i thought the law and the law won exercise

the next task was to make a video ourselves and by using a song we're given. we didn't know what song we were getting and we didn't have any time for planning. the exercise was so we could practice lip syncing with the music. we got 'i thought the law and the law won' by the clash.

we automatically got a rough idea of what we were going to do so we got to work straight away. we filmed each person twice so we had more to edit and we found it easier singing the song rather than mime it because it looked more genuine.

after filming it, which was loads of fun, we transferred it onto final cut and began to edit. after we finished that we watched them all and gave feedback. feedback for me was:

-good lip syncing

-good performances, compliment the fun song

-needed more variation of shots, most were the same angle

-the idea for the video was good and complimented the song

-well cut

this exercise was a good practice before we did our proper videos because we can learn from our mistakes and feel more comfortable with final cut editing a music video

music video - looking for a song

i went onto myspace so i could contact artists and ask for their permission to use their music. i managed to find some underground bands so i contacted them but i also contacted well known artists just to see if i would get some feedback. i got replies from 2 bands. one was called M.E.S.T and they got back to me saying it was okay.

i also contacted P.O.D and they got back to me but i don't have the email anymore. they said that it was fine to use their music but they didn't want me to use their new stuff because of promotional reasons or something. anyway that's okay because i'm using a song called ' will yon' hopefully. i have a dew ideas.

you wanna what exercise

after doing the exercise with editing the footage with out lip syncing, we went on to lip sync a song called 'you wanna what' which was country western. we got the footage and the song and we had to lip sync it together so it looked as if the actors were singing the song. it was quite hard to get right and it showed me that it wasn't as easy as i first thought.

i got the hang of it though and felt comfortable doing it. i did it the fastest out the class. after we all did it we watched a few of them and found that everyone had got the hang of it really quickly which was good. i then started to think about what i could do with my music video.

research - spike jonze

Spike Jonze was another person we looked at. he has the same reputation as michel gondry in the way that he changed the business in terms of ideas and filming. in one of his videos it's filmed backwards and then reversed. the band learned the song backwards so the lip syncing looked okay. another one of his videos was of christopher walken flying around a hotel room. watching these concepts showed us that if you have a good concept and it works, the video will be just as good as a narrative video. 

research - Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry was a music video director that we looked at and analysied. he's one of the music directors that went that little bit further and put that little bit more time into his work. actually, judging by some of his work, he put a lot more time in his work through planning, filming and editing. he puts so much care and attention into his work it's hard not to like it. his video for daft punk, 'around the world' is one of my favourite music videos because it shows thar simple ideas done well are the best. it's like a live action animation. people are dressed up and are moving to the beat of the music.

he did videos such as the 'come into my world' video when the Kylie is walking around in one shot and then she multiplies. it's a fantastic video showing that planning pays off and that if you have a good idea it doesn't matter how many cuts you do. it really shows off what Michel Gondry can do. it showed us what could be achieved as well because some of us were in the mind set that music videos weren't taken as seriously as films. 

cutting exercise

to practice cutting music videos we were given 4 different songs and different clips of footage to play around with. we had to chose one of the songs and then cut the footage to compliment the music. it wasn't as easy as it sounds. the footage didn't have any lip syncing in it so we only had to concentrate on the cutting. this gave us an understanding of how many cuts music videos actually have. the average for a 3 minute video is between 200-300 cuts. that's a lot more than what we're used to. we cut it together the best we could and then went round and watched them ll. some people had put effects on to make it look more visually interesting, others just cut it well. it was a good exercise to do because it showed us how to form a music video on final cut.

music video project

we're just starting the music video project. we're looking at different music videos and analysing them so that we get an understanding of what we need to achieve. music don't follow any rules like feature length films or even shorts. some videos follow the same ideas such as live performances and such but some times music video directors create crazy, adventurous music videos that change the business and standards. we looked at some examples of these so that we could get an idea of what we could do and what is possible.