Editing

Completed by Ruby and Amie 

Camera Movement and Shot Type
    

How Instruments Are Filmed 

Instruments are used during the performance part of the music video as it gives fans a chance to experience seeing their favourite musicians in action. Within music videos that are often filmed as apart of a performance piece generally involving lots of close up with the artists and fragmented shots. This provides the audience with a visual experience that they would perhaps get on tour. It shows off the artists skills as a musician which is sometimes over shadowed by music videos so often takes them back to basics. It often highlights the instruments playing and the background introducing the audience to their music which allows them to explore the song and it's lyrics.Instruments are also used as a prop in scenes of music videos, this is instead of them being played.

Ruby filmed someone on a piano so we could see the sound quality and which angles worked best; this includes working with and without a tripod.She put together the clips using Final Cut, then tested out some special effects to see the effect they had on the clips.

Music Drives The Pace of The Editing

Editing fits the tempo of the music. If the pace is fast then this will mean fast cuts which highlight the pace and show the meaning of the song.

The shorter the sequence and the more edits made mean the faster the pace will be. 

The camera movement and the composition of the images play a role in the tempo.

Here I have used examples of both fast and slow pace songs, in particular Amie and I are focussing on the slower paced songs because this is the pace of our chosen song - your song. We have noticed that in slow paced songs the shots are longer, in some of these shots they are very still but in others it features the artist moving. An example of a still shot is the opening to skyscraper and an example of a  long shot where the artist is moving can be found in Beyonce's drunk in love. 

Music throughout all music videos drives the pace of the editing which is something will obviously needed to be considered when editing our own music video. To ensure we understood this we looked at various music videos to see how they done this.

Rihanna- We Found Love

If you could manage to keep up with yourself during this video I would be very impressed. The editing is so fast to match the beat you need to keep up or watch it a few times to value the different shots. Besides the incredible style to this video the fast pace cuts is determined by the beat. This creates an exciting atmosphere which then matches the dance genre it goes along with.

Justin Timberlake- Cry Me A River

The narrative and performance element of this video combined has a strong story which is defined and made from the beat. The pace of the editing is driven by the music and the visual images is told within this capacity proving that the story comes from the lyrics.

Rihanna ft. Kanye West- All Of The Lights

The dance and rap combination video is a combination of all kinds of elements but like the other videos it is increasingly obvious that you cannot deny that music drives the pace of the editing. Even with all the text features at the beginning video they change according the to the lyrics/ beat. It would be hard to find a video that would reject this theory.

Jay Z ft. Kanye West- In Paris 

The technical advance on their world tour was brought forward within this music video. The video without a doubt drives the pass of the editing. From when he is singing, to the lighting and all the girls dancing the pace is always made to fit the music. As the music slows so does the upbeat video. This video is a fantastic example as to how editing is driven by the music. 

Adele- Make You Feel My Love 

Although our song is not quite a ballad this video replicates the sense of pace Ruby and I will be working with as we are editing. The slow music really does have a slow pace and it certainly not full of fast paced cuts. This allows for a more dramatic performance and strong narrative. Also following the other research regarding the demand for close up's it will also provide many opportunities for the audience to feel at one with the artist creating a more intimate feel.

   

Ellie Goulding- Your Song

  

Within our music video our song is rather slow paced with insinuates to me that our shots need to match them and unlike hard core rapper video with not be constantly changing to the beat. Ours has more of a soothing feel to it so the pace of our cuts need to a lot slower to give the mellow feel that the song has to it. Looking at other music videos really helped me to notice what we need consider when we edit our own music video which is obviously the soul purpose of research. This post will be refered back to as we can look at other examples to ensure that our music video would survive in the real multi media world to ensure that we are aiming for the top grades.

Amie & Ruby

Demand For Close Up's

A close-up can be defined as:
1. A photograph or a film or television shot in which the subject is tightly framed and shown at a relatively large scale.
2. An intimate view or description. 

Ruby: The record company demands for many close-ups of the main artist within their music videos. The demand for close-ups is part of Andrew Goodwin's theory as he feels that they create intimacy for the viewer putting an emphasis on half of the commodities on sale. Another purpose of close-ups is to show the artists lip synching. Close-ups do not necessarily have to contain the face of the artist, it could feature parts of the artist, offering alternative angles of them. Although the point of close-ups are to show the artist, sometimes they are not completely shown i.e. in the 'move' video for Little Mix it features a silhouette of the band members, and in the 'live for' video by The Weeknd the flashing lights make it not as easy to recognise the artist - these two examples are shown in the video below. To show how common close-ups really are I have taken sections of four music videos and highlighted each time that a close-up is used.


Amie: Music Video's demand close up's as the audience want to see the artist and often to entice the audience they may even include close up fragmented body shots for the artist. It is one of the only platforms now days that you can feel insightful within a artists life visually which is something that social networking such as Twitter and Facebook does not provide. Close up's focus on the subject of interest as it generates audience interest and almost suspense. Facial expression is to show emotion but it creates a stronger relationship with the lyrics as you can see and then feel the passion in someones voice which is a different experience you get from close up's with in blockbuster movies for example.

Ruby:

Ruby: Lyrics on the Screen

Ruby made a video about titles along the screen and looked at how they appear within music videos. This research will give us creative ideas when we are editing our own video. Rihanna used various text effects throughout her video to highlight words except our song choice is a lot more mellow therefore a similar effect would be inappropriate. The same effect have also been used within Cher Lloyd's music video but again it is not the same genre so it's irrelevant to what we are doing. From the various examples found by Ruby, Kanye West clearly uses these effects throughout a lot of his videos which appears suitable within the R&B videos. However, we do not want to do this throughout our music video. We want to take an approach similar to Chase and Status, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga just by at the beginning of our music video having the title come up on screen. We may even try to do this in a format of a music channel to give a professional look.

Lyrics can be illustrated by the artist themselves i.e. by miming, pointing or using their fingers. They can be illustrated by giving a visual to something which is mentioned i.e. if the lyrics were 'drinking coffee' then a visual of someone drinking coffee would be shown. 
 

Amie
Lyrics within a music video are generally meaningful and the music video will help portray the story and create a deeper understanding or meaning to the song. Their is a distinctive relationship between the lyrics and the video creating a storyline conveying the message to its audience as well as creating a platform for a star sometimes we must remember it is still actually about the song. Within a music video sometimes their may not even be a meaning which must be portrayed in the song all conventions of a music video are still needed to make a video that would consist within the real media world.

It is also important to recognize that sometimes music videos totally contradict the lyrics to create confusion amongst the audience only to ensure that they what it in more detail. For example...

 

But although you could say the video is contrasting to a certain to degree it does have a message behind so it does still have some sort of relationship which is why it does still actually work. The contrast just has to make the audience focus more to understand.

Sharing the work load with Ruby she started looking at music videos to see how performance and narrative are used. She under took a collection of videos and just took notes on what she had been watching. I decided to also come up with my own notes to make sure we were doing things fairly but to also develop my own flavour of how music videos in the real multi media world are and we will both be able to decide on the knowledge we have gained from out research what will make a great quality music video. 

Ruby

Amie  

Adele- Make You Feel My Love: The powerful ballad is a performance piece with a little bit of a narrative as we find her in a hotel room checking her phone etc although I don't think I would actually even class it as a narrative but just a performance as it is more the setting. The song is too strong to need a story to go with it as her amazing voice tells the story for you.

Jay Z and Kanye West- In Paris: This is a performance piece high paced with modern effects from their tour together. The pair represent a united front whilst managing to promote their tour within the music video! 

Martin Garrix- Animals: The video is a narrative piece but obviously has the typical club setting and people dancing. This is why a narrative really works for this video as the lyrics are so limited they can creatively do anything they wish narratively but they just would not be able to construct a performance. 

Britney Spears- Work Bitch: The narrative video promotes her new residency in Las Vegas which reveals the artist and the label using a video as a platform to provide and gain publicity and promote what they got going on else where in their lives. Generally within her music videos she also promotes her perfumes proving how an artist uses a narrative to their advantages. 

Tinie Tempah- Trampoline: Is a cleverly structured performance piece which uses bold words across the screen to highlight his the lyrics creating a strong relationship a clear advantage of using a performance. The black and white visual effect also looks good as I believe it always looks classy. 



Wilkinson- Afterglow: This is one of my favourite music videos as I think that it has been so cleverly done. It is a narrative a couple and about the adventures they do on with subtitles included. It is the first and only video of its kind as I have not been able to find any more. I would of like to used similar stylistic features but it would have been too close to the original.  

From my research it is clear that different music videos combine narrative and performance in different combination or chose one or the other. This indicates that when Ruby and I make creative decisions about our music video that their is not necessarily a right or wrong answer. From a student point of view I think it would be the best for us visually with the tools we have to a combination of performance and narrative to make it look like it would fit in the real multi media world.