The ideas of Andrew Goodwin (1992)

Andrew Goodwin had six key characteristics of the music video and we are going to identify these within our music video of Adele - Turning Tables.

Here are those six key characteristics:
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals
4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body
6. There is often intertextual reference

Here is how we feel we adhere to the six key characteristics:
1. Adele's songs whilst sounding similar are very hard to identify as a specific genre. But Adele herself classifies her music as Pop Soul - so that is how we have decided to handle the content of the video. To handle the activities of a pop music video - we stuck to strong eye focus on the camera in single shots where Maddie is singing on her own and a strong focus on activity and events taking place - the pop aspect occurs within the narrative aspect of the music video - lots of short shots interlinked with each other to create a dramatic sequence of events within the music video. Following Soul conventions - one word was focussed on - energy. Soul is all about the energy that is portrayed and that energy is a result of passion for the music and that's what we've tried to achieve by use of energetic movements in the studio shots and energy coming from the mouth movements whilst miming the song.

2. We have tried very hard to accomplish a connection between the lyrics and the visuals of this song. This is clearly evidenced in the three situations of the lyric "it's time to say goodbye" - on the "goodbye" - we have three different events of closing the other actor out of the singers life - a true "goodbye".
The first place this takes place is once the singer has thrown the clothes at the actor and kicked him out and he is storming out the front gate carrying (then throwing) his clothes away. It then happens later in the song when the door is slammed shut as he leaves and a third time during the lift scene when the lift doors close and there is a shaddow of Maddie singing over the door closure.

We also stick by this when there is a lyric near the start of the song that goes "All that I have is on the floor" - we think that the scene we used here is cleverly used by the fact she is walking on a broken plate on the floor - what she has on the floor is broken dreams, broken heart and her head is all over.

3. We have made every effort to match tone of music to the visuals on the screen as you watch it. Shots change at change of beat or lyrics sentence and we have made every effort to match the tempo of the music to that of the pace of the footage in front of you as you watch it. For example, when Maddie is playing the piano during the points of the song where there are no lyrics - this is done especially at the introducing 10 seconds of the song where it fades in and out of the piano and studio shot. We also attempted to match the beat near the end of the video when it fades between Maddie and the actor walking down the stairs of the statue.

4. As has been evidenced in previous posts - we have made every effort to adopt conventions of Adele and the types of shots she would usually be seen in. We have attempted to meet that convention without 'copying' the methods use in her other videos. This is done with the variety of shots we did in the studio. These vary from shots showing her full body and fatigue beside the table and close up of her face and upper chest - which is the same variety as used in Adele's other songs. The key demand which is clear from her other videos is her engagement with the piano which we have portrayed her being with the piano in this video.

5. We have made every effort to portray Maddie in Adele's methods which match Goodwin's fifth characteristic. This is done in the two methods demonstrated by Goodwin. We have tried to engage lots of eye contact from Maddie in this video - especially in the studio shots. But in the majority of shots involve a closer shot of either herself of both together - we have ensured there is either constant eye contact or a flow from no contact in to firm contact.
As Adele typically does - we have focussed on the aspects of the female body. Instead of firm close-ups of the neck upwards in the video, we have included the upper-body of Maddie and during the shots with Maddie and our actor being together, we have focussed on the chemistry and sexual relationship once shared in the couple and their past which is now exactly that, the past. From focussing on where the actors hands were placed i.e. on the hip/waste in the roof shots to the chemistry being shown during any kissing during the video - we have tried to seriously portray the female body in a voyeuristic manner.

6. For inter-textual reference, we have achieved this in a variety of methods. This is heavily evidenced in our task evaluation which can be found at http://loretomedia-c1-11-group4.blogspot.com/2011/12/1in-what-ways-does-your-media-product.html - we have taken strong inspiration from other music videos - speicifically that from Robbie Williams and Beyonce and of course, Adele's own videos.

1.In what ways does your media product use , develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?

The videos we have gotten most of our inspiration from is: Adele
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0&ob=av3e
Robbie Williams - Feel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc06ZOJCqIA&feature=fvst

and Beyonce - Listen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc1R1JMTMKQ

Adele is almost exclusively doing pop ballads for this type of songs and she preforms very
emotional songs. Therefore we thought bringing that emotion out would be a great feature and
aim for our music video . A more famous peice that she has gotten around to creating a video
for .This video is" someone like you ".In the video you can see Adele's lip synched performance of her song in a beautiful yet ill weathered location . this is very effective as you can directly see her expressions and her emotions clearly . Therefore we have decided we are going to use some lip synching in our video. Her video is also this effective because of the black and white effect applied to this video .We are going to use this in our video not only for the impact but to keep in house-style with Adele way of working . This house-style of hers is carried out through her album cover as well and we have decided to do that as well apart from the video element were we have decided to be a little bit more creative .

Even though Adele's video, 'someone like you' is a good video, we will try do a lot more various locations , we like the black and white effect however to fit together with the colour scenes we have gotten we have decided black and white is too much of an overpowering juxtaposition , so instead we will take that less colour feel she gives out and turn the effect into a saturated layer to compliment our video yet still look relevant to her work .Id like to think of the reduced saturation as the mixture of mixing the black and white effect of Adele's with our full blown color effect .I think its a nice bridge between the two .For example ;


+

=

With this bridge created i believe using black and white is acceptable as you can see the gradual change as black and white is only used towards the end and full color near the beginning with saturated in the middle almost like the video is loosing its color as time goes by .

Our inspiration for having many two shots rather than going Adele's way and only having one actor was from Beoncey's video for Listen .Her and the male lead appear trough out the video in
several shots in dark situations and locations .We were inspired by this but
we decided to do a more different and more interesting point of view .
Maybe like an over the shoulder shot that proved to be interesting in Robbie Williams's video for feel .

Those two scenes are responsible for the creation of this one .

The way Robbie Williams and Byonce's mixed performance and narrative and sows some emotional performances with effective flashbacks .This has inspired me to mix performance and narrative as I can clearly see that they do combine very well when it comes to pop ballads , especially when a song like Turning tables has such a strong complex and pictorial story-line .Just like the song Listen Adele's song has various bits where her voice is much stronger and emphasis as the emotion is getting across allot
cleared therefore we will also use her video inspiration for her statement making moments.


but instead i have decided to use more variety of shots such as a long shot along with the close ups.


What also inspired me by his video is a rotational movement in the camera along with some panning and tracking shots .Since the tile of my video is " Turning tables " i thought this same movement would be beneficial and relevant to my video exept that we will make it far more elaborate and longer swinging motions .

Two shots are also very common in Beoncey's and Robbie Williams's video .So the idea of using an extra actor to act out the narrative of the story line could work quite well in subtle however ways .However at the same time i will try not to capture the second characters face as not as obvius as in Robbie Williams's video as i believe its too much , because i believe it draw too much scene of importance to the other character and this is not about her its about his own
experience and spin on the situation and who he is is irrelevant . So I have decided to try to keep his face out as much as possible , keeping his hood on and over his shoulder shots are a must I
would like to leave the face placement to whoever the audience presume him to be as her fans may be able to relate to it a little bit better .

As far a challenging music video conventions i believe that most videos only use two time lines at the most to merge , we have however used three time lines merged together to create our video witch can get quite confusing but does not disturb the linear quality of our video .
Another feature that we have added if the full color at the beginning slowly reducing until near the end it fades to black and white bit then it is restored to full image quality in full color at the end to show the motion of cycle and yet again imply thee title of turning tables .

Production Progress Update - #4 - AS VS A2?

AS vs A2 - an interesting comparison.

In AS Production work, creating the final task was to a certain extent, easier than this task of creating a music video. The film introduction had lots of long scenes in it, with not many locations required to make the two minutes work. This A2 task is a complete different ball game! We have a total of 138 different pieces of video footage in a variety of locations. For the AS task, I can remember having a very small pallet to work from and it working fine - despite this big pallet, the task was still hard to fill it with footage that worked with the songs lyrics. Films have their own set of conventions, as do music videos. The two tasks are both of a very different media nature.

Filming in the AS task was steady and continuous. Filming for this A2 music video task was completely different - lots of short shots and movement in far more settings. We found the overall time taken to achieve the number of different shots required for the music video was far greater than that of the film introduction last year.

Even in the post-production/editing work - we were cautious about falling in to the film-trap by following the same style we had adopted last year in AS. The variety had to be far greater in the music video than in the film we had created last year.

The overall amount of work undertaken definitely seems to be a heck of a lot more for this task than the AS task. At the start of the task, we didn't quite adopt that understanding, which led to us having a slow start on what we should be doing and coming to agreements as a group. However, despite that delay in getting to grips with the demands of task, we pulled together in good time as a group and ultimately led to us working on schedule to the task and with the long amounts of extra time put in outside of the lessons, we have managed to complete the task. There were definitely moments of worry and hesitation as to whether we'd get to this stage in the time we did very early in the process of the task, but here we are with the task done and we're proud of the work we've accomplished.

Technology in creating the music video

Technology played a very big part in the creation of this music video - there was no cutting and gluing of film - that much I can tell you!

One of the big advantages we had was access to the filming studio that we have here in college. This facility we have been told has the same specifications as a BBC Training Studio - which we feel quite proud and very privileged to have access to. The studio contains three HD Camera's with green screen technology and state of the art computer equipment to back it up as can be seen from the piture below. This facility aided the creation of our black background shots of Maddie singing on her own and allowed us to provide the lighting we required with the various lighting equipment in the facility. The camera's also have monitors mounted on them which is for the autocue which allowed Maddie to refer to them in perfect sync with the music if she needed to and aided our video and the lip syncing we have aimed to perfect.

For filming which took place outside of the studio at our outside locations we used a handheld camcorder / digital camera to film our footage. This in itself presented us with some issues. The camera itself wasn't too good at filming in the dark/night despite using the light on the front of it. So we had to compromise by using a handheld LED torch strip (rectangular torch) to provide different strenghts of light depending on the shot we were going for. However for the most part, these cameras were great in providing the material we needed in natural light and weather conditions.

We found ourselves using a variety of equipment to aid the filming with the handheld camera. The primary piece used was the handheld camera jib - which you can see being demonstrated by the chap in the promotional picture below.

This allowed us to get shots which involved moment but also provided accuracy and was used in various shots, especially at night time. In the night shots where you can see the singer and the actor walking down the steps at the end and also when they're kissing and the camera goes from out of focus to in-focus on close-up - the jib proved to be a vital piece of equipment in providing accuracy during these shots.

We also used a small steadycam frame which is a rectangular frame which the camera screwed securely on to and allowed steady shots to be filmed. This was used mostly in the filming of the shots at Manchester Science Park of the lift and running up stairs scenes. It also proved useful in nightshots involving both singer and actor walking past each other along with a variety of other shots we have done.

We found ourselves carrying a tripod to mount the camera but only using it once. We found the accuracy of the jib and the handheld frame to be perfectly fine and they also provided more flexibility than the tripod could provide us. The one time we used the tripod was also with a tri-dolly (wheel mount) for filming the short clip where Maddie is entering the lift.

On to the software side of the production, we did the post-production work in Final Cut Pro on the dual-screen Mac editing suites we have here in College. Final Cut Pro proved invaluable to the creation of this video. Down to the editing, shot filters and attention to accuracy - it would have been very hard to create without it. Final Cut Pro is a general piece of editing software used by the industry and having the ability to use it in college was not something we took foregranted and used the software to it's maximum potential to achieve our music video.

In all, technology played a very big part in the creation of the music video, it's quite hard to image the filming world of the past where many hours were spent with long strands of film and manually piecing them together.

Shot list of the middle of the video

Long shot- as she is walking towards the camera

Two shot- she crosses paths with another person which may signify something in the relationship she’s in

Establishing shot- the view of the city

Two shot- shows the involvement of both characters in the video to prove that they are both in it together 1:40

Over the shoulder shot- this is used to view the view from someone else’s point of view

Close up- this is used to view the performers close emotion and body language

Over the shoulder while sat at the table- this shot lets us focus on the male performer and his current emotions.

The camera spinning- signifies the actual term “turning tables” which could also mean an unstable relationship.

Two shot- at the table while the camera pans around them

Tracking shot- as she walks into the lift lets the audience think someone’s following her

Medium shot- shows her body language and her dress sense gives us an idea of what she’s going through

Close up at her performing- allows us to see her true emotions 2:32

Panning shot- while she’s sat on the floor, the camera pans to her bottom half and then pans back up

Panning shot on the roof- the camera pans left and right to show what atmosphere is like, and it’s a sunny day that must be a correlation with the couple’s relationship being a good one.

Medium shot- at the piano where she is playing

Medium shot- where the couple are stood on top of the roof

POV shot- as he runs up the stairs trying to catch her up on the lifts.

Medium shot- she’s stood on the roof

Medium shot- he’s stood on the roof

Analysing a music album magazine advert

Analysing a music album magazine advert

The album advert that we as a group are analysing is that of the American based recording artist Gwen Stefani’s and it is called Love Angel Music Baby. She recorded her first solo album “Love angel Music Baby” and was released to the United States in the year 2004; this album shook the world and was a great hit with over 7 million sales in the shops Love. Angel. Music. Baby. This album was designed as an updated version of a 1980s music record, and was influenced by artists such as early Madonna. . The album yielded six singles and had high sales, going multi-platinum in several countries, and selling eight million copies worldwide. It earned Stefani six Grammy Award nominations in 2005 and 2006; the album is primarily pop, with the synthesizer’s characteristic of synthpop, most popular from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s. Like all pop albums of the 1980s, L.A.M.B. focuses primarily on money, with songs such as "Rich Girl" and "Luxurious" that feature descriptions of riches and wealth

By just looking at the album cover the audience gets this sort of idea that it is about being glamorous as Gwen Stefani is sat on what looks like a distorted throne, this indicates her status as a leading female artist of the 1980’s era. The dancers behind her also signify the intensity of how much she took over the music industry.

The colour co ordination that was used in this album cover are all colours that are catchy from a distance in the eyes of anybody, from the dark red to the brightly lit yellow.

Production Progress Update - #3

So here we are - the final video is done and is ready for adding to this blog as our final post. We have been busy working hard to ensure all the material we have done is done to perfection (in our eyes at least!).

We are mid-flow with the print media at the moment, all is looking good. We have had a photo shoot so we have photo's that can be used in the print media which we did in the studio. The final products are almost complete now! Maddie is driving her talents of Photoshop in to the print media and I have to say - they're looking good! We've had one piece of feedback from a different media teacher on our CD covers which was "I actually prefer yours to Adele's own CD covers!" - which really reminded us that this task isn't just about plodding through it and getting an okay looking music video - this is about us driving our energy, passion and creativity in creating a masterpiece. We each hold our own individual skills and things we're best at in this media project and those skills have really come together so far and here we are with only a few days to go and a few final hurdles to jump over - let's hope we don't fall over them!