Music Video Planning:Props and Setting

Props are a key part of a performance, possibly as important as the setting. they can either make the video seemed incredibly staged when selected wrong, or work amazingly and introduce a real to life or theatrical element o a video. a good example of prop use is;

Although it is staged and quite obviously set up the use of props in the video work incredibly well with the persona of the singer and the fun joyous dandy like nature of the video.

Setting

setting is possibly one of the most important aspects of a video, it poses the posibility to litraly and conceptualy explore the meaning of the music as well as engaging emotion and story. Its an imediate connection between the media text and the audience allowing them to be  quickly introduced to the text setting out the basis for the piece.

Past Students Work: Video Analysis

The editing of this video is fantastic and incredibly successful, it demonstrates what can be achieved when the same amount of dedication is payed to each sector, costume, makeup, acting props editing etc. i really like the the use of color editing in this video as it really demonstrates how successful it can be when done properly and is therefore something i wish to explore in our music promo video. however the short storyline providing an introduction and end to the video doesn't seem to have had as much attention payed to it as the rest of the video in terms of editing and filming, although the concept is interesting. having a small section at the beginning of the video without audio is possibly something i would like to explore.

Key Elements

Here is a collection of key elements themes and emotions that we hope to include and produce within our music video. They are inspired by the lyrics of the song and the mood it creates as well as the realtionship between the songwriter and myself.

Filming: Props and settings

Here is a list of props we are thinking of using for our music promo video along with possible settings;

• Cotton Wool and cardboard clouds hung up by string
• Les Paul guitar
• candyfloss
• puppets

 Settings;

• southend on sea beach front
• Forrest
•  park
• the beach
• near a lake
• in the rain

Mood Board

here are a selection of images that capture the feel and the same ideas as what we plan to portray in our music video. this mood board brings together too main ideas, firstly a 'cute' 'sweet' idea of free living and happiness portrayed by the flowers blues skies etc. the other idea is a sad, evocative idea displayed by the rain, dead animals etc. 

What we Learnt from our Preliminary

our preliminary video and its production taught us the basics of creating a music video, from lip syncing to simple editing in time with a piece of music. it also showed us the importance of shooting several takes allowing us to take only the god bits rather than just having to sufice with less sucessful parts in a single recording.

Preliminary Exercise

producing a preliminary exercise gave me and shelley an opportunity within a larger group including georgia, hannah and harley, to explore the different techniques and elements included in a music promo video such as lip syncing and performance. lip syncing is allot more difficult than it looks. it was allot easier for harley and georgia to sing the song aloud in order to match their mouth movements with the lyrics of the track.

Making Our Preliminary Video

for our preliminary video we worked in groups to film a short section of the song 'Don't go breaking my heart' by Elton John. our video featured georgia and harley as the two people singing. to begin with we set up a suitable place to shoot within the school as it was just a quick exercise to give us an idea of how to direct and edit a music video. after setting up we gave Harley and Gerogia time to practice and memorise the lyrics before filming  number of attempts. we then uploaded the footage into final cut ad proceeded to edit the music video, removing the origional audio and replacing it with the track.

Music video: Brainstorm

Here is a small brainstorm documenting our initial ideas about what our music video could include.