Pitching ideas and initial thoughts of videos

Skills at the beginning of the course can be improved upon and referred back to later in the course and used as a reflective view to see how I have progressed (if I have..hopefully).
I pitched to an audience of nine females of various ages and recieved some very helpful and constructive critasism. 
Starting with the positive's;

• The song choice fits well with the narrative idea
• A 17yr old male likes the idea as our generation is fascinated with substance and alcohol abuse and misuse -examples of this is shown in the channel four series Skins and also through Rhiannas 'we found love' lyrics
• My initial ideas of lighting and camera angles were considered a really good idea
• The narrative of the music video can also be used to not only show how substances can not only affect people but also how they can create issues for people who decide to use them
• I can widen my audience through showing the issues implicitly rather than explicitly
• Another point of showing the issues implicitly can enable my audience to be more active rather than passive by making them think about the scenes that are being shown and therefore the more the audience pays attention the more they will notice within the video
•  Using an all (almost all) male cast can be a good use of actors as it can make my video appeal to a younger female audience 

And the improvements to be made;

• The music genre and the possibility of using an all male cast may result in my music video having a niche audience which would not be so good as my music video would only then appeal to a smaller audience
• The masculinity of the music genre may not appeal to females
• I need a more structured narrative with a beginning, middle and end 
• I need a better and stronger narrative - I can improve on this once I've learnt the narrative theories and how narrative works, once I've found a theory that I like I will cling to the theory and use it to structure my own narrative with my own ideas
• The ability of being able to film in low key lighting may create visibility issues

Preliminary task

I worked with Annie during this task to see how well we managed with filming a 60 second clip of a music video and to make our own copy of it. However due to technical difficulties with the Macs we were unable to export or even retrieve the clips we had filmed as the computer had decided that the files were corrupt.

Influential music video:

Bring Me The Horizon - Blessed With A Curse

The main points that I have made from analysing the music video is that it does follow Andrew Goodwin's theory, this is proven through the use of 'thought beats' (editing the film to the beat of the song to make the editing transitions more effective and conform to the ideals of a good music video) the music video. The narrative is slightly different as it plays on the idea of the emotions of the lyrics rather than matching the actual lyrics, therefore the lyrics and the acting go hand in hand to create a narrative running alongside the emotions created from the song lyrics.
Within the entire music video the lead singer is shown singing directly into the camera increasing his 'star image' through the repetitive-ness of his appearance on screen.

The technical elements of the music video help to make this video really successful and hence why it has influenced me:

• the lighting contradicts the darkness of the emotion and lyrics which cause a confusing yet thought provoking scene to watch
• The editing is always on beat which makes the watching and viewing as comfortable and as enjoyable as possible
• The proxemics of the actors and band members on screen works well to create an isolated feeling as it is rare within the music video to have more than one person on screen at a time
• The relation of the visuals to the song illustrates the meaning and emotion of the lyrics but not the physical actions of the lyrics, personally I think this works perfectly as it affects people without them knowing and enables them to relate to a song more easily if the emotions are being subliminally related to them and it enables them to feel as the artists intends the music to be interpreted. (This feeling is what I hope to recreate in my music video) 

Examples of more screens shots from other music videos from the band to illustrate my points made: