Key features of pop music videos

Pop genre music videos always highlight the youthfulness, attractiveness and what an ideal person is supposed to look like in the artist. Bright lighting is used in the videos to highlight the artist’s facial features and to make them look more attractive by removing blemishes etc. Look at my post on lighting in pop music videos for more information at http://hattiesmusicvideo.blogspot.com/2011/12/lighting-of-music-videos.html

Pop artists usually wear tight, revealing and provocative clothing in their music videos to gain male attention as well as still appealing to their target audience. The music videos focus heavily on the singers and their performance compared to the rock genre which tends to focus on the instruments played.

Musicologists often identify the following characteristics as typical of the pop music genre:

·         an aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-culture or ideology.

·         an emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal artistic qualities.

·         an emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance.

·         a tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments.

·         much pop music is intended to encourage dancing, or it uses dance-oriented beats or rhythms.

The shots of the pop music videos tend to be quick and sharp usually to fit the beat of the music. They don’t tend to use continues shots as the large range of angles and shot differences tends to suit the audience and music better.

Meet the Girl Band

Ella – (Cheryl) Colour: Pink

The girly and slightly prissy member of the group wears a large amount of pink including a necklace that has the Barbie logo on it. This suggests that she is very feminine and youthful. She is the more moody member of the group. We have included shots of her looking unhappy at the sleepover scene when she is woken up and hit with pillows.

Luisa – (Nadine) Colour: Purple

Luisa is the sexier member of the group, wearing provocative clothing and dark, heavy makeup. In a particular scene she wears tight sequin leggings with an unbuttoned blazer. This would be seen as not appropriate for our genre, however a large percentage of artists aimed at a tweenage/teenage audience have outfits/ lack of clothing being displayed in their music videos. E.g. Katy Perry, Britney Spears. Luisa is a more daring and cheeky member of the group provoking her friends and causing chaos within the group.

Lily- (Kimberley) Colour: Green

The sweet and innocent member of the group wears minimal amounts of makeup. Lily has a country style with checked skirts, denim shorts and cowboy boots. She is a very friendly character and is constantly smiling and dancing and having a good time.  She is much more forgiving than her best friend Ella and shrugs of any mischief that happens with group of girls.    

Kate- (Sarah) Colour: Blue

The cute and sweet member of the girl band is petite with long, curly hair and is constantly smiling. She takes on the role as the little girl of the group as she still sleeps with her teddy etc. She is a lot smaller than the rest of the girls and is seen as the little sister and is sometimes bullied because of this. She is cheeky and is always involved with the activities taking place, she is very confident and wears a girly, glittery crop top and skinny jeans.

Molly- (Nicole) Colour: Red

Is another sweet member of the girl band but also has a mischievous side to her, often influenced by Luisa. She wears a 60s type of style with large, puffy skirts, long pearl necklaces and red lipstick. She has jet black hair with pale skin which also suits the 60s look. She is a confident member of the band and along with Luisa has a cheeky side to her that likes to cause mayhem.

Discovering Photoshop tools

Photoshop elements is a program that I have used in the past for IT lessons at compulsive level (year 7-9), but never really experimented fully with. By creating my practise Digipak I have learnt a number of useful tools to enhance photographs and design.

These include:

·         The crop tool, a relatively simple function which resizes a photograph or image to fit the requirements necessary.
·         The cloning tool, which simple clones an image selected. I have used this to remove a mirror from a background of a photo, by covering the mirror with a colour similar to the background surrounding it.
·         The red eye remover tool, has been very helpful and effective by removing the red eyes of someone in a photo created by the flash of the camera.
·         The type tool, has also been useful by creating the text added to the Digipak. This includes the Digipak title, song listing and company information.
·         The shape tool, has allowed me to create what looks like an added sticker to the Digipak which is commonly found. Cutting out a circle of a section of the front cover and writing in it, gives this effect.

Other aspects of Photoshop include the layering options, which allow a person to add multiple images onto one document. The tint tool has also allowed me and Faye to change the tint of the girl’s photos so they have their own colour as originally planned. I haven’t explored the advance parts to Photoshop, and have mostly stuck to the simple tool. For the final design of me and Faye’s’ Digipak we hope to use more complex tools to get more professional effects.

Vodcast - Digipaks

Podcast 7 - filming bedroom scene

Digipak/behind the scenes photos

Digipak Photos

Backstage the ballon + sleepover scene

 

Podcast 6 - editing final sample scene

Snow scene problem

Unfortunately due to Yorkshire not having a freezing cold winter as predicted, the degree in temperature has not been cold enough for it to snow. This leaves us in an awkward position as one of the scenes in our music video was to be filmed in the snow. Nearly every year it snows in Yorkshire in the winter, however due to our luck of predicting a snow scene it has not snowed. Faye and I will have to re-think this scene perhaps doing a raining scene with umbrellas instead.

We still hold out for snow in January.

Podcast 5 - uploading new footage and extra filming

Pointer Sisters original vid

The Pointer Sisters were the original girl band in 1983 to create the song Jump (for my love). The song was released prior to the 1984 Summer Olympics games, the song's video featured footage of athletes competing in track and field events. The song was the second of four Billboard Hot 100 top 10 singles in a row for the sisters in 1984; it peaked at #3 in July. It also appeared on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart and reached the Top 10 in the UK, peaking at number six. The song also netted the group a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1985.

The song sang by the Pointer Sisters is the original and the music video was seen as quite visually impressive for the 80s. However I believe Girls Aloud gave the song a more modern factor which works better with the music video I wish to create and the vocals match the age of the group members a lot better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jump_(for_My_Love)

Pop group reunions

Recently past pop group S Club 7 have been rumoured to be back for a reunion in 2012, and the pop group Steps have already formed a reunion and are touring the UK. The group steps have recently announced that they are continuing to embark on their tour in 2012. All seven members of S Club 7 are hoping to reform after seeing how successful Steps reunion has been. Their representatives are trying to agree a deal with Simon Fuller, who still owns the S Club brand.

Seeing these former pop groups reunite and the success of the Spice Girls reunite in 2007, other former groups are hoping to come back together in the present day. It is already rumoured that the girl band Girls Aloud have decided to plan a reunion tour in the back end of 2012. This will be a great chance for the girl band to promote there already produced albums and to earn even more cash with advertisements and promotions etc.

Treatment

Treatment - Faye

Podcast 4 - planning to re-film and upload

Lighting of pop music videos

The pop music video is notorious for the glamouress full beam bright lights which make the artists look flawless. My music video three out of five scenes are inside. I hope to borrow two set lights from my schools art department so I can get the bright light effect in the scenes. These lights will hopefully brighten the group member’s faces and also brighten the set. The lights being shone on the girls faces during medium close ups will make their skin pale and flawless, other pop artists us this lights such as Britney Spears or Katy Perry.

I also hope to lighten the scenes in editing to make them even brighter and as similar to pop music videos as I can.

Podcast 3 - ideas for sample scene

Preperation for music video

Recently I have purchased 200 white feathers, 100 10 inch white balloons and 100 pink balloons, and one balloon pump :S. These props were bought from where most of my internet purchases are from… the amazing eBay! eBay the online market stall is a great place for finding random items you may need for cheap prices. The 100 pillow feathers cost merely £4.50, and the 200 balloons £12.99. Not bad seeing as they sell a pack of ten at Tesco for £1. The feathers will be used in the sleepover scene, some being put in pillows and slow motioned downed during the pillow fight scene. I also think a close up of feathers falling from the ceiling would also be a nice shot to include. Other shots included would be group shots of the girl members playing will the many fathers in the bedroom.

The 200 balloons will be inflated on the day and placed on top of each other in a small room. I wanted to hopefully borrow large studio lights to light the room. I will film each member of the band playing in the room full of balloons. As the balloons will be in a small room they will be piled on top of each other hopefully up to the artists wastes. I will also have one member of the band bursting a balloon full of glitter which will be put into slow motion.

I have acquired three large bottles of glitter two of blue and one of red. I think having a member of the band blowing the glitter into the camera would look visually very interesting. I think a close up of the falling glitter would also look great and be appropriate to the pop vibe of the music video.

Both. Other Girls Aloud music videos

Girls Aloud, as one of the top and well known girl bands ever have over 200 songs! There are many to choose from but the one that stood out to me was the song Jump - this is the track we are using in our project although I am taking a cheeky little look at other music videos they have produced and why we did not choose the track to them...

Whole lotta history

This song is very slow, we did not want this slow, romantic gesture as it is not that well known and we wanted to make a fun exciting music video! The original video to this is very 'lovey dovey' which is good as it suits the lyrics, as each girl, unlike the other videos have worked on are more upbeat and fun video. This video shows the girls of the band looking miserable, obviously to go with the lyrics but it is not a denotation we need to be inspired by.

Sound of the underground

This song was released in 2003. The chorus ‘sound of the underground’ is the main aspect to the music video, as the band members all sing in a grotty underground train station. The metal cage the band members are singing in throughout the music video also portrays the dull, dark and neglected area the underground train station is. ‘waters running in the wrong direction’ lyric is portrayed in the music video through water dripping off a dirty light bulb in reverse from the underground station.

The song starts with electric guitars and then the tempo and the beat increases, and becomes more sharp and edgy. The visuals to the music video match up to the sharp and fast beat of the song as the band members are collectively singing in what appears a dark and dreary cage in a underground tunnel. The drum beat slows down whilst the girls sing the verses around different parts of the underground and the beat then picks up again when they sing the chorus in their cage. 
  
This song is as upbeat as the song Jump, but Faye and I thought that Jump would have more relation to the band characters we wanted to use. We also thought the song would be more fun to remake as there were more ideas we could use for this song compared to Sound of the Underground.

Podcast 2 - editing sample footage

Sean Kingston music video ideas

The Sean Kingston music video has interesting editing and light effects that I wanted to use as aspects to my video. The first idea was that of the balloon filled with glitter popping, and edited with slow motion. Faye and I have tried this idea twice, one with a large amount of glitter, and the other with no so much. The results can been seen on our sample footage behind the scenes
http://hattiesmusicvideo.blogspot.com/2011/11/sample-footage-no1.html

 

The video also includes a thin blue light edited across the clips on medium close ups of Sean. In the club scene I think an effect of a light edited on would give a really great effect as it would appear that the club had more lights and would create greater visuals that the club was more active.

 

To see my deconstruction of this music video visit my blog post

http://hattiesmusicvideo.blogspot.com/2011/10/sean-kingston-music-video.html

Hit the lights music video ideas

Hit the lights by Selena Gomez has a great music video that really inspired me for the production of my own music video. The large balloons bursting and Selena dancing in the room filled with pink balloons encouraged my desire to work with balloons in certain scenes of my music video. I have recently purchased 100 balloons which I intend to use on the sleepover scene of the music video. Slowing down footage of balloons floating and bursting really gives a good effect in music videos and along with the feathers I also intend to use the whole vibe to the music video will have a pop video look to it.

The song Jump that I am using for my video has some fast pace beats in the chorus and so I intend to use multiple jump cuts from different scenes such as the singers from my girl band dancing in a room of balloons and feathers. The music video for hit the lights, does this very well. I think that changing the colouring of the different shots in editing would also have a great effect.

I am also going to use multiple layering over some of the balloon scenes to give the scenes an artistic vibe. I was hoping to use either glitter, shots of feathers falling or popping balloons.

1st ideas - costumes

1st Costume Ideas

Sample scene vodcast

Podcast 1 - ideas for sample footage

Charity shop scene

For one specific scene in our music video we are hoping to film in a charity shop, where the five different girls try on unusual outfits and costumes. I want this scene to be similar to one in the film Wild Child released in 2008 directed by Nick Moore. The scene consists of five girls looking for and trying on different clothes to buy for a party they are attending. There are a variety of transitions and shot types that make this scene look interesting. I wish to do my own rendition of the scene whilst trying out similar transitions that may work with my own music video.

These pictures show some of the camera angles and edited transitions that I wish to try and replicate.

Sample footage - behind the scenes

Genre and Directors lesson

Genre and Directors powerpoint

Sample footage no.1

FH The Band Members

Kimberly Walsh

Kimberly was born in Bradford in 1981. She is a singer-songwriter, model, television presenter and actress. Most well-known for being in the girl band Girls Aloud, Kimberly also fronts the 2009 Autumn/Winter collection for the fashion chain New Look. In July 2010 she also became a presenter on music talk-show, Suck My Pop. She has also had her fair share of acting including appearing in TV shows such as This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper as Gillian Oldfield and starred in a BBC Educational Schools programme called Focus. She has also appeared in films such as St. Trinian's with her fellow band mates and Horrid Henry: The Movie.

Nicola Roberts

Nicola Roberts, a young feisty ginger was born in Lincolnshire, raised in Cheshire. Roberts always felt 'ugly' in the band and felt different to the other band members because she was so pale skinned. In 2008 she started to accept herself and became more confident, and ditched the fake tan for good. After accepting her paleness she went on to create a make-up brand targeting women with paler complexions. She then went on to making a documentary - The truth about tanning. In this she explored with BBC3 how dangerous sunbeds can be. She also did campaigns for skin cancer showing the dangers young women can do to themselves due to sunbeds. Nicola also released her first single ‘Dance to the beat of my drum’ in June of 2011. It debuted at number 27 on the UK Singles Chart.

  Sarah Harding

Sarah as a young child was brought up in more than one place - Berkshire, Surrey and Manchester. She is best known for being one in Girls Aloud, but is also recognised all over the world for different business deals she has accepted, such as advertising campaigns. In May 2009 she was reported to have created a fortune of £29 million sue to record sales and ad campaigns. She is well known in the fashion industry for her ‘funky bob’ hairstyle which has inspired many short, cropped hairstyles.                    She has made her fortune through signing onto deals. Some of these include appearing the St. Trinians film in 2007, in this she played a band member to a famous touring group.

Sarah has also modelled lingerie and signed a contract to advertise the Wii console and Coca-Cola Zero. She was used as a model to advertise Coca-Cola Zero as the drink contains limited amounts of sugar. The idea behind using Sarah is that if you drink this product, you will be as thin as her.

Nadine Coyle

Nadine is a young Irish singer, song writer and model from Derry, Northern Ireland. She had already had her experience of a band – Six, that was the Irish equivalent of Popstars: The Rivals. The band became a hit but then the directors realised the Nadine had only been 16 and that she had lied about her age at the first audition. This forced the organisers of the TV show to stop the band. A few years later she found herself back on TV in the UK version of Popstars: The Rivals this time she was old enough. This time she found herself in another band,
 Girls Aloud. Since the band split Coyle has tried to go solo like her former band members Cheryl and Nicola, but did not have much success. She now owns a small pub in Los Angeles. However she is still spoken about in tabloids with information about her private life, such as who she is currently dating.

Cheryl Cole

One of the most successful girls of the group came from humble begins in a council estate in Newcastle. She got her big break when auditioning for Popstars: The Rivals where the judges were very fond her due to her classicabeauty.                                                                                          The young singer, dancer, and songwriter went on to marry the famous footballer Ashley Cole in 2006, where she changed her name from Cheryl Tweedy to Cheryl Cole. After following the success of Girls Aloud Cheryl decided to go solo, as well as still being in the girl band. She released two albums three words & messy little raindrops, which both reached to number one in the UK.  
Cheryl was also a judge on X factor from 2008 up until the last series of 2010, which she had lef the UK series to go and do America's X factor, this however did not exactly work out. The Americans did not keep her on the panel for long because they could not understand her Geordie accent

10 things I have learnt

10 things that I learnt to date in media:

To use Final Cut Express

To use a broader range of media language

To use a broader range of codes and conventions

To use different gadgets and elements of the blog

Different camera lenses such as fish eye lens

To take a lot of coverage which includes more shots

The different types of music genres

Whether a video is performance, narrative or concept based.

How to intensely analyse a music video

The large amount of planning and organisation you need to do before creating the music video

3 things I would like to learn:

To use effective special effects on Final Cut Express

To create an impressive music video
To create a digipak