Project 3 music video

Music Videos

For my third task I had to create a music video for the song "rockin around the Christmas tree". A music video is a combination of visual imagery to go alongside an artists music. Music videos usually contain, a performance from the artists to promote the video. along with visuals that can represent what the artists is singing about or they can represent an entirely different narrative all together. 

To first start this project I did some research into music videos on my Miro board. Here's an image of the research I gathered. 

Now that my research was finished I understood that:

• In Christmas music videos the actors most the time need to look like their either having a really depressing time or a really happy time 
• Some of the best Christmas ads have a very home made look. 
• Good set design is key to having a good music video especially if its a Christmas one 
• Choreography is an important part of a lot of music videos  
• A lot of the time the camera is focused on the main singer while also cutting to the band
• Camera movement matches the genre or style of the music
• Colour and costumes can represent different themes and genres in a music video
• Dancing in music videos can symbolize joy 
• Quick zooms are commonly seen in music videos
• Lip syncs are used in a lot of music videos 
• The camera cuts to the bands instruments a lot
• A bands instruments can match the music video
• Red and Green are 2 colours that can symbolize Christmas 
• Guest celebrity's can sometimes show up
• A music video can have its own colour to match the genre
• Christmas music videos are sometimes very cheesy 
• There are sometimes a lot of quick cuts to the beat of the music

Thanks to my research I now decided to start brain storming ideas. My first idea was to film a sequence of a gardener sweeping leaves around a Christmas tree (it was autumn at the time) while he dances with a broom. I scraped this idea as the location I wanted to film it at was to difficult to film in. My next idea was to have a female performer singing next to a Christmas tree while shoppers run around her under a sign that says "black Friday" the shoppers would occasionally stop chaotically shopping for a dance break every now and then which would be fully choreographed and in sink. This idea was way too complicated though and would require me to get many actors and a good location. I still wanted my music video to have a choreographed dance as this was seen many times in my research. This issue eventually gave me an idea to use editing and green screen to create copy's of my main actor which would dance alongside her. I liked this idea for many reasons:

1. I would only need to use 1 actor
2. Emily who I sat next to kindly offered to work with me on this project 
3. I would be able to experiment with a technique I have never tried before
4. The background would not only have copy's of my actor but also whatever scenery I wanted
5. Learning green-screen will help me in future projects 
6. Since it was a music video my rough editing would give it a home made cheesy look that would fit my Christmas themes
7. I could implement other techniques I had already learnt such as opacity keying 
8. It gave me a lot of creative freedom 

Despite having an idea. It was missing one thing, that being a Christmas tree. To resolve this I decided to take inspiration from the "I wish it could be Christmas everyday" Music video. Where their instruments are festive to match the genre and Music they are singing. For my Music video I decided that my microphone could be a mini Christmas tree decoration. This would add a fun and Christmassy theme to my music video similar to wizards one. The tree would match the lyrics and make the project stand out to other Christmas videos. Here is an image of the Christmas tree I will be using as a microphone. 

Story boarding 

Once my idea had been developed Emily and I started to create story boards. Our ideas for what we wanted to achieve were different to each other but our shots were similar and we were both following the same idea of a performer singing with a Christmas tree microphone. Before we could plan any scenes we needed to work out where each beat was as we wanted to have the camera cut to the beat of the music. While listening to "rockin around the Christmas tree" we realized that there were small segments where a guitar could be heard playing. This gave me the idea to have the camera cut to the main actor playing the Christmas tree as if it were a guitar. I also realized that the lines "you will get a sentimental feeling when you--" would work perfectly with a smooth panning shot since the rest of the song up until that point had a very different tone to it. This technique was also seen many times in my research The 2 of us noted down each beat that we wanted a cut on and colour coded it on the lines that we wanted a different cut to appear on. For example instead of using the Christmas tree as a guitar like the majority of the cuts the actor would be dancing or celebrating. This would make the Music video feel less repetitive. Here is the image of the script we edited: 

With our new script I now decided that it might be a good idea to gather some test footage, to see if the cuts and pan worked as well as I wanted them too. I asked my sister to be my actor and I recorded the footage on a simple phone. I then edited the footage and used the mark tool on premier to match the cuts to the music. Here is the footage I gathered.

What I learnt from this test footage:

• The cuts line up nicely 
• The camera must be static 
• The pan shot works well 
• I will need a dolly
• It looks better if the actor is more emotive  

The test footage was successful so we decided to move onto planning more of our cuts. In the lines "new old fashioned way" we decided to have a cut for each word. And during the saxophone segment we decided to have a segment where Emily would dance In-front of the camera before it cuts back to the main shot. This saxophone segment would be filmed under green and red lighting as these are colors associated with Christmas. 

Production

 Now that my ideas had developed more we could move onto production. Unfortunately I ran into a problem during pre-production. I wanted to use the green screen for my music video but had completely forgot that the green Christmas tree would ruin the effect. To solve this issue I instead used a portable blue screen to achieve the chroma key effect. The blue screen does not work as well as the green but it still achieves the effect i wanted.

I then began filming for my music video. Filming took around 2 days and I used a cannon camera along with 2 soft lights. Unfortunately I could not quite figure out how to light the blue screen properly. Which effected the chroma key in post. i did however use 2 soft lights as well as a dolly for my music video.

Here is a screenshot of the lighting for the saxophone sequence:

Once all my scenes were shot i moved onto editing. during my edit i had to learn how to implement the chroma key effect here is how i did it.

While learning how to do the chroma key effect my motivation for this project began to slow down its here where i began to go away from my planning and started adding extra things to entertain myself. These things were scenes such as santa pulling a out a gun as well as random elves dancing in the background. These effect may be different to my original plan but they do add some humor to my music video. I was also more just experimenting with chroma key and testing its limits. 

Overall i feel as if this project was less successful then my others and is a little too rushed. I am pleased with the result but this is mainly because i find the footage funny instead of impressive. 

Here is the footage i created: