Editing Update 3

Editing Update 3

With our third editing session, we noticed that one of our guitar performance scenes didn't look right. In order to fix this, we had to re-record a few scenes and then put them into our video in order to make the video look right. In the screenshot above, this is the scene that we re-recorded. We feel that this made our video better, as it made the guitar playing look more realistic. This shot is used at the start of the video, and also we put the song title, and name of the band in the bottom left corner. We repeated this in one of the last shots of the video.

Filming Status/Digipak Planning

After our successful filming trip to London last Wednesday, we believe that we have all the shots necessary that we need to finish our music video. All we have to do now is to edit all of the shots together in order to make our video as good as it can be. We also started thinking about the production of our digipak, and thought about using some of the pictures that we took in London. We feel that we could some of these pictures in our digipak as it would make for a good location, and it could be used to find our target audience of late teens/young adults. Some of the pictures that we took were designed to portray our group as being serious, but also being jokey at the same time. We took some shots of where we was being pretty silly, and some of where we was being very serious while looking at the camera.

Audience Research

Audience Research

Before we make our music video, we will need to do some audience research. We will have to find out information about our audience before we make music video because we will be able to know what they like and what kind of music videos will appeal to them. It is important that we do this well so we know what features people will like so we can put them in our video to appeal to our audience. By doing this, we will be able to appeal to our target audience, and also try to be able to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. We have to make sure that when we conduct our audience research, that we ask suitable questions and ask the right kinds of questions which makes sure that we get the suitable information that we need in order for our audience research to be useful and for us to use it well. Examples of these questions include:

• Do you watch music videos?
• What kind of music do you listen to?
• What is your age?
• How do you listen to music?
• What makes a great music video?

There are many types of ways of which we can conduct audience research. Some of the ways of which we can do audience research are:

• Surveys
• Questionnaires
• Interviews
• Focus Groups
• Vox Pops

Vox Pops 

A vox pop is a type of audience research. Usually, there are personally filmed interviews which are conducted in public places.

This is the audience research that we have done as a group. We have done this so we can find out information about our potential audience, and what kind of people that they are. We will use the information that we will receive from people who complete this questionnaire in order to be able to target the correct audiences. 

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Sexism in Pop Videos

Sexism and Laura Mulvey

In the music industry, there are a lot of issues to do with sexism, especially with women. A lot of the sexism issues are based on how men are presented and how women are presented. The women are treated a lot differently to the men. With regards to this, Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory is very important with dealing with issues of  sexism as much of her theory covers the way that women are treated in media texts. One of the more important points with her theory is the male gaze. This means that the media texts are made out to be designed for the viewing of males, and not the viewing of females. This is why in media texts, women are designed to be "objects of erotic desire" as this is what would appeal more to the majority of men, and therefore they would want to see that more. Even when women consume media texts, they have to watch it from a male point of view as they are forced to watch the exposure of women. Laura Mulvey says that women have 2 roles within a narrative: To be an erotic object for characters within the text or To be an erotic object for the audience consuming the text. Women are simply seen as sexual objects and are relegated from their human status. They are objectified as just an object used by men to be enjoyed. Women are also presented to be weak, and needs saving by a male character, and are irrelevant without the main character. The female characters are known as passive as they are under control by the males are present subject to the male gaze. In most texts, women slow the narrative down and are unable to add meaning to the plot. They have no agency. Most texts live in a world of Patriarchal Society in which men are in control.




The song "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus is a song and video which has caused issues to do with sexism in video. A lot of the video is spent with her being sexual, and naked. She is seen to be naked while swinging on a wrecking ball, and she is seen to be licking a sledgehammer in a very seductive manner. This pop video was able to cause controversy because of what she is doing, and the messages that it would send to young kids. I think that Miley Cyrus made this video because she wanted to show that she is her own person, and that she isn't controlled by anyone but herself. She wants to show that she is an independent woman, and she's not the young girl anymore. She wants to get rid of her Hannah Montana young girl image, and wants to be known as her own woman who is able to make her own decisions. I think this video is quite unique in the way that I think that she is exploiting, and is being exploited at the same time. I think she is exploiting the music industry because she is doing something unique and being controversial about it, thus creating interest in her, and therefore giving her more chance of achieving revenue. On the other hand, I think she is being exploited, as she is using her body to appeal to the audience, and making herself look like an object of erotic desire. She is exposing herself in order to appeal to a wider audience, by having less clothes on her. The mise-en-scene is used a lot in this video, especially with the costumes and props. With the props, she is seen to be performing sexual acts on them, and with the costumes, she's mostly naked which completely exposes her. There is an amplified relation of visuals to music video, as she is constantly shown to be sitting on the wrecking ball.





Another example of a video which creates sexism issues within the music industry is the song "Hard Out Here" by Lily Allen. Laura Mulveys theory can definitely be applied to this music video as most of this video is with lots of women being half naked dancing in sexual ways, and making themselves to be sexual objects, and objects of erotic desire. Lily Allen once said that she wanted have a more feminist society, but this video makes her seem like a bit of a hypocrite as she is using ideas that she doesn't agree with in order to be popular with audiences. Lily Allen is sexualising women by having them in their video and by making themselves to be objects. This is not a feminist video, and completely does the opposite as it is inviting the male gaze to be active. This video makes women look like objects and doesn't achieve her purpose of living in a more feminist society. The mise-en-scene is most effective here, as the costumes are very limited and there isn't much of it, which allows for the women to be able to expose themselves and make them be objects. The lyrics of the song kind of match the song because she says she doesn't want to be in the kitchen, and she wants to be in the studio, which is where she spends the majority of her time.





This video is also controversial when it comes to dealing with sexism issues because of the way that women are treated in this video. The main character is shown to be very dominant over the women and so much so that they are in his control. They are doing what he wants them to do which shows that he is dominant over them. Also, the women in the video are wearing very little clothing (if any at all) which he is fully clothed which again is able to show his dominance. This women are wearing this little clothing and are therefore responsible for being the objects of erotic desire for the male gaze, which is agreeing with Laura Mulveys theory. There are different versions of this video because one of them is very extreme, and has the women being 100% naked, and other versions which are not quite as extreme. I believe that different versions of this video were made, because i believe that the version which shows all of the girls being naked was the original version, but then they realised that it wouldn't be suitable for all audiences at all times so they should make a version of which would be watered down. In terms of Goodwin, the girls in the video have a dance routine which is a characteristic of his theories.

Photostop Album Cover Exercise

Todays lessons involved a basic exercise using Photoshop of where I had to create my own album cover. I did this by using random generators in order to get my artist name, the title of the album and the picture that the album cover would actually be. The artist name that was randomly generated for me was "Chengdu Meishi". I had to choose a font which I think would work well with the picture that I was given. In order to do this, I used the website www.dafont.com in order to find myself a font which I felt to be suitable. I screen shotted this process as seen above. 

When I had found myself a font, I saved it onto the hard drive and then imported it into Photoshop. I then inserted my text of "Chengdu Meishi" onto the picture and then also used the same font and inserted the album name of "Therefore Wash Them Often" below the band name. I chose to use colours that would work well together, and I feel that it worked well. 

After putting my text on top of the picture, this was the final result. This was what my album cover came out to be. I feel that this exercise has been useful for me, as I have learnt the basic skills of Photoshop and it will help me when creating my own digipak. 

Editing Update 2

Editing Update 2

After filming the park scenes, we decided to have our second session of editing. We was able to film scenes which we can use for the montage parts of our song, and also the bits which we are going to use for the storyline. There's one particular piece of editing that we done, of which we as a group was very proud of. There's a part of the song of where there are 32 beats, and we was able to put in 32 different edits. We was very proud of this, and we was able to successfully edit each clip to the beat, and we feel that it drastically improves our video. It also shows our editing skills of being able to edit to the beat well. These 32 clips are useful as well, as they detail the montage scenes that we were aiming to use in this video.

Filming Planning

For our next set of shots, we have planned to go into Central London. We decided to film there because we feel it would our video to be more professional, and would give us a different variety of locations.

We are going to go filming on Wednesday 10th December. We have all planned to meet at Dagenham East station for about midday. We will need to film as much as possible as quickly as possible. This is because it will get dark very quickly, so we will need to make the most of the daylight that we have. We will also need to make sure that we wear suitable clothing, as we will be walking around a lot, and it will most likely be very cold.

 We will travel to Tower Hill from Dagenham East using the District Line. It all depends on how busy the area is, which will depend on the types of shots that we will use. If the area is busy, we won't feel like it would be the best time to film shots. We will then get the train to Embankment of where we will walk round London Eye and Tower Of London. This will make for a good variety of shots which should make our video more professional looking.

Case Studies on Alex Southam

His Career

While working for Agile Films in 2012, Alex Southam was described as being "an exciting new talent working in a dizzying variety of styles across live action and animation". He was able to teach himself and has shown signs of being inventive and very creative and have caught the eye of many, with a series of diverse promos, for companies such as "Walkman" and people such as "Lianne La Havas".

His Style

In his early career, Alex wanted to do all of his work himself. He wanted to be his own "One Man Band" as he did all of the tasks himself. He used to setup and film all of the camera work himself. He also organised the lighting in the way that he liked it, and then he also edited all of the footage that he had captured himself. He wanted to make sure that the videos that he creates were all of his own work and that he could take full credit for the creation of his videos. Now, that he is much more well known, he employs a director of photography in order to help him with his camera and lighting work.
Alex Southam liked to use his own kind of style when making his new music videos. He liked to come up with new things that no one had ever used before and he liked using new techniques and giving the artist freedom when deciding how the music video should be. He never really liked the idea of using commercials as he feels that it restricted the artists in a way that doesn't allow for them to have as much freedom. Instead of using YouTube to show off his videos, he instead uses the website "Vimeo" as he feels that it has higher status than YouTube and is becoming increasingly popular in the music industry.


His Works




His first big video was the song "Tessellate" by alt-J. He had a budget of £10,000 for this video and was able to film all of the scenes that he needed in just one day. He had a very large cast in this video and was able to use special effects in this video. There isn't really a storyline to this video as it consists of a lot of people just standing about doing nothing. This suggests a disjuncture with regards to the music and visuals. With regards to Goodwin's theory, there are a lot of close ups of the cast, and even the animals in the video have close ups. This would be a demand of the record label. With regards to Laura Mulvey's theory, it could be argued that woman are the objects of male erotic desire as most of the women in this video are wearing tight clothing, or clothing that shows off their body.





Another one of his more famous videos is the song "Lost & Not Found" by Chase & Status. This video had a budget of £50,000 and was set in Los Angeles, California. It was filmed using a Steadicam, and was initially filmed at 36 frames per second instead of the normal 24, and then was ultimately slowed down in the editing process. Also, there are only three shots in the whole video, which shows that hardly any editing went into the making of this video. Alex Southam done this as he tried to go back to using an early 1990's VHS video look, and could be considered as trying to bring an old technique back, and using it as being new. With regards to Goodwin's theory, there are quite a few closeups of the cast in the video. There is no mention of Laura Mulvey's theory as women are not the objects of erotic desire.