Me and my group started off looking for individual artists around the internet who would be willing to let us have permission to film them a music video. So as we were searching the web Jess mentioned that she knew a very high profiled local band which would let us film them in the studio and create a music video for us. This had got each and every one of us very excited and really up for the project. The band were called Show it off and the song by them we were going to use was called Dance all night. As we were sure we had this band for certain to be our clients we started on the pre-production work early to try and make their music video to the best of our ability for them. One day though when we got into college Jess had told us that the band had split up and we could not use them anymore. This knocked all of our confidence and work levels down to 0. We had the idea of a love interest between a girl in the crowd and the musician who was playing in the band but this plan had now failed as the band weren’t together and all our work seemed pointless.

As we were just about to give up as we couldn’t find any artists we found a singer from Bridgwater College called Taylor Topham. This was great news for us and a lot easier than having a band from Weston, we immediately got in touch with him and he agreed to the music video and was really helpful. He came in when he could and the fact he was also a Bridgwater College was a lot easier for us because this meant we could film on our breaks and be within a short distance of each other. As Taylor Topham is a solo artist and his song is self written we decided to go for an idea that we got from a music video from a famous artist called Matt Nathanson. The basic outline of his music video is him in front of a projector playing on his guitar and singing whilst there are images being projected onto him and it gives off a really fantastic look. We decided to go for this look and have Taylor wear a white t shirt come in. This made it easier for us to project footage onto him. 

The footage we were projecting onto him was the story of a boy and girl who clearly fell out of love because the girl was more interested in following the crowd and it happened to be the wrong crowd which lead the boy and girl to fall out of love. What i love about this footage is that some of it is found footage and it looks really jumpy and flickery but it gives it a really unique look. We also added lyrics on part of the footage that come up as Taylor is singing which makes the audience feel more closer to the singer i feel. 

There’s a really nice bit where in the song Taylor sings about being clear and then as he sings this on his t shirt a water drop falls into water and bounces back up and fades away. This was a great shot i think. 

When it came to the editing the footage into final cut i did struggle with matching the music with the footage because we used DV X’s without sound so when it came to editing the music together it was hard because we had to lip read what Taylor was singing and when he was playing guitar we had to get all the movement correct. 

I think our footage says a lot about the song because we have a lot of shots where there are days turning into nights and nights turning into days, and a caterpillar turning into a cocoon which evolves into a butterfly, this represents change and following a routine, which is what the music video is all about. The end of the song Taylor sings ‘following the crowd’ and as he sings this the shot of a big crowd of kids at a party dancing together comes up. I think its good  because our shots actually make sense with the song and the meaning of it and it doesn’t just look like a piece of scrambled up mess that the viewers wouldn’t be able to work out what the story was. 

To film in the studio we had to book it out and we had originally planned for a wednesday because that was a day when Taylor was free but it turns out the studio was only free for an hour which was a bit of a nightmare. So we did it on a friday for three hours, We set the white projector up with the two DV X’s and one SD60. Throughout the music video you will see Taylor sat down surrounded by tea light candles on the floor, for this we had to have Jake supervise us for health and safety issues, it was worth it though because it’s a great shot and we could do a lot with it. It’s also a good filler when we didn’t want shots of Taylor standing up in front of the projector. 

Overall i think it was a great project and we worked really really well together, we had some ups and downs and it was a dodgy start but we managed to get through it happier than ever, if not happier than what we would have been if we had Show it off. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zvEr7Jpt-4 - Taylor Topham music video.

Contractual, ethical and legal are similar because if you are under a contract and break it then that becomes an illegal act which makes you unethical, but on the rare occasion it could be very ethical. For example, if you are in a production and you leave because you feel that the health and safety on set is not quite up to standards and you decide to get up and walk away then that decision would not be considered as an unethical decision but more so an ethical decision. 

Ethics.

Ethics is moral choices that a person decides whether to be right or wrong.  An obligation is the act of action to which a person or company is legally bound, this could be in duty of showing a good attitude to people to learn from your ways to set a good standard or it could be some sort of rules that you are obligated to follow for example a contract or some type of rule.  A good example of an ethical obligation within the television and film industry would be airing certain television programs on at certain times of the day and night to suit the right audience. For example, a kids program would be on just after 3 o’clock when the children leave school and not at night time when most children are asleep, or the other way round it would be an unethical choice to put on a adult television program that contains swearing, use of drugs, sex and alcohol on at 3 o’clock for the children getting home. This is why the water shed was created as a lot of big media companies had the ethical obligations to air the correct programs on television at the correct time.

A code of practice is written guidelines issued by an official body or a professional association to its members to help them comply with its ethical standards. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/code-of-practice.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u93ROg0P2XY&list=PLPO1TToo3hJfOFVFRqXAgKG0jIS5OTvgh

There are many different purposes to a music video but the main purpose of a music video is promotion. This can be from the promotion of a song, band, album, tour, lifestyle or the promotion of image. All this promotion leads to the artists/band getting money out of their fans and hopefully getting new fans. Every time you hear a song on a radio the band/artist and record company will receive royalties. (money) So if the artist/band decide to add a visual element to their song and make a music video this will then mean that the musicians and record companies will get royalties from all the music channels. which means more money! The more plays a music video will get on a music channel will mean it will get a lot more fans and followers. Sometimes musicians will make Dvd’s of their live performances, this means more sales and money. The band Airborne Toxic Event made a dvd of their live performance and advertised it, this is the movie poster 
 

Sometimes collections of music will come out as well of all of the musicians work over the years of their career, this will often be very expensive. For example The Beatles have a cd boxset collection for sale which is going for way over £100. 

  
 There are many  codes and conventions in a music video, here are some examples:

In-concert - This is multi-camera filming of a band on stage giving a life performance but it might not actually be ‘live’ it will look live but the song will be getting over played the visual performance, an example of this is Passion pit - sleepyhead 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNCQWkVtiZ0

Interpretive - This is where a music video visually will go with the meaning of the song and reflect on the lyrics. A really interesting example of this is the music video ‘run’ by Matt Nathanson. In the music video there’s a projector with the lyrics on it and in front of the project will be objects/people representing and refelcting these lyrics.
As you can see there’s a woman undoing her dress and the lyrics are coming up on her naked back ‘i wanna watch you undress’.
Another example in this same music video is when the lead singer sings the lyrics ‘run right into you’ visually this comes up on the screen.

Narrative - Is a music video visually telling a story in the video. This is a good way for the viewers to get dragged into the music video and get their attention into the song. A good music video that tells a story really well with the lyrics and visuals is Sometime Around Midnight by the Airborne Toxic Event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKEu3EmBCzQ

Mis-en-scene is a very good technique of film making, because without it a film would be nothing. Mis-en-scene is basically the background of a film that makes the film more realistic towards the story, for example, if you have a scene set in a cabin you’re going to want the background of the scene to look like a wooden log cabin. 

One film scene i really find interesting is the dinner scene from the movie, little miss sunshine. It says so much with so little. The two male actors Steve carrell and Paul Dano are both wearing white and they’re both sat next to each other, to me this says that they are almost the same people? their both troubled and locked away with their emotions and they are both troubled people. You then have the old man and the little girl sat next to each other, they are the closest to each other in the movie. The family really are a very middle class family, you have the dad who is the money maker in the family, you can tell this by him wearing a suit. They aren’t very rich, we know this because right in the centre of the food table is a bucket of chicken. This is very low-middle class of a family to eat this at a family meal. But the part of this scene that interests me the most is as this scene is going on and on the family are arguing with each other and making digs and comments and the mum is the only one trying to keep peace with everybody and just have a argument stress free conversation and in the scene above her head the lamp is glowing and it makes the mum look like an angel, as if she has control over the whole family trying to affect what happens and when it happens. This is very clever Mis-en-scene for a film. 

Another big part of Mis-en-scene is costumes. A costume and make up in a film will signify what era the film is set and advertise that era’s fashion. A really good example of this is a biographical film about the artist Frida Kahlo’s life the actress Salma Hayek was given a costume and had her make up done to play the artist Frida Kahlo and she eventually looked like this through the film 

The opening of the Skyfall trailer is very tense straight away as there’s a close up of James Bond on a laptop presuming he’s missing or he’s dead. Straight away this will draw the attention into the the viewers watching the trailer as they will want to know what’s happening next as it’s such a fresh new story for a James Bond film. In the background of this scene there is a sad music playing but very quietly. The scene then slowly fades onto the next scene. It then goes onto revealing that the character M has lost the drive to all of the agents. again, this will keep the viewers on the edge of their seats with suspense. It then proceeds to a lot of cuts, not to quick but not really slow, the scene’s are of James Bond fighting someone on top of a moving train and a car crashing. The sounds of this are obviously a foley artist making sounds for the fighting and the car exploding and crashing. You then see a sniper turn up and get hear shot ready and the character M who is presumably a close friend of James Bond tells the sniper to shoot and you see James Bond get shot and fall off the bridge into some water leaving the viewers wondering whether he’s dead. The next scene is quiet, you see M in a room and you can hear James Bond but you cant actually see him. This is a very interesting effect as he’s presumed dead, so the viewers cant see his face only him in a shadow and it leaves the viewers a lot of mystery towards the scene. The next scene proceeds to show the viewers what James Bond was actually dying on his time off as people thought he was ‘dead’ he was taking a break off being an agent, wasting his health away drinking alcohol and forgetting his skills so to say. Due to this break James Bond had off the next couple of scenes clearly show us that he has lost his touch at doing what he does, he gets out of a swimming pool and looks like he’s struggling for breathe, he’s in a shooting range practicing his shooting and misses his targets, not only can we tell he isn’t himself by the way he’s acting with his old life and job, but he doesn’t have his old fresh James Bond look, he looks tired, ill and he has stubble, he does not look himself at all. 

We then see the character Q, and for all the old James Bond fans they will know that Q was older than James Bond and he was more like his mentor, now this Skyfall film has completely turned against that system got a younger actor than James Bond himself. 
We then see the girl that every James Bond film always has, the dangerous girl for James Bond, The next couple of scenes are to show the viewers the bond he has with the woman. The music in the background is quick and fast as if trouble is approaching.

As the diagetic music gets faster and more tense we see James Bond in trouble, and we can see the bad guy who James Bond is trying to face throughout the film, There is dialogue between James Bond and the bad guy which is crucial as it gives the viewer suspense.
The trailer then goes insane, The sound of the theme tune in the background being very loud. Lots of quick cuts and close ups, medium shots of James Bond being the action packed hero that he is, explosions, shoot outs, fighting, James Bond running away from people, car crashes, people getting killed.
I personally feel nowadays not many film trailers show the action off as much as this Skyfall trailer has, by them doing this i personally feel they would have gained a lot more viewers attention and made a lot more money out of the film by making the trailer so action packed and interesting with how crazy the ending of the trailer is.

I think the framing of this trailer has been really good. There has been close ups when needed, for example the close up of the laptop telling us that James Bond is missing or dead, this is good because then the viewers can read it for themselves and it will make them feel like they are actually there in the film. The extreme long shots have been excellent because it makes us feel so far away from the scene on the train fight but yet at the same time it makes us feel tense still. The close up’s of the characters have all been really good with no dead space, this takes me onto the Mis-en-scene of the film, i cannot fault any of the trailers background. It has all suited what’s going on in the film that it’s made the film really realistic, for example when James Bond is practicing his shooting you can see in the background that he is on his own in a shooting range and you can see all the shooting targets. I created a survey on survey monkey about how people enjoyed Skyfall, their age, education and so on. The results i got were very interesting, the gender of viewers who watched Skyfall were half male and half female. They were all aged between 16-20 so i would class them as young adults. Every one of them are attending some form of education the most popular one being college. Only 83.3% of the audience don’t work and 16.7% work and would consider themselves under ‘semi skilled and unskilled manual workers. Strangely 83.3% of the audience prefer drama and romantic films. The majority of them rated Skyfall a 6 out of 10. All the comments on the film were very positive like ‘i think it was really good, i like how they used recognisable locations within the UK and i was shocked about the twist at the end’ and ‘It was quite a impressive movie. Focused more on the story. nothing much to improve on’. However when i asked if they thought Daniel Craig was the perfect Bond the comments were very mixed like ‘i think he is a really good Bond, however this is the only James Bond film i have seen so i can’t really compare him to other Bonds.’ and ‘He’s alright but he’s not my no.1 choice. though i can’t think of anyone else to do it’