts compared to our storyboard. Our cuts are now much faster to keep the audiences attention,

Our only postproduction work so far is to edit the song to more appropriate length, around three minutes ten, so that our viewer’s attention doesn’t linger towards the end.

Evaluation of the Shoot Day

For me, the day prior to our shoot was mainly focused on organization. I spoke to all the cast members so they could show me their costume to check it was appropriate and their makeup plans, also giving them a schedule of the day. I also checked I had all the necessary props, and that all the items of the set were in place to set up.

Before we began shooting, I helped construct the first set, black walls all round and some blinders behind the artist. We did find a different DJ table, a box that held lighting equipment in, which looked far more realistic. We also had  to do the artists makeup, and direct them and explain what we wanted them to do in each scene and placed them in the space ready for the camera.

Each scene that we shot worked very well and felt that the shots we got really embodied how we had imagined the video looking. We found that the performance element was slightly away from our vision, but was in fact better, as it gave us more of a range of shots, as we could play around with lighting.

Throughout the day my group played various different roles. I was directing the people in front of the camera and motivating them making sure they were lively and confident. I also worked on filming, making sure we had enough interesting and usable shots for edit. I mainly used extreme close up, medium close up, wide shots and tracking.

I felt that my directional skills were particularly good. As a dancer I was able to physically show them what it was exactly that they needed to be doing. Therefore they were never dull to watch on camera and always had something to do. This made them feel more confident therefore their were more convincing as their character.

The main issues we had on the shoot day were to do with costume and the amount of people we were working with. We had issues with costume not staying on or being too uncomfortable, these were soon solved with safety pins and slight alteration to the material or a change in outfit, the other issue with the amount of people in a small space meant that they were difficult to keep control of and not distract the people who were currently on camera. This took effort from our whole team but eventually they were co-operative and we were able to direct them well in the auditions and party scene.

I think that the most successful part of the shoot was the performance element. Our female singer was a great performer and easy to direct. We got lots of usable shots very quickly and finished that scene ahead of schedule, setting us up positively for the rest of the day.

I felt that we could have got more shots of the auditions, as there were so many cast members to get through we did not spend much time on each member individually as we wanted to fit them all in. therefore we may not have got every person in detail as much as we had hoped.

I felt that we worked very well throughout the day and prior. We split our duties, so one of us as on camera and directing, another monitoring the cast, costumes and props, and the other organized the schedule and planned the set, making sure that everything ran smoothly.

We can now add pictures form the shoot day to our website for ‘fans’ to see. We also got the artists to take ‘selfies’ to go on the website. Whilst they were performing we got a photographer to take pictures, so they look professional. We will put them in black and white and use them as backgrounds and covers on the site and twitter feed.