The Brief

1. A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options: 

• a website homepage for the band;

• a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD package); 

• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD package).

All material for all tasks to be produced by the candidates with the exception of acknowledged non-original sound or image material used in a limited way in video/radio work. Further guidance will be available in the support materials. For music video, permission should be sought from the artist for use of the audio track.

The centre will be expected to allocate marks according to four levels for each of three categories: 

• Research and Planning 
• Construction
• Evaluation

What is a Music Video

• "A music video is not primarily a commodity, but a promotional one." - Andrew Goodwin 1992
• "They now provide pictures for the songs in our heads. Goodbye imagination.... All kids need to do is watch and listen, stare straight ahead. No need to think, to embellish, to create, to imagine. The electric fix is in." - Joe Saltzman 
• Part of the construction of a particular band or star.

A music video can be either organic or synthetic, meaning the artist has control over the material produced, or they are just the performers of prewritten songs for a mass audience. 

Start of A2 Media

First blog post this year, and with a mix up of the classes, it's great to have a new mixture of peers to work with this. I think my target for the year is to hit the A* grade because I think I can. I have a good feeling about this year, and I'm going to make more of an effort to keep up to date with these blogs.

Music Video Analysis - Including star image

Sum 41 - Fat Lip

Account of the Preliminary Shoot

Yesterday we made our first attempt at shooting a music video, and we were lucky enough to be able to use a real band, called Acres Of Life. Being of a similar age to us meant that we got on very well with the band and the shoot went relatively smoothly. Aswell as myself, my group consisted of Courtney, Talisa, and Nina.
In total we had 3 hours to shoot our material and edit it, which actually made us more efficient as a group because we got down to work and didn't waste any time. We also had the advantage of being a three, meaning that we could easily rotate roles as Director, Cameraman, and Playback, and we worked together last year on our Thriller.




After watching the first group shoot, we saw just how short 25 mins is in the studio, and when our turn came we already had a shot list planned out and a timeline of what we wanted. We began with our wide shot, and then did the following among others:

• Singer Profile shot
• Close up on Guitar/Bass
• Drummer MCU Shot
• CU Drums shot
• CU Guitarist
• MCU Bass

Once we finished in the Studio, we moved up to the editing suite and began putting the video together. I think this was so much easier than making our thriller, because we essentially had a backbone to the video, (the soundtrack), and we could make cuts according to the beat of the music.

A2 - Music Industry Advanced Production Brief

In this second year of Media Studies, We will be creating a promotion package for the release of an album from a new artist, including:

•  a music video to his or her first single
• the cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD package)
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD package).

Evaluation Task 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

From looking at both the preliminary task and the main task comparatively it is easy to see that the difference in the quality of the editing between the two is huge. What has to be borne in mind though, is that we shot the preliminary in just under an hour using ourselves as actors and whatever we had in our bags as props. On the other hand we had almost an entire day to shoot the main task on location in two different houses and we had weeks to prepare, gather up props and such. 

In terms of sophistication, the prelim was actually quite offhand, we turned up, were given some guidelines, a storyboard and a camera and told to go and shoot it the best we could. During the shoot, we experimented with adapting the storyboard, different moods with which to shoot and even added some of our own touches into it, such as the mobile phone, implying a call was to be made. The main task however was a totally different story, we had about 3 months to plan it and then another month to edit the rushes. Our planning started from brainstorming ideas in November then moved to choosing an idea in early December and getting it approved and storyboarded by the end of the month. Next we got a shot-list written out, actors cast, a final storyboard and props collected up before shooting in late February. 

We found that shooting the main task was in some ways easier than the preliminary  as our main task didn’t include dialogue, eliminating the possibility of the actors saying the wrong words or not speaking them correctly. In hindsight this was an extremely good choice as we would have been very pushed for time otherwise. 

We mostly shot the main task in medium close up, although we did have a few extreme close ups as well, and I feel we were more adventurous in the main task as we deliberately broke the 180 degree rule, and included a tilt shot showing the debris scattered across the floor. Because we were filming in 2 different locations with the aim of jumping between the two, we actually gave ourselves a lot of freedom with shot order, as during the editing process we experimented with three different sequences before choosing the one that we liked the most and continuing with that one.


While editing the the preliminary task, we began to realise the importance of added sound effects such as the mobile phone bleep and the door slam which emphasise these key noises. Finding these sounds in Soundtrack Pro was harder than I thought, as almost every different bleep we tried sounded wrong, and there were so many of them.  What I hadn't realised prior to this first bout of editing was that the buzz track is essential in ensuring continuity between cuts. In the main task, we actually used much of our original sound dubbed over with an original score created by Sophia, so the buzz track wasn't actually needed. We actually used less sound effects than we thought would be necessary, as the original recordings were extremely realistic, so we kept them.