Final

 

Image is having a huge impact on our minds; it is easy to understand and is a way to fast transmit its message. That’s why during the history, the political views of some radical rulers were also sent out through paintings, photos and TV screens.
Nowadays, the images are still used mostly to transmit a message. If talking about the whole industry of making movies, it’s interesting to notice that in a five minutes video, you can actually learn more about today’s life than from a whole book. And this is also regarding Music Videos. Usually their duration is a couple of minutes, but the impression can be of a long time astonishment.
It was a great experience having a “Music Video Production” class, as we dived deeper in this field and learned a lot of secrets concerning the creation of a successful music video. More than that, we even tried to make our owns, looking for a balance between the given theoretical standards and practical experience.
We analyzed a lot of videos during the semester and focused on different aspects of video making: performance, movement, dance, beat, shots, zooms or close ups, setting, music, camera placement, lighting effects and so on.
Talking about the visual changes from a traditional Music Video, we mentioned the revolution that took place in all the aspects mentioned above. The early videos are now often called documentaries, as they totally differ from nowadays explosion of creativity. They were showing the whole action without any “cut-aways”, seeing only the performer.
What we see now, is a lot of emotion and movement, expression, energy and action. Today’s performers try to show something exclusive, unique, never done before, in order to impress and label their own style.
Another important issue is Genre and Diegesis. Genre, as Thompson describes it, is the various types of films which have a recognizable and familiar narrative form.
For example: Gangster, Western, Musical, etc. We can more or less predict what it would be about and how it will end, expect certain shots, music and "over acting".
In Music Videos we also have different styles, like Goth, Hip Hop, R&B, Classical, Rock and so on.
According to Metz, Diegesis represents the narrative's voice we search for series of codes and conventions that give the text its meaning. When the sound becomes part of the narrative or is integrated into it - we can certainly say it is a diegetic song. The diegetic communication takes place in movement, symbols, beat style, fashion, lighting, special effects (like speed for ex.) and others.
Taking this information into consideration, the question is whether is it important to have a video related to sound and lyrics or not, because we have plenty of successful Music Videos which are not correlated to the lyrics of the song. My answer would be a positive one, since it makes one single product of creation, a harmony between the text and motion.
An important key factor in the whole Music Video industry is also MTV, as it is able to control and determine some social behavior, creates fashion, stereotypes and imposes its pervasiveness, appealing to our commercial sense.
All the theoretical beliefs we had passed through, had to be linked to a practical experience, which represented our own Music Videos.
The first task was to do a Music Video to any song we like. We choose “Beautiful Day” song by Trentmoller. The idea was to show our everyday life, with funny and sad moments, but finally having a Beautiful Day at the end of the video.
The main character was to be an ordinary person that actually represented any human being. The trick was that this person equals the camera itself, so that what he sees is the camera that shows the viewer images while he walks.
So, the main character (= the viewer) is walking, and different life moments he sees; then other shoes, other legs (=other persons) see other every day moments: kids playing, old people, students, beggars, etc.
Periodically we inserted some dancing movement of different style: ballet, flamenco; and the funniest parts were meant to be the play with different parts of faces (lips, eyes, nose). We did a lot of close ups of different eye color: blue, green, black, as well as different smiles.
The song is a very optimistic one, showing how different we are but how beautiful life is!
The first shot we made you can see in the image attached. It was the stairs of a dancing school we were climbing. Suddenly, we noticed the nice shadow of it on the wall and started experimenting.
It was at Oktogon and so we started…
Finally, the project was done in a couple of weeks. It gave us a lot of experience and I would like to mention what I learned:


1. Weather can spoil all your wonderful plans and suddenly you may have to change everything in just a moment.

2. The ideas come and come and at the end you have so many shots in your hot camera, the memory of your computer is booming, you are full of enthusiasm and you think: "Great! Now what remains is just a couple of hours of working and it s done. "
NO! Suddenly you realize that editing will take you 5 times more than all the process of shooting. You get a bit nervous, but you have to stand it.

3. I realized for myself (not for the first time) that I prefer to generate ideas, I can see them in front of my eyes, even the smallest details, but I would rather be the manager and find people that do the technical work, which means I like shooting more than editing.

4. I hate when there is no communication in the group and I think if something happens (anything may happen anytime with anyone and it is very understandable) - you should inform your mates. Your team should know that you cannot come to the meeting, for instance. And another point is that if you promise something- DO it, or at least prevent the others that you cannot handle it, but don't leave it for the last moment. (Yes, there were some misunderstandings in our team but finally everything was all right)

5. GET permissions all the time you shot in a private place, even if it seems a public one. E.g.: markets, railway station, etc.

The following task was to do a Music Video for a given song. (Queen- The bohemian rhapsody). Our idea was to tell a story about a homosexual guy that killed his friend giving him drugs. He realizes his fault and can't stand the internal pain that he feels, he's trying to get out from pain but can't. He fights with hallucinations, the real and the fake life, but finally he escapes through death or through faith.
But here is the funny story: a couple of days before shooting the video, as we thought of it (we wrote even the scenario), we decided to change EVERYTHING.
Why? Because we understood that there is no way to shoot it like we thought of doing it. No necessary time and what was the worse - no necessary number of people that would be involved (actors). So, we had the idea to shoot dolls, plastic soldiers, anything we could find in Nora's brother’s room. It turned into a real adventure. Very funny experience! At the end, we had a clip with a very stable, strong, powerful statement:
A kid is playing the war. He does the same what he sees that is going on round him, in news especially. He sees what is going on in the World: war, crashes, bombs, politics and he feels lost in this War Space.
I think it shows also that sometimes adults forget that the next generation is coming and it has to be pure, happy and strong; but in an environment like that, it is difficult to grow up healthy (meaning - coming from a healthy environment)
It was not a very funny story, because once we did the movie and wanted to save it, it disappeared, was automatically deleted. Nobody understood why, so we had to start everything from the very beginning. Suddenly it happened to us again; I think there is no need to write down what we felt, staring at this wonderful human innovation. We felt desperate. Finally we did it, and I think it was good enough to make people think.

In conclusion, after having some theoretical background and a great experience from the practical part of the course, I would say that I feel ready to improve even more my movie making skills. The course had a very positive impact on all of us, starting with typical knowledge set and ending with getting to know better each other and our own reactions. Now, I know even better what I would like my place in a team to be and I have even more stable opinions about what a good Music Video is.