Music Video - Redundancy/Entropy

'Bullets' -TUNNG

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI1NgFYJCN4

This music video conveys a high level of entropy as the entire music video is based around a large collection of unusual objects (such as rubber ducks and talking pineapples) glued together and flying towards the sun, and doesn't relate to the song at all. This is not a typical feature included in every music video and there are aspects of this video I haven't seen before included in music video's and there for it has an element of unpredictability.

However there is a level of redundancy portrayed in this video as the band is shown projected on screens performing the actual song. There is also a shot where an acoustic guitar is showed being played by an arm and playing in time to the song the main riff.

'Ghosts' - Laura Marling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XonJJbV54BE&ob=av2e

Similar to the video above this music video conveys a high level of entropy as the entire music video is created using animation and only certain parts of the video include the artist and her band members in real flesh, and even then only their heads are real and have been super-imposed onto animated cartoon bodies.

The video its self relates to the song and the lyrics and the animation is based around a grave yard and the idea of 'ghosts' which is the song title.

Although there are elements of entropy there are also elements of redundancy and this is shown through the shots of the band performing and playing and singing, although the shots themselves are conveyed in an entropic manner.

There are also some single shots of a piano and guitar being played by a skeletal hand.

Another example of a video using both humans and animation is another video of Laura Marling - 'My Manic and Me'

Blur - 'Song 2'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlAHZURxRjY&ob=av2e

This music video has a high level of redundancy as the entire video is based around the band 'Blur' performing their song in a room. The idea of the band simply performing the song is a very predictable feature and very redundant. But there is a twist to the simple performing of the song for the video and the band members are seen one by one being thrown around the room and bouncing off the walls which adds a n entropic twist to it. A wind machine is also used towards the end of the song and dust and sand is blown into the band members, which again adds a less predictable twist to the video.

Post-Production

Digital Technology

Research and Planning

Before we could go ahead and film we had to complete a number of research and planning tasks, in order for us to be organised and for every group member to know their role in the task.

Personally I found creating the story board of each individual shot of the original video the most important and useful task, this is because without having a still picture of the original shot to hand whilst recording, lining up the shot accurately would prove difficult.

Here is the original video of 'Britney Spears,' 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' that we were re-creating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn_wAfWVLdk

We only had around 2-3 days to record and there for re-creating the whole video would prove near impossible, so instead we only recorded the first 30 seconds.

Throughout the 30 seconds there are around 30 different shots, I screen-shot these shots and pasted them into a word document to create a story board.

Shots vary from close up's to tracking shots, such as the screen shots show below.

The finished story board looked like this :

The shots go in chronological order from left to right.

One aspect of the planning I think we could of improved on and done more of (given the time) is practise runs through of complicated shots. I feel that if we had planned more before and not worked out what we were doing whilst filming then this would of speeded up the recording process.

Lip Syncing Task

Our first task to was lip sync to a song, our chosen song was 'The Ace Of Spades' by Motorhead. Before the actual recording of our lip syncing we had to learn the lyrics to the song to make the actual lip sync look convincing. We then had to set the appropriate equipment up (camera, stand etc.) Part of the preparation was actually filling the performer with the confidence to perform the task ahead with confidence.

Whilst filming we attempted to do a straight run through of the song with the lip syncing but found that it was hard for the performer to lip sync straight through and instead had to break the song down into verses and chorus's.

One of the most important parts of the task was making sure the performer was happy and comfortable with what was being asked of them. Instead of just instructing and verbally telling the performer what I wanted out of them, I had to show them and actually get in front of the camera myself and physically show them what I wanted.

After the actual recording of the lip syncing on a 'mini-DV' camera we had to edit the recordings on Adobe Premiere Pro, which is a piece of software designed to enable us to edit the recordings, such as cutting out unwanted footage and also matching up the lip sync with the original recording. We also had to delete the audio file of the recording so that only the song its self can be heard.

Once we had our edited video we then had to upload it onto 'YouTube.'

You can watch our lip syncing video here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsnI32D_iNo