Framing and Composition

Rule of Thirds

How it works is that the image can be split into 9 equally sized parts, divided by two vertical and two horizontal lines. The four lines create four intersections, which should serve as the main points of interest. This is an example below:

Framing

Try to never cut off a small part of an object, such as a person’s hand or the ear or tail of an animal. If you leave an entire arm outside the frame it usually doesn’t look odd, but if there’s something small like a hand missing the viewer will notice it in a different way and it can be very distracting at times.

Lines and Shapes

Lines and shapes are everywhere; try to use them to your advantage. They can draw the viewer into the picture or they can guide the eyes to a point that you normally wouldn’t pay so much attention to. Both symmetrical and asymmetrical lines and shapes are a great asset.

Simplicity

Less is more! Focus on the small things instead of the entire scene this obviously won’t work for every scene you’re shooting but as a quick rule it’s often good to keep your compositions clutter free and with less distractions.

From the website: http://www.tutorial9.net/photography/composition-and-framing/

Meeting- 19/11/10

Last Friday we had a meeting at my house and we came up with quite a lot of new ideas. We used the lyrics to the song to help us with ideas for camera shots and angles whilst also listening to the song. We have editing some of the shots that we filmed and have put it to a song, so this is just a practice of editing:

Fireworks

This is footage edited from when Dom and I filmed Enfield Town fireworks, we both edited our own short video. I thought this was useful practice for when it comes to filming and editing our music video. This is because it was helpful to try and fit the clips to the beat of the music. This was quite challenging and I still think it could be sharper but it was good practice.

Questionnaire

Our group have created a questionnaire in order to help us with ideas for our music video and our research. We are going to ask a variety of people of different ages. We will give them to people to answer, in person and over the Internet and hopefully film them if we receive permission to do so. We are hoping the results will give us some ideas as to what an audience wants to see from our music video. This is our questionnaire below:

Age (please circle): 15-20, 21-25, 26-30, 31-40, 41-50, and other
Gender (please circle): Male, Female

1.What do you like to see in a Pop video?
2.What is your favourite genre of music? Please circle
Pop, Alternative, Jazz, Classical, R&B, Rock, Dance, Country, Other (please specify)
3.What do you expect to see from this genre?
4.What costume would you prefer; flamboyant or casual?
5.What colour do you think represents Pop and why?
6.How do you consume videos? Please circle
MTV, YouTube, iTunes, Downloads, Other (please specify)
7.Do you like being surprised by music videos e.g. music videos with a twist?
8.Do you prefer narrative or performance videos and why?
9.If narrative, do you prefer the story to have an ending or is a cliff-hanger effective?
10.How often do you watch music videos?
11.Do you like music videos with bright lighting, or dull lighting and why?
12.Do you like music videos in black and white or do you prefer them to be in colour and why?
13What interests you about music videos? Please circle
Different camera angles, The narrative, Special effects, Other (please specify)
14.What location do you think reflects a Pop genre video well? Please circle
A house, A busy town, Countryside, Beach, The street, Funfair, Other (Please Specify)
15.From your answer to the previous question, why do you think this represents the Pop genre?
16.What is one of your favourite music videos and why?

Teenage Dream Idea 7

From watching the video 'Matters At All' by Kids in Glass Houses, we have agreed that we want to use our ideas of the girl being obsessed with the boy. This has combined all of our previous ideas of her imagining she is with him but the reality is that she is just obsessed with the boy. We think this will be a good twist and surprise our audience. The ideas we have got so far are:

• There is another girl in the video who is actually dating the boy (this could be Jess who would be in flamboyant clothing and make up)
• Kayla would imagine that she is dating the boy
• Kayla's make up will be like a child's to try and imitate the Jess who is actually dating the boy
• Jess would the girl Kayla wants to be like and we thought we could bring an element of voyeurism into the video with maybe Kayla watching herself with the boy on a TV screen. This would be her dream life.
• In order to distinguish between the dream life and reality we thought her dream life could be in colour and reality could be in black and white. This would be similar to Lily Allen's video 'LDN' which shows the audience how she sees the world but then the reality and this is a contrast of bright and dull colours.
• We also think that we will use a spiral shot to show the audience when the character has realised that she is imagining things and 'reality hits' her. We think this will go well with the part of the song when she sings a long note 'you' and then it is the chorus again. This is near the end of the song.

Below is the video 'Matters At All' by Kids in Glass Houses:

This is Lily Allen's LDN video:

Trip to Richmix- Liz Kessler and Corin Hardy

We met Corin Hardy who has made a variety of music videos, including Keane: Somewhere Only We Know, continuing with films for The Prodigy, The Rumblestrips, Jon Spencer and MVA award-winning Horrors promo for their track 'She is the new thing'. I thought his presentation and videos were really good and inspiring. His videos are very unique and interesting to watch and I thought it was great to be given a presentation by him. As a task, we had to pitch an idea for the song 'God and Satan' by Biffy Clyro which we filmed. Both Corin Hardy and Liz Kessler gave us positive feedback about our ideas and also advice about how we could improve our ideas to make it more realistic if we were to make a music video for it. We then watched the video Corin Hardy made for Biffy Clyro which was really good. After watching the making of video on Corin's blog, I cannot wait to make our music video.

This is Charlotte and Dom's pitch:

Trip to Richmix- Pete Fraser's Presentation

On Tuesday we went on a trip to Richmix in Bethnal Green. We were given lots of advice and information about music videos from Pete Fraser. I found this very useful to my media studies. We were shown a wide variety of music videos starting with Len Lye: A Colour Box. This was made by painting on film and then animating it. I thought this was strange because it was just loads of patterns and I had not really seen a music video like this before.

The next video shown was Nat King Cole: Frim Fram Sauce which involved intertextualtiy where he is watching himself on a television screen. There is a point of view shot in the video of the artist looking at a woman's legs and it is quite a slow paced shot. This kind of thing was seen as inappropriate at the time it was made whereas nowadays there are more explicit videos shown such as 50 Cent: Candy Shop which we also looked at. This video objectifies women for a male purpose but it is more acceptable these days because there are lots of music videos similar to it.

We were also shown the Beatles: Can't buy me love which was in black and white. There are a variety of different shots in this video which keeps the audience interested. For example there is a high angle shot filmed from a helicopter looking down at the band who are dancing around. There are also hand held shots. The Beatles started the trend to make a music video into a short film. This video would then be shown on Top of the Pops if the band were unavailable. This video showed record companies that you need visuals to go with a song.

We were then told that MTV was dominated by Britain when it first started, this is because British record companies were ahead of the game, they always made music videos quickly. This is because, as mentioned before, they knew that visuals were needed to go with a song. Madonna was the first USA artist to have a video on MTV. Michael Jackson made a video for Billie Jean which created a big uproar as in that time period they did not allow black artists to show their videos on TV. However there was an exception because his video was quite good. He then went on to make one of the most popular music videos- Thriller. This video cost loads to make but it was very successful with people making their own versions of the video and copying the dance. This is an example of user generated context, where people make their own videos and publish them on YouTube.

Another great video that we were shown was Jay-Z: 99 Problems. There are lots of cuts in this video and the drama is emphasised because it is in black and white. The camera is moving a lot which makes the video more interesting to watch because the audience is less likely to get bored because there is a lot happening.

Research and Planning-Audience

Andrew Goodwin writing in 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' (Routledge 1992) :

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band)
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting)
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (visual style)
5. There is a frequent reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescope etc) Voyeuristic treatment of female body.
6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV etc)
   

Audience Theory

Audience theory is an element of thinking that developed within academic literary theory and cultural studies.With a specific focus on rhetoric, some, such as Walter Ong, have suggested that the audience is a construct made up by the rhetoric and the rhetorical situation the text is addressing. Others, such as Ruth Mitchell and Mary Taylor have said writers and speakers actually can target their communication to address a real audience. Some others like Ede and Lunsford try to mingle these two approaches and create situations where audience is "fictionalized," as Ong would say, but in recognition of some real attributes of the actual audience.

Active audience theory:
Active audience theory is a theory that people receive and interpret media messages in different ways, usually according to factors such as age, ethnicity, social class, etc. The audience is neither passive nor similar.

The Hypodermic Syringe Effect

The hypodermic syringe effect also known as hypodermic needle theory implied that the media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on their audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour change. Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including: the fast rise and popularization of radio and television, the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda and Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind the Nazi party.

It is also referred to as the "magic bullet" where the media would control the audience when they are targeted. This suggests that the audience is passive and easily influenced by the media to believe what is said in the media even if it is exaggerated.