Music Video 'Kickstarts' Journal Entries

15^th October: we were given the tasks and I was given the role of Director. I had to oversee everyone’s progress. I talked with Lauren about locations for filming the scenes and we agreed on three locations that were the knavesmire woods, in town outside of a nightclub and a road called the Horseshoe. I chose the song for our project before the task began when we were first told about it and now I had to design the storyboard for the video.  Everyone worked efficient in my personal opinion and hopefully; we will work well as a group.

16^th October: I continued work on the storyboard while collaborating with Amy who was drawing the storyboard in detail. I believe that Isaac worked on the risk assessment but I can’t remember that much. Lauren assigned everyone his or her roles with me officially being the director, herself as producer, Amy as a leading actor with me and Isaac and everyone shipped in for the other roles. I am going to start working on designing the costumes.

22^nd October: Unfortunately I was ill today so I don’t know what happened

23^rd October: I was filled in of what I missed yesterday. Interestingly, a new member joined our group yesterday called Sam who I knew from when I did A-levels. I know he works hard and has a good personality (And likes games like me) so he should fit in well with the group. I continued to collaborate with Amy on the storyboard while the others finished their tasks.

5^th November: Unfortunately due to an error by me by forgetting the equipment and costumes for the medieval scene, We couldn’t film anything so we have had to slightly change the filming schedule to make up for this.

6^th October: We met up today at the start of college, got all equipment and we made our way to our first filming location, ‘The Horseshoe” and starting filming the first third of our music video. We got most scenes so this shouldn’t be a problem although I believe that we forgot one or two shots. We need to return back to college for Catering needs and due to the fact the camera was running of battery. We continued filming other things after that before retuning the equipment.

12^th October: I really felt brave today, after all, why would I walk to college in medieval Armour? We were filming the medieval scene today so I brought in the necessary props including an axe, sword, shield and such. After getting Amy into costume, we proceeded to make our way to the Knavesmire to film. We got a few outtakes that were quite funny and overall, everyone enjoyed themselves. After this, we got lunch and proceeded to film the shots back at the horseshoe that we missed. I spent the whole day in armour, walking around college and such, some people’s expressions were funny.

13^th October: Today, we started filming in the green screen room, The only actor required here was Isaac so I started setting up the props necessary involving CCTV monitors, a computer monitor, speakers and such. Everything looked good but Sam seems to take unnecessary shots of things such as recording when we are not ready which takes up valuable memory. After we had done this, We had lunch and then processed into town to film the middle part of our video. This took time to film due to annoying traffic so for the dance scene, We decided to film that on the Castle walls which would relate to the next part of the video we had planned.

19^th October: We started editing today. There were quite a few arguments due to the fact that our tutor lost our footage by placing them in another group’s folder was annoying but every group has their problems at times.

20^th October: Everything went well today. For extra shots, we went filming at the horseshoe again and then continued with editing. Nothing much else happened today.

26^th October: Finished everything today including all documents, Music video and such. Everything went well today and the project was a good project to work on.

 

Third song: IF I DIE IN BATTLE

Song: ‘If I die in battle’

Artist:’ VAN CANTO’

Producer: Napalm Records

Styles:

Narrative: The video has a storyline about marching into battle and beating down your enemies without leaving anyone behind.

Impressionistic: The video is quite impressionistic in the way in which a battle would have been fought and how people would leave the families for war. It is also quite influenced by fantasy games due to the fact that there are certain looks and characters such as the wizard and the orc.

Conventions: 

Song type: The Conventions of the music which are used are of both of heavy metal and cappella bands. The reason for this is that the band themselves are a cappella band who focuses on heavy metal music. Van Canto start the video almost live with their backs up against a wall in the video singing towards the camera but later in the video, they use their voices to imitate instruments such as the guitars

Song Lyrics: The lyrics can only be interpreted as marching into battle with your allies by your side. It can also be interpreted as engaging in a fight in any war as the lyrics could matchup to other battles such as World War 2, the Vietnamese war or even the Israel war.

Techniques: 

Cutting to beat: Cutting to the beat is used throughout the entire video but what is unique about this is that the cutting to beat is only used during the part where it shows the band members singing. Cutting to beat isn’t used when the two factions are fighting in the video but choreography is used in its stead.

Computer animation: is used to help showcase some of the scenery which would be hard to locate and to highlight specific people/actions/scenes. Examples would be at 2.32 where a knight is shown in battle stance which preludes to the scene at 2.36. It also gives a more olden, Fantasy look to the video.

 

Stop Motion animation: stop motion is used within the computer animation as an effect at 2.07 to 2.09. This matches the lyrics as he seems to be getting larger as if he is gaining power and standing up. It can also be seen as him having people behind him who can fight with him such as the war scenes within the music video.

Chroma Key: chroma key is used to a give a unique feel to the battle within the video and make the magical characters increasingly believable as the setting seems based around the king Arthur era where legends were common. It also seems that the entire video has been edited to be a yellowish cream colour to make the video look olden which matches the Arthur theme and to match the computer animation which looks like it is on parchment.

Live footage: live footage is used in recording the band singing to show the feelings of the actors singing the song as well as show their teamwork. Shots are either focused on them alone or all together as a group which matches the fighting were its 1 vs. 1 or everyone as a group against the other faction.