Survey Results

I created a survey to help me discover what types of music videos people liked watching the most. I then posted my survey to social media to help me with my ideas for my own music video. I posted it on social media to get a wider range of opinions than just people who I go to college with which would be biased as they are all aged 16 to 19. Posting my survey to social media meant that I had access to a wider range of ages. To get an even more diverse range of opinions I could have also asked people who don't have social media the same questions. My survey has helped me discover that my original concept was actually the type of music video supported by the majority in my questions. This also means that I asked the best questions that I could without being biased or influencing the answers I got.

I asked this question so that I could see what genre of music people preferred to listen and watch a music video for. My original choice of song was from the pop genre and this was backed up when the majority of the people I asked preferred pop with 20 out of the 52 choosing it. This means that I can now continue with my original song choice. 

This was one of the most important questions that I asked as it helped support my decision of what type of music video I was going to create for my song. My original idea was to do a narrative video as I personally prefer a video that has a story. My survey results showed that yet again the majority,18, of those who took my survey preferred a narrative music video. 

I included this question to see whether people do still feel that a music video is important to a songs success and 47 people agreed that they still enjoy watching music videos. 

Music Video Analysis

Katy Perry's music video for her song Last Friday Night is a narrative video. It tells the story of a teenage girl throwing/attending a house party and being unable to remember what happened.

The first thing I noticed whilst watching this music video was the fact that it was. The first shot of the music video is a long shot of a typical American suburban street, which connotes the idea of the American Dream and perfect families. The camera then tracks a paper delivery boy on his bike throwing newspapers at each of the houses, at this point credits appear on the screen in a yellow font, symbolizing happiness, telling us that this video stars Katy Perry and has been made by Capitol Records. The appearance of young celebrities and well known people as well as Katy Perry herself attract a younger audience as well as these celebrities fan base meaning more views and therefore more sales of Katy Perry's album/songs. A jump cut then takes us to Katy Perry's bedroom, the wise en scene of the room is that it is decorated in white and hot pink and is also decorated with numerous trophies and toys which shows that she is still quite naive and sheltered from growing up and is good enough at a craft, or at school to have won so many awards. However the room has been vandalized and now has blue graffiti on the bed covers and the pink curtains have been pulled down as well as having three men asleep in the room. One of these men is asleep on the floor with a beard and glasses drawn on in black pen, this is the kind of thing a younger person would do to their friend while they are asleep. Another one of the men is tied to a desk chair with tape whilst wearing a shirt and tie, this to me symbolizes Katy restricting her studious side and embracing her youth and promiscuity this can also be shown from the third man who is asleep in Katy's bed next to her and is topless. This is also the first time we meet Katy's character who is shown to be a stereotypical 'geek' with her headgear braces and her big glasses. The use of these tropes quickly inform the audience of this as well as telling us this video will be a comic one. This is also where we meet the first guest star of the music video, Darren Criss is an actor and internet celebrity. Criss gained a large cult following when a musical that he co wrote was uploaded onto YouTube and went viral. Criss then guest starred on Glee, however he quickly became a permanent star on Glee and was one of the starring roles. Last Friday Night came out in 2011, which was when he was at the peak of his fame. The use of Darren Criss will have meant that his fans will have watched the music video to support him and possibly bought the song.  Katy also featured another star of Glee in the video, Kevin Mchale. Glee’s fans were mostly teenage girls, who have a larger disposable income than an adult meaning that they are more likely to purchase Katy’s song.  Two more celebrities are in this music video: Rebecca Black and Corey Feldman. Rebecca Black is an Internet celebrity with a YouTube channel that has over one million subscribers. Rebecca Black is most well known for her viral music video to her original song ‘Friday’. The song went viral and quickly gained millions of views catapulting her to celebrity status. Katy Perry knew that Rebecca was one of the most well known people on the Internet at that point and by asking her to be in the ‘Last Friday Night’ video that she could ask Rebecca to promote the video to her followers and gain more views for her music video yet again resulting in more money and sales of the song.  Corey Feldman was part of the famous set of actors from the 1980’s he starred in the cult films: The Goonies, Stand By Me and The Lost Boys.  These films are some of the most famous films ever made and are loved by many, which yet again attracts a larger audience. This also links to part of the video where Katy wears iconic 1980’s fashions such as a neon yellow skirt and a bright pink crop top. This shows that Katy is following the roots of her parents in the narrative.

Survey for music video

I have created this survey to collect quantative data to help me see what kind of music videos people prefer and to help me see what I should do for my video.

Research Techniques

Production research(textual analysis) - The research conducted to inform the production process of a media product e.g. techniques, locations, genre etc.

Market Research(Qualitative)- more through investigation into the reasons why products are produced and how they appeal to the consumers.

Audience research( quantitive)- the analysis of who consumes what media products and why.

Primary research involves material and information found for the first time.
Secondary is found through a secondary sources research- or theories

Health and Safety

To ensure that I was safe and that the cars were not damaged whilst filming for my promotional video I had to make sure that when I was using the sliders to film the exterior of the cars that I put a towel down underneath the slider to prevent any scratches to the leather seats. I also had to be careful whilst using the tripod and dolly not to get to close to the cars and damage them. I also had to keep closing the car doors and moving out of the way of traffic while I was filming the cars interiors as cars were driving past me and I didn't want to hurt myself, damage the cars or damage the equipment. In one part of my video one of the cars that I filmed was being driven onto the drive so that I could pan the camera round and follow the car, at this point I had to make sure that I was stood back enough so that the car could pull up safely onto the drive and continue down the drive all in one long take.

I chose not to feature anyone else in my video and only focus on the cars. My design brief from my client stated that they didn't want any interviews and wanted to let the cars promote the business themselves. Due to the fact that I didn't have anyone in my video I avoided the need for talent release forms, this meant that I didn't have to wait around for anyone to sign the release forms and could arrange my filming dates quicker.

Evaluation

Overall this unit has gone well for me and any problems I had was rectified quickly. The final video was finished to a standard that my client said was 'brilliant', the video was successful in promoting all of the cars Grooms On Time have on offer to hire. The feedback I received was mainly positive with the one criticism being that we could have filmed at a nicer location, which I would do if I redid the video.  I completed everything the client asked for during our original meeting: the voiceover, the branding on the Jaguars, the subtitles showing the cars names and the use of customer testimonials.

If I was to do the video again I would try and film in a nicer location, perhaps at one of the buildings that their customers regularly use. I would also go back and get more of the detail from inside a few of the Jaguars as I struggled with these whilst originally filming due to the exposure. However I think my video was a good quality promotional video considering it was the first one I have done, there were a couple of parts that I am not happy with, however there are a couple of parts that I think are really nice, the pull focus onto the bottle of champagne as well as the go pro footage I used. During this unit I applied a lot of techniques that I had learnt this year: pull focus, voiceovers and the use of the slider.

I chose to use the camera slider to get a professional finish on the virtual tour of the cars interior. The slider enabled me to slide the camera into the car, on a tripod, smoothly. I also used the slider to glide the camera along the back seats, for when I was going to describe the leather seats; this meant that this piece of footage wasn’t shaky or jumpy.  However there were points where I wanted to use the slider but couldn’t due to the slider being unable to reach where I wanted it to. My original plan was to have the camera slide from the back seat to the front of the car and to then focus on the details in the front of the car. I managed to do my idea once however it looked messy so I came up with the idea of not using the slider but of taking the risk and doing it handheld. The result of this was that my footage was a little shaky but this was easily fixed during editing when I put a stabilizer on the footage.

I chose to include some of my favourite camera techniques in my promotional video that I had learnt and developed over this year. I played around with using the dolly and tripod; I ended up using these to show the cars driving onto the locations drive.  I also experimented with the camera’s focus because I like how the pull focus draws attention to the subject of the camera. I used the pull focus a couple of times in my video to pull the attention onto the most important things that I wanted to promote, these were the Jaguar hubcap and the bottle of champagne. I wanted to focus on the Jaguar brand itself as this was the biggest selling point of the business as people want to buy into a well-known and classic brand.

The first problem I encountered was having to reschedule my first filming session due to the weather. The rain meant that I was unable to film the cars because the owner didn't want to uncover them all and get them wet, this also would have affected my exterior car shots as the rain drops would have made the shots look messy. I quickly resolved this issue by rescheduling to another date. This second date was where I encountered my second problem. The second problem I faced was also due to the weather, however this time it was due to the sun. I still went ahead with the filming despite the sun meaning that no matter how many times I changed the ISO and the aperture of the camera it was still ridiculously overexposed however I focused on the interiors of the cars instead. I still got a few bits of exterior footage and fixed them in editing with a colour corrector.

One issue I thought I was going to face was getting the permission or having to pay to film outside of Coombe Abbey. However because I am not a professional and it was my clients Go Pro I avoided having to do either of these which meant I didn't have to spend any money or waste time waiting for permission. At the start and end of my promotional video I used an image of all of the cars owned by the 'Grooms on Time' company in front of one of the locations that is regularly used as a wedding venue, I didn't need to get permission from the owners of the building themselves because they had already given permission for the image to be on my clients website and whatever the clients wanted to use the photos for.

Music Video Ideas

• Narrative video

Song: What Do I Know- Ed Sheeran:

This song is good to use because not only does it fit the themes that I want to focus on for my video it also doesn't have a music video so I won't be able to be influenced by the original music video. I also really love this songs message of love being more powerful than anything in the world.
 My idea for my music video is to show a young boy listening to this song and believing that he is Ed Sheeran. I want the narrative of the video to be the boy filming his own music video. I want the props used in the video to be very amateurish such as a homemade guitar and a booklet that relates to the lyrics "Politics" and "Religion". I want the final message of the video to always come back to family and have the video end on the family at the dinner table together.