Defintion Of A Music Video

A Music Video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. Although the origins of music videos go back even further, they came into their own in the 1980s, when MTV’s format was based solely around them

Must Do's For Music Videos

This is what I need to do in order to make a music promo as good as possible.

Copy of letter to artist or record label must be on blog with their response to it.

Lipsync – you are graded on accurate lip sync

Know your lyrics and sing along

Performance – believable

Vowels – mouth movement

Play the song so it can be heard on camera (recorded) as well as by ARTIST

x1 ‘BASE TRACK’ is an absolute must ie sing through whole track at least once

Editing to markers is a MUST/alignment of tracks – research how to do this

Different shot angles

Keep locations straight forward – 4 maximum

Keep x2 weekends free to get promos shot

No sound tracks with DRUGS or SWEARING.

No more than 3minutes long

Editing to the beat of the music – this is what editing markers are for.

Use a genre that is clearly identifiable

Faster paced music will require more shots/slower paced music less – keep your idea simple – the simpler the better.

Must Do's For Music Videos - Copyright

•Examiner's report, I definitely need to get artist's permission:

For music videos, permission should be sought from the artist for use of the audio track. Where this was breached, centres either didn’t comment on the use of a found song, or acknowledged its use but did not reflect it in the marks allocated.

 In these cases significant adjustments were made to construction marks which potentially puts in danger the order of merit, thereby affecting the outcomes for those candidates who had followed the requirements of the Specification; such a situation may also result in all work being returned to the centre for remarking.


This is an example of a copyright letter that I will send to the people who hold the rights to the music.

History Of Pop Music

History of Music Videos

Requirements for A2 media studies

Post Production

The post production was crucial to the success of my opening title sequence. The post production -process consisted of editing the sequence, gaining opinions from our target audience about the sequence, and making adjustments to the sequence based on the feedback.

We spent a lot of time editing the sequence and came up with multiple drafts of the final version. This was done so that I could spot any mistakes that were left in the sequence, and see if the sequence could achieve the SMART targets that I set out to achieve. Therefore, I kept making draft versions of the sequence, until I felt that they sequence was able to appeal to my target audience. The editing that I carried out consisted of putting clips together in the correct order, adding editing techniques like fades, shot reverse shots and jump cuts, adding in music and foley, credits, company idents and screen effects. I spent a lot of time implementing each part of these features into the sequence, as they all had to be of a high quality to look appealing to the target audience, and gain me more marks. The music was particularly important because it had to create a sense  of tension in the atmosphere, while varying in the volume throughout the sequence, so that it did not cover up the speech made by the characters. The editing software that I used to edit the sequence together was Adobe After Effects. I chose this software because it enabled me adjust the clips and sound in a detailed way, allowing for more precision editing, to generate a high quality piece of work.

I also gained feedback from a range of different audiences during the post production of my opening title sequence. I did this by posting questions, attached with questions of social websites like Facebook and Twitter, which allowed the audience to respond in a quick manor and in detail, telling me exactly what they liked and disliked about the sequence. I felt that it was crucial to gain opinions from a range of audiences of different demographics because it gave me a clearer indication into whether the sequence would appeal more towards my target audience or to another demographic audience, and thereby make changes if this was the case. Overall I would say that the feedback that I got from my target audience was very useful and detailed, as it told me how I could improve my sequence to suit them better. for example, my target audience did not like the original music that I put into the sequence, so therefore, I changed it to appeal to my target audience.

It is clear that the post production work that I carried out was crucial to the quality of the opening title sequence which had a direct impact on the grade that I got. It was important that I edited the sequence together in a way that made it look professional, but yet still appealing to my target audience. This was done by having a protagonist, accompanied with an assistant, and a protagonist holding a dangerous weapon in the form a sniper rifle. As a result, it attracted my target audience as it consisted of mystery and danger. The feedback that I received from my target audience was also very useful in the post production stage of the sequence. This is because it gave me clear guidelines on how I should edit the sequence, in order for it to suit them, and become a success.

Conventions Of Real Media Texts

Pre-production

My sequence has kept to the conventions of real media texts by having characters that are common conventions of media texts. I used research and planning in order to establish the common conventions of thriller films, thereby allowing me to plan the sequence with characters that meet the common conventions of thriller media texts. Therefore I planned the sequence during the pre production process so that the main protagonist has a companion, and is set in an “everyday location”.

Furthermore, I planned the name of the sequence on the basis of common conventions of thriller films. Thriller films usually have a few variances throughout them that may confuse the audience before finally explaining what it means. This convention was transferred into my opening title sequence, by choosing the name on the sequence ‘Vindicate’, after planning what the sequence was going to consist of during the pre-production stage.

 

Production

During the production process I aimed to include a range of features that kept the sequence in line with common conventions of media texts. One example of this is the way in which the film was recorded. I filmed the sequence using a variety of camera angles that are associated with thriller media texts, such as long shots, close ups, pan shots and point of view shots. Furthermore, during production, I also filmed the antagonist holding a gun, which is a common convention of an antagonist in a thriller film.

 

Post production

During the post production process, I added features to the sequence to make it follow common conventions of media texts. One way I did this was by adding music to the sequence. This created a sense of enigma to the viewer, which is common amongst thriller media texts. I also added a range of edits like jump cuts and fades. These are conventions of thriller media texts, so therefore my opening title sequence follows the conventions of media texts through the range of editing techniques used in the post production stage of the opening title sequence.