Problem…

So I spoke to my friend today who I was meant to be borrowing the retro TV from to film the end of my video, but she tried to use it this morning before she gave it to me to use and it no longer works!

This is incredibly frustrating, I was really looking forward to having a nice and fitting outro for my video. I’ve tried to find another one to use but no one I know owns one and I don’t have the money to rent one (broke student). So unfortunately I’ve had to rethink this aspect and what I think I’ve decided on is to have the beginning and the end of the same clips so that the video can be watched on repeat if necessary. I also think that this rounds the video off quite well, where there is no particular narrative for the video (it is concept based) I think it’s important to make sure there is at least a slight element of closure to it.

Megan’s ‘Flashy Car’ Shoot

Megan’s shoot has gone really well! It took her a while to warm up to the camera but in the end I think I got some good footage out of it. The use of the car really helped with the male stereotype within music videos as well so I’m very appreciative of Jono letting me borrow it for a few hours.

I initially wanted Megan to drive the car around but (understandably) Jono had some issues with this – partly because Megan isn’t insured to drive the vehicle anyway – but mainly because he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to his car by her hand (also understandable), but he agreed to drive it around for me whilst I filmed Megan in the front seat. However, after looking back on the footage (besides the fact that Megan was very nervous and Jono’s presence wasn’t helping in the slightest) the lighting was too dark, and after I tried to edit it brighter by adjusting the exposure, brightness and contrast, it just looked unnatural and overly edited and so in the end I decided to scrap that footage, as I got some good clips of her sitting outside the front seat with the door open and sat on the bonnet.

The weather was dry but by no means bright, and so I had to adjust the saturation on the clips to make it look less dreary. Jono was also on a bit of a time constraint (he was late getting to me anyway) and so I had to kind of rush the footage, which didn’t ease Megan’s nerves either. But like I said, after a few test shots and (notably) after Jono got out of the car and left us to do the outside shoots, the feel was much more relaxed and she got into it more, which came across in the footage.

However, one thing was that she didn’t learn all of the words in time, so there are bits within the footage where she messes up and sometimes would laugh after she got the lyrics wrong, which meant that a section of the footage I got was unusable, but still enough was good that I managed to include her a few times in the drafts I’ve done thus far.

‘Vossi Bop’ and Change of Subject

Last week Stormzy released his music video for his new release ‘Vossi Bop’, and the whole video is a ‘one shot’ narrative; much of the video is filmed where Stormzy is stood in the same spot and the camera circles him whilst he raps, and as soon as I saw it I knew I needed to include it in my video. I’m going to use it on the street shoot that I’m doing (for the male vocals section) as I think this will really enhance the urban feel to this shoot that I’m trying to create.

Not only this but it also looks really really cool.

Another development is that my subject for this shoot has had to pull out due to leaving all of her university coursework until the last minute and now can’t spare the time to help me out, so instead of having to rely on someone else to learn the words and act the way I want them to, I’ve decided to do it myself. I’ve got my course mate and fellow subject Joe to do the shooting and I’ve told him exactly how I want it.

Although this wasn’t ideal and not exactly what I wanted (I definitely prefer being behind the camera!), the shoot won’t take as long since I know what I want to do on camera and Joe’s instructions are easy enough. Will post an edit once I’ve finished (so close now!).

 

Style Points

One of the things I’m really enjoying whilst editing this video is the use of reverse shots and increasing the speed up to anywhere between 200-500%. I think this is a definitely a personal stylistic angle that I enjoy, since in previous music videos I’ve produced I’ve used a lot of these shots. I find that I’m using them most with the shoot of Harry (the black and white shoot) and speeding up the clips so that they appear in quick flashes rather than in clips of 2+ seconds long. I think the way that it looks in the video is really enjoyable, and it shows that I’ve done a lot of footage as well as thought about the editing process, selection of shots and placement of shots in the sequence.

I think that I’ll do more of these shots with the female vocal sections (so the ‘girls’ shoots) because I want their bits to come up in sexualized flashes, so as not to be taken too seriously, whereas the ‘boys’ shoots will be more lyric focussed and less body close ups. This is so it seems that the ‘boys’ hold the power in the video, as they make eye contact and rap into the camera, not in bedrooms or private rooms where they can be objectified either but all locations are outdoors and in public spaces.

Beginning/End

I was speaking to a few course mates recently as well who were asking me about what I was going to fill the gaps in with, obviously they know the shoots that I’m doing but they were asking if I had ideas of individual shots that I knew I wanted to shoot.

The answer is yes, at the beginning of the video I’d like to have a close up of a boy walking down a corridor, where the focus is on his feet and ankles, but the shot won’t reach the knee (will obviously try lots of different angles and shots on the day, but this is just the vision at the moment). I’m undecided about whether I want the boy to wearing heels or not, mainly because I’m not sure I’ll have enough money to buy heels for him but also because finding high heels in size 10.5 is proving to be rather difficult.

I’d like that shot to be the majority of the intro (the intro is 30 seconds long but I’d like it to take up at least 20 seconds), this may lead into another room and so won’t be entirely walking down a corridor, I’m also thinking I might slowly move the camera from the feet up the legs and torso, to try and incorporate the male gaze concept. This idea I got when I watched Duran Duran’s music video for their song Girls on Film (2010), where the camera is used to lead the audience’s gaze onto the female body and stopping in places of sexual significance (such as breasts, bum, legs and even hands whilst a woman massages a man), this convention is used to enhance female objectification and is commonly used in music videos (Cole, 1999). I am also considering using some shots of the boys in bed, much like Beyoncé in her Rocket music video, where she is seen using a lot of the self touch convention (Wallis 2011) whilst she wears lingerie and writhes on top of her bed sheets.

Secondly, for the last shot, if you listen to the audio after 4:28 it sounds very distorted and separate from the rest of the song. Because of this, I’d really like to get some footage from the video and play it on an old vintage television and then have the camera slowly zooming out. I think that this would fit well with the audio and it rounds the video off nicely, as when the audio finishes I would have the TV zap off, and then the video will finish. I have been talking to some friends of mine about this and one of them has a vintage TV that they said they wouldn’t mind me borrowing for this purpose, which would be perfect. To give a better idea of what I mean, this is the kind of TV I’d like to use:

Using this in my video would go along with the audio of the song and I believe that’s one of the most important things to consider – you can make the video look however you want, but in this case the audio is unchangeable (or at least I don’t want to tamper with the audio, I like it the way it is).

 

 

 

Cole, S. (1999) I am the eye, you are my victim: The Pornographic Ideology of Music Video. Enculturation [online]. 2 (2). [Accessed 05 April 2019].

Duran Duran (2010) Duran Duran – Girls on Film (Official Music Video). Youtube . 16 November. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCjMZMxNr-0 [Accessed 08 April 2019].

Wallis, C. (2011) Performing Gender: A Content Analysis of Gender Display in Music Videos. Sex Roles. 64 (3-4), pp. 160 – 172. [Accessed 11 February 2019].

Edit 2

So I’ve added a few more clips into the mix, I haven’t done any more shoots as of yet but I knew I wanted to fill in a few gaps with Harry and Kira’s shoots, and I’m really happy with some of the stuff I’ve done thus far, my favourite section of the video is between 2:33 and 3:00. This is where the most clips feature together and the collection of shots, although still with a few gaps, just looks more together, although there are some individual shots that I’m very proud of.

I also had a play around with the speeds of the clips and reverse shots a little more, and I can safely say I absolutely love the effect it has, I really like this style so I think I’ll be featuring a few shots like that. The next draft link is below:

I’m really liking the way that this is coming together, I feel it’s a good mix of my own personal style and also keeping with the theme of the video. It is definitely frustrating not being able to have all the footage done now, I’m kind of itching to edit. I’ve been looking through this draft a lot over the last couple days to really pin point the clips I’ve done that I like, to then pour through all the footage I’ve done so far and see if I can get a style of editing going and to keep as reference points for my next couple shoots. One of the clips I’m particularly fond of is the clip at 1:13, where my hands are around Harry’s neck whilst he has his eyes shut, but the thing that caught my attention was the speed. I didn’t slow down that clip, that’s it at regular speed, but it looks so slow it’s almost, haunting? I love it. Also, with my hands round his neck it really enforces that power dynamic that I wanted in the first place, so all in all I like that shot A LOT.

 

Edit 1 and Shoot Review

Above is the link to the first little draft that I’ve done thus far. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve decided to opt for a slightly odd editing technique, and so at the moment there are a lot of black spaces, but they will all be filled by the end.

I edited the shots I took of Harry into black and white by adjusting the contrast, brightness, saturation and exposure, because the shot just didn’t look right in colour, the lights were very warm and there was a fair bit of glare on both of our arms because the lights had to be in very close proximity in order to give off the spotlight effect that I wanted. However, I really like the black and white and I think it works with the feel of the shoot – very much like that of the Beyoncé Rocket video and FKA Twigs’ Papi Pacify, the latter of which I was using as the inspiration for this shoot anyway.

We used a spotlight and a dimmer light in the light studio on campus, we were there for around 3 hours and Harry was such a brilliant subject, followed every direction I gave him and I ended up with a lot of footage that I deemed usable, so all in all I was very happy with this one. I also used the same camera as before, the Canon XA30 as well as a Manfretto tripod, I’ll be using this camera with all of my shoots though because the quality is just unbelievable. I spent a lot of time fiddling with the white balance and the manual focus as well, making sure that I was getting the sharpest image I could considering how close I was wanting to get.

Above are a couple of stills from the shoot I did with Harry, I had him sat down on a stool in front of the camera and I stood behind, wearing nothing but a small vest top as I wanted as much skin on show as possible. I did want to have my nails longer and painted so the the knowledge that it’s a woman behind is a bit more noticeable but simply due to lack of finances I couldn’t afford to get my nails done and I needed to do the shoot sooner rather than later and so I ended up having to scrap that idea (even though I really wanted to do it). I know the theme of the video is gender role reversal and Harry is not wearing anything that makes him look like a female (i.e. clothing, makeup etc), but this is because I wanted the reversal in this shoot to be more on power dynamics, and how women are usually dominated by men (such as how FKA Twigs is in Papi Pacify) and this is displayed by the presence behind being in control of the movements of the subject in front. The subject behind also has their hands all over the front subjects face and upper body whereas you don’t even see the face of the person behind, giving an air of mystery and power to her. I didn’t want to have my hair down in the shoot though, I did a test shot with my hair down and it just got in the way of the focus of the shot – Harry. It kept covering his skin and the hand movements and made it more difficult to convey the message of power shift that I wanted.

I’m also really enjoying the shots where I’ll either play the clip normally and then put it into reverse, such as the first shot in the draft above, and I also like the idea of playing a clip with different speeds, such as playing it normally and then speeding up the end, or slowing down sections of it and then having it a regular speed in other sections. I’ll be putting some of these clips into my next draft I think so I’ll make note of them once I post them on here.

Shooting Timetable

I was hoping to begin shooting the last two (maybe 3) shoots this week, however, I’ve run into some trouble loaning the cameras out so will have to see if I can sort it asap.

I will show the original plan for my last couple shoots, granted I might shoot a couple days later/earlier depending on my camera situation but I’ll be aiming to follow this as closely as possible.

I’m not too worried about finishing the shoots as I know that editing is my most loved section of production and so I will devote nearly all my time in order to finishing this, simply because I love it, so motivation to finish definitely won’t be an issue.

 

Editing Technique

I’ve opted for a slightly different editing technique with this project, mainly because due to conflicting schedules with my subjects it has become rather difficult to find dates that are suitable to shoot on, and due to this I have had to spread the shoots out quite far. This has meant that my last shoot is planned for the 20th April 2019 (Saturday) and so in order to make sure that I leave myself enough time to edit the video the way that I want to I have decided to start slotting in clips in different places on Premiere so that I don’t have all the footage to sort through and edit in the last few days before the deadline date (1st of May).

Above you can see the sequence that I’ve been using to create my video, visuals on the top and the green audio track on the bottom. As you can see, the clips are not all connected at the moment, this will change as I get more footage under my belt and by the end there will be no empty slots anywhere on the sequence. I wanted to do it this way because I want to edit bits that are maybe more technically challenging or take up more time in order to get it exactly how I want it, and in order to make sure that I have enough time to do this I’d rather edit some bits in now and then work the rest of the footage around it.

I know there will inevitably be clips that I’ve edited in now that I’ll end up deleting and replacing with something else further down the line, but I want to try and cut corners with time management as much as I can as although I enjoy editing the most out of all the stages of production I know that it can take a very long time to edit properly so I don’t want to run out of time.

Let’s hope it works!

‘Boys’ Shoot Idea

I’ve had a bit of a revelation recently, I wanted to be inspired to do another ‘boys’ shoot (girls dressed as boys) but couldn’t think of anything that I actually wanted to include – I’d had ideas about what I wanted but none of them were quite right and I didn’t want to shoot something just for the sake of shooting. Then I realised that a common theme for males in music videos tends to be flashy cars: sitting in them, driving them, standing in front of them, as a show of wealth and power.

Because of this, I asked a friend of mine if I could borrow his Audi A5 2.0 Coupe (with him there of course, not only would I not ask to borrow a friends car without their permission but a) I’m not insured on his car to drive it myself, and b) I don’t think he’d let me use it without him there anyway in the case of something happening to it), and he said YES!! So hopefully I’ll be able to do a shoot where I can feature Megan sat in the front seat of his car and rapping to the camera. I think this would be a good addition to the video because it features some shots that are a little bit more exciting than just stationary camera shots of people sat down or in beds (the beds is a ‘girls’ shoot idea). I did consider filming it in the style of an Ocean Wisdom video where he’s seen sat in the back of a car rapping, but then I wanted her to be in the front because it gives off more of a powerful impression, she is in the drivers seat therefore it gives off connotations of control as well as wealth, two very common themes of male representation in music videos (Wallis, 2011).

Jono also said that he would be more than happy to dress himself in revealing clothing and wash his car, in Jessica Simpson’s These Boots Are Made For Walking style, but I think that this would be more of a parody and would look humorous and this isn’t the vibe that I want my video to have, I don’t want it to be a joke because then people won’t take the gender reversal seriously.