Shot leading to the last

                                                Filming of shot before the last

These two videos are footage of us attempting to get one of the shots we needed for the match on action in the end of the music video and the shots involve Marc chasing after our female actor in a field. We set up a little system for this shot where we had Huda on the phone to Valentino,  whilst she was on the field outside with the actors the shot as a referee, and Valentino with the camera inside Marc's bedroom, telling Huda at which moment he's ready to record so that Marc and our female actor may beginning running across the field. We repeated this several times just so to ensure we had a number of takes to pick from and luckily all has worked out with the Match On Action in editing. This system is very effective, and allowed us to save a lot of time, and gave everyone else a chance to view what has been recorded so they can improve as Valentino would send us videos of takes through Whatsapp before we re-took the shot.

Planning of Ending Music Video

Tester shot Carried Out on Mobile Phone

For the ending of the music video I wanted to end it on a cliffhanger so I came up with the idea of chasing after the girl who references are made to throughout the music video representing my interest and up most love for her, and by the end having lost her. I thought the best to way to go about this would be to have me chasing our female actor in our field location, and in editing doing a match on action and have me run forward (starting directly in front of the camera so new surroundings are revealed as I pace forward) as if still in pursuit of chasing her and cut this last shot once I turn around and look at the camera as if I've gained sight of her again or could hear her behind me. I tested how this end shot would look in the above footage and we shot the chasing in the field from my bedroom window so we could catch it on camera from both a good distance and angle.

Surreal Shots (Too horrific)

Pictures of Surreal String Shots

Before taking Opening shots

The Main Influences of Stromae from mlevi97

Lack of Narrative

In music videos there are either; several references to narrative, narrative shown throughout the visuals,or simply no narrative at all. However, we've decided to add narrative to a large extent, as the song is based on a man having lost a girl he loves to another man. Throughout our music video we aim to be exploring surrealism through both the narrative shots and those which don't include narrative.

 

As the shots with our female actor we only had one day to film are all narrative, whilst all shots not including her are completely surreal we have a lot more shots of surreal concepts alone which led to a lack of narrative in our music in our first attempts of editing. After analysing this issue we have removed  several shots of surreal concepts and added more references to the shots with our female actor and myself, to develop upon the narrative and we feel as though this has really helped develop our music video as a whole.

Space at the start of video (problem)

Dark Shots (Cut)

Attempted Surreal image of Mask (Cut)

Above is another surreal we didn't use in our music video although we did film our own shot of this. For this shot we had some paper wrapped around Marc's head and him holding a mask in his hands, whilst lying down on a bed to mirror the image above. At first we thought it might not fit in with the rest of the music video if we were to just film Marc lying down with the mask in his hand and make a cut to this shot in editing, or may just simply feel out of place if we cut from a performance shot or shots of narrative to this surreal image. So we thought we'd begin this shot from outside the room Marc is lying down in, with the door closed at first and then opened, to make the shot more interesting and allow us to make several cuts to the shot in our music video and the viewers to anticipate what surreal image is to be revealed once the door completely opens.

Above is the tester shot of this surreal image which we used Marc's Step-dad for to get a sense of what the shot would be like when opening the door before we reveal the surreal image, and below is the finished shot we had which we decided not to use because it just didn't fit in with the rest of the shots in our music video and didn't look professional in terms of lighting and composition: 

Attempted Surreal image of Bookcase (Cut)

A surreal image of numerous books in a stack being thrown in the air whilst looking as though they are raising/falling in a straight line we tried to film for our music video but found it too difficult, so we tried to create our own surreal image with a bookcase by having a tilting shot of the bookcase covering my face to make it look as though the bookcase has replaced part of my body. We then carried out numerous shots of me holding a monocle to my right eye whilst holding the bookcase just below my chin, with each shot having the tripod stay in the same position whilst having me move around so that when editing we could potentially cut from each of these shots at one point in the song when the instrumental quickens and repeats itself.

When watching back these shots and editing in the editing suite we did not like the various different colours of the books in the stack/frame and felt these shots just weren't as strong nor surreal as many of the other shots we've decided to use, besides us having shot better shots which reinforce surrealism a lot stronger, with the aim to cut from the same subject in time with the instrumental at moments it repeats itself very quickly, whilst giving our audience something interesting to watch. When first considering using the shots of the stacked books to overcome the problem of the various colours we was considering having black and white shots, but felt it was unnecessary to introduce black and white filters to our music video simply to allow us to use a few shots which we didn't even particularly like. 

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Audience feedback from lecturer

Our lecturer after having seen what we have so far gave us both constructive criticism and positive remarks on our music video up to date.

The key criticisms he had was:

- 'Watching that I felt like the cutting of shots should be more in time with the drums than the actual beat'
- 'Certain shots are simply too dark'
- ' It almost feels as though you have too many shots, like you've tried to add in everything you've shot at some point and it holds it back from certain points from being as smooth as it potentially could be'

Positive remarks he made were:

'I noticed many surreal references'
'The variation of shots is really nice'
' I think once you stop cutting so fast and change the editing from being in sync with the beat to being in sync with the drums it'll help you distinguish which are your stronger shots, as you've got many strong ones but some just don't compare or aren't neccessary'




A simple insight in us identifying irrelevant shots on final cut pro, and deleting them from the system in order to have clear solid shots to work with. This simple process allowed us to be more efficient as we cleared all unnecessary content, leaving us to only work with good quality camera shots.

Surreal Objects Brainstorm (Via bubbl.us.)

What exactly is Surrealism?

Surrealism is an artistic expression and embrace of subconscious thoughts and feelings. It is the most influential movement in 20th century art and was official founded in 1924 by André Breton whom wrote Le Manifeste du Surréalisme . Salvador Mali and Man ray were two of the main figures who had the biggest influence on surreal art but through their commercial work, so they mainly influenced surrealism coming about in film, advertising and fashion photography, allowing a wider audience to consume the beauty of surreal art.

A lot of surreal art is not logical, as subconscious thoughts usually aren't, so surreal art never really has any justification or explanation. The surrealist movement was also founded by a small group of writers and artists in Paris who strived to channel the subconscious in aim to unlock the power that lies behind their imagination.

Audience research

Different demographics are targeted in different ways and types of media

Targeting-

·         Marketing of audiences

·         British audiences

·         Distributing to British Audiences.

 

Pre- internet

Major Labels dominate: marketing/ promo/ distribution ( gatekeepers  ‘taste’)

 

Marketing promotion to British audiences:

Newspapers, music mags, posters and TV (TOTP- music videos) Playlists on the radio.

 

Independent Labels:

John Peel- Radio 1, pirate raido, fanzines. John Peel- Willing to play independent music

POST INTERNET

• New business  model
• The long tail
• International global reach
• Blogs reach local
• Online Virtual communities
• High street record shops (HMV)& independent record shops are closing down
• More live gigs and festivals- targeting British audience
• Still use some old practices  

 

The gate keepers filter out music, newly formed gate keepers Eg. Pitchfork

Surreal Art in Our Music Video

Location shots

Lego (Prop)

Bird Feathers (Prop)

Mannequin (Prop)

String & Tape (Prop)

Mirror (Prop)

After our trip to Tate Modern where we saw this interesting mirror in the art gallery we really wanted to find some way of using mirrors as a Surreal image in our music video. We found the above surreal art online but it has no source, all the same we felt inclined to try it out in our music video and hopefully when editing, the superimposition of the two shots we took of Marc facing into and away from the mirror without moving the tripod/camera (as you would have to do to create the image exactly the way it is in the original picture) comes out as a success.

Bird Cage (Prop)

Fish Bowl (Prop)

Once we chose the genre of Surrealism to focus on in our music video I wanted to use famous and researched surreal images and art and try to create them on camera, besides creating some of our own surreal images. So in saying that I thought a toy fish in a fish bowl without water would seem quite surreal as its just so different to whats expected in reality when you associate a fish with a fish bowl. I also thought in our music video we could have this prop appear out of nowhere in shots to seem more surreal and make even less sense to the audience who will have no idea where it came from besides it being so far from reality.

Fourth Costume Design

Third Costume Design

Second Costume Design

First Costume Design

Exported preliminary exercise

This is our preliminary exercise, before we had an idea of what we were doing we played around with the camera and made this short music video of an existing song by Pharrel and Miley Cyrus, this had a very fun theme and we used one of Goodwins conventions which is the relationship between the lyrics and visuals, this means that the atmosphere, mood and tone of the visuals should reflect the music. We used hand movement and feet movements to connect the beats with the visuals, it was very difficult to do and although it did not come out terribly, we decided that we should not repeat this same convention in our music video because its time consuming and intricate.

Completed Preliminary Exercise

Finished Preliminary Exercise

After recording and editing all our different shots; from medium close-ups of tapping our feet, medium shots of clapping our hands and further edited close-up shots of smiling and bopping our heads to the beat, after editing our preliminary exercise we felt very pleased with the outcome and completely prepared to begin our own.

Preliminary exercise

                                           Preliminary Music Video
Before shooting our music video to Marco Levi's 'Wonderland,' we completed a Preliminary music video to explore ways of getting the visuals on screen to match the mood of the video and thought as none of us in the group have shot a music video before. We decided to use Pharrell Williams 'Come Get It Bae' for our preliminary exercise, as it is more of a fun and upbeat song compared to 'Wonderland' and it would allow us to see how dancing and body movement can really impact a music video and make it seem more fun for an audience.

 Besides the fact we won't be using dancing or body movement elements in our music video as it is not suitable for our song and we've decided to base our music video on surrealism, so it will be fun for the group to explore this way of presenting a music video before hand. The original music video does involve a lot of dancing and body movement but we tried to create our own and edit it in a way we think would make the song/video even more fun to watch.

Tough day shooting

Today was arguably one of our most challenging days. Our actress who has a leading role in our narrative was not present. Therefore we had to  adjust the narrative and had to only shoot individual shots of Marc, which required constant costume changes in the tough, rural conditions.

Initial shots

TUESDAY 18TH OCTOBER PLAN

These are the following shots we will do based on surreal images we found on the internet and art gallery.

• Marc tied to a tree with string
• Field of balloons
• Shadow creeping up on girl
• Wings
• Umbrellas scattered around
• In a forest with a suit and brief case
• Rope and scissors
• Dirt thrown on valentinos collar bone
• Bowl of lego
• Bird cage on fire

Ideas For Surreal Shots

Explanation of beginning shots

Shot List before The Music Kicks In

Camera Techniques

We're going to use different types of techniques in our music video and stop motion is one of them, it makes our video come accross more sophisticated and can emphasise our ability to film and edit.
This is a perfect example and we will do the 360 rotation method in our video, but our artist will be standing still, he will be wearing a bowler hat, a suit and will have an apple on his head, here is where we will replicate the Classic Surreal image with the man and the apple.

Current timeline for project

Pitch Powerpoint

2nd Pitch and new idea

1st pitch to class on concept of our music video

Music video conventions

High quality videos

Performance based video example

Concept Based Video and Example

Narrative based video and example

A low budget music video

In this music video the audience can see how extremely creative a surrealist concept video can take you. A very low budget video in comparison with the industry, we see a surrealist demolition of a corporate dads house through the vision of a child. The surrealist team enter the house, performing surrealist activities and costume which when juxtaposed with the posh house is humorous towards the audience.

Artist Insight

Tate Modern Visit -27/10/2014

On the 27th October 2014 we thought we'd take a visit to Tate Modern Art Gallery to inspire us with some imagery for our music video based on surrealism. We gathered many pictures of our trip such as art and words we came across whilst on our travels and have gained a better insight into surreal figures and art which already exist and have came up with some new ideas after having explored Tate Modern. We have pinned images and captions on Pin interest which can be viewed with the following link:

http://www.pinterest.com/marcolevicd/trip-to-tate-modern/

Initial Research

Music video analysis

Blue jeans from marclevi97

Artist/ Genre research

Mis En Scene

Most Alternative soul singers usually have a narrative in their music videos as well as performance, Steve Archer said  "often music videos cut between a narrative and performance of the song by the band. Additionally, a carefully choreographed dance might be part of the artist's performance" and this is exactly what some alternative soul singers do, however most of the time the artist in this genre do not join into the choreographed dance, they generally stay put whilst they spectate the dancing.

In contrast, our artist that we've created is more of an artistic person, most singers create synergy between different types of media whereas we will have an artist who combines classic art with music, hence why we are incorporating surrealism in our music video.

           

Tous le memes has a similar genre to our song, but with a more pop sound and a classic french style instrumental, this mis en scene is created through a continuous changing environment, conventionally music videos want to make you feel like you are not watching a video but you are just catching a glimpse of their lifestyle, in this video the setting and props continuously spin and change around the artist, the dismissal of the first shot is clearly visible which makes it a lot more interesting and intrigued whilst the next set is initiated, it gives the aritst a lot of room for creativty and fun.

Inspiring Videos

Compostition

This uses ellipses to shorten the time Indila (the singer) gets to the entrance of the building, this is a useful tool we want to use in our music video because it can shorten the viewing time but allow the artist in the video to walk at a slow pace to keep the mis en scene intact and allow the artist to walk at a pace that reflects his attitude

 

The shot reverse shot is something between the mannequin and the televison is something we will incorporate into our video, this video has a similar theme to ours which is just to be out of the ordinary and have a lasting effect on our audience, this artist is named Stromae and even though he is a french singer he has managed to become a large figure in the music industry as a whole, this is because of his level of creativity and personal input he adds to his videos, you can tell that everything he lets out is not just the work of a record company, he is a very talented artist who adds an artistic flair to everything he makes.

This video has performance shots as well as narrative, it swtiches from one to other very frequently allowing each element to have the same amount of focus, our video will also have this, as well as having a conceptual type of video our artist will also synchronize his lips to the track in a different setting to other part of the video, our artist will also lip sync in the conceptual part of the video but it will not be consistent throughout.

Music video analysis

                                                 Comfort inn Ending
The song Comfort inn Ending by artist Jhene Aiko tells a beautiful story not only through the music, but through the music video to.  The music video begins with medium close-up shots of Jhene gathering all her boyfriend's belongings together allowing us to know he is the one who has done her wrong. The song beginning with the words , ' Thought I told you not to trust these hoes,' is also referring to him and makes us aware he's been cheating.

Following this sequence of shots of Jhene gathering her boyfriends belongings is close-up shots of Jhene then reflecting with her friend on the pain her boyfriend's actions has bought to her and crying with the words, ' I was not the only one to you, so I was the only lonely one.' This being sung, besides the visuals on screen adds to the sympathy we all ready feel for her having been cheated on. The costume design in these shots of very modern every day clothing e.g. beanie hat, vesttop and jeans also adds some realism for her audience rather than extremey fashionable clothing/outfits and makes it more relatable for her fans, as she attracts a more young but mature audience who would most likely wear such clothing.

The interesting shots of reflection such as the one above where the Mise en scene involves the only lighting being made from her boyfriend's belongings being burnt into flames draws us in as a viewer to connect more with what she's saying and the feelings of frustration, sadness and despair she is expressing in the song. Her facial expressions also reinforce this as her face is expressionless, almost as if she has nothing more to give.

 The music video ends by taking us to a memory in the artist mind, of when him and her truly were in love and their relationship was whole. The location being used in the Mise En Scene is full of life and nature which could have the connotation of feeling whole. Having gone from reflecting on the present to reflecting on the past which is a pleasent memory again makes us feel more sympathetic towards her. The body language shared between the artist and the actor such as holding hands adds to the portrayal of love between the two and the costume design of her in a dress covered in nature reinforces the connotation of feeling whole. 

The Island Def Jam Music Group

The Island Def Jam Music label was created in 1999 after UMG (Universal Music Group) merged two of their daughter companies, is in an American label and it is based in New York, it is a very major label with hundreds of mainstream artists currently dominating the charts. We have chosen this label because it is the label of the artists song we have chose, his name is Frank Ocean, he may give off the 'underrated' and 'independent' impression but he is infact signed to Def Jam, he is on the other hand a member of odd future who are also signed to Odd Future Records who happen to be an independent label which is why the word independent seems synonymous to man like Frank Ocean because of the vibe he gives off and the impression we get from his attitude and music.

 

This is Frank Ocean, not only is he the singer of the song we are using but he also has an unusual, creative and surreal personalilty which make him stands out as an artist, he isnt the usual singer and that is why he is a perfect reference for our artist we will create for the music video.

Why is a music video important?

Music videos allow listeners to establish a visual connection with the song, it can leave the listener with a good impression which leads them to watch the video repeatedly as well as listen to the song. It also gives the artist a chance to display other talents apart from singing, the may able to play instruments or even have dancing skills, this gives them a chance to get on a pedastal and the audience will think highly of the artist. By having a music video it can be played on multiple platform such as the televison (music channels), YouTube (which can then be shared to facebook and twitter), this will gain the artist popularity.

Music videos are apart of technological growth, as the music industry growns in order to match how fast society is moving they need to make sure profit is always stable, by expanding the margins of what a singer is it allows the artist to become anyone and anything they want, by always re- inventing themselves they can become who ever they need to be to sell thier music to thier target audience, the main and easiest way to re-invent yourself is to by creating music videos.

 

For example Ariana Grande is known to be a cute, innocent and sweet singer, her target audience loved it and that is how her label marketed her for the earlier years of her career, recently she had to expand her fanbase and target an audience that can audience that she express herself with, as well as audiences who can attend concerts and pay for her album so she decided to become a mature young woman with songs that are no longer so innocent and censored.
 

Surrealism through Art

This is a painting of Cleopatra painted by a surrealist, he depicted her as a classic 1920's actress and has taken the ancientness out from her image and he has made her look like a beautiful everyday actress, the intent of this twist may have been to say that we're all queens, just like Cleopatra, or that if you simply change the date of someones existence they may have not been the same type of person they were, in Cleopatra's case, if she was born in the 1920's she may have been an actress,




This image is an idea for the look we are trying to give the main character, the nice well presented attire juxtaposed with a peculiar facial feature is intriguing as well as surreal, this is the image we are trying to create with Marc, currently, we are hoping to completely erase the Sclera of marc's eye and insert black contact lenses, this will create a fairly unusual look.