2. Planning
When we were planning our music video we took a look at popular R&B music videos which gave us ideas of what
we could include into our music video and what the audience expect from the conventions of the R&B music videos.
When we were planning we told our peers our ideas for the music video to which they gave us feedback to which
allowed us to change our ideas and base it off of what would appeal to the majority of the audience. When we did
our questionnaire we were able to get feedback from a various range of people allowing us to ensure that our music
video is good to the audience.
From our target audience we found out that the most important aspect to the music video for them was making
sure that the lip-syncing and lyrics because they believed that this was the core of the music video and what would
make it interesting and bring the audience in. This allowed us to base our music video on the visuals, take care in
ensuring that the lip syncing was accurate, and having a song that had lyrics that were relatable.
When we was researching our initial ideas we chose songs that we would be able to recreate the image our
audience were looking for.
When planning we wanted to ensure we were conforming to some of the conventions of the R&B genre yet
subverting some of them too, for example our artist is seen wearing clothes that are simple and none of them are
revealing or provocative even though some of the lyrics are sexual and seductive yet some of the audience may still
perceive the music video as innocent due to the fact that the artist isn’t being seductive. However, the fact that the
artist is looking into the camera as she is singing the lyrics this may be seen to some as being seductive as the actor
is engaging with the audience. The feedback we received from our peers helped us to decide that this is what we
wanted to do with our music video as people said that they were looking to see something different in music videos
as in this century music videos tend to follow the same idea and conventions rather than subverting them and being
more unique.
3. In addition to this, the audience feedback helped us to decide our location as we knew our
target audience wanted to see locations that were visually appealing hence why we chose
London, Maidstone and a damask background.
To further add to this, our target audience also gave us verbal feedback on how they
expected good lighting and quality which prompted me to come up with the idea of using
quality streets wrappers and placing them on our camera flash in order to create different
lighting for the music video. My partner thought this was a good idea after we had discussed
what we could do with this and we decided to incorporate this idea into both portions of the
music video as this allowed the two videos to have a link between one another as they were
two different songs that I thought we should merge together in order for it to be unique.
In the previous slide I mentioned the mise en scene of our actor and how she was not
dressed provocatively, this was encouraged by our audience’s feedback as they felt that it
was not important for the artist to dress in such a manner to attract an audience. We
wanted to teach our target audience who would include young teenage girls that dressing in
a revealing manner is not needed in order to fit into society.
4. Our target audience research assisted in helping us plan what type of music video
we was going to produce. Although we did not include this as a question in our
questionnaire we decided to ask people within in our school which was perfect as
they were of the age range of our target audience (15-19). We asked them what
type of video would go with our song choice and 100% said a non-narrative music
video would be the best. We took this into account and planned our video based
on having no narrative which was fairly easy as this is what we wanted to do for our
video initially.
We asked our target audience what age they would expect the artist to be and we
got a range of ages from 19-22, we did not have access to anyone who would be
willing to take part in our music video of those ages so we compromised and chose
an actor 17/18 years old which wasn’t too off the age range our target audience’s
vision for our music video. This was helped by the fact that our actor looked much
more mature meaning that she fit the image of what was expected.
5. Filming and editing
In the filming of our music video we chose locations that were picturesque and appealing to the audience to target
the audience. We made our first half of the music video set during the night time in order to create a mysterious
vibe and because the lighting during the night time created a nicer look for our music video, this helped to contrast
the second half of the music video when the lighting would completely change to the day time as would the location
of that portion of the music video.
After our first day of filming we showed our shots to people who were part of our target audience and people who
weren’t in our target audience and they all gave feedback on how the mise en scene - artists hair was straight and
this didn’t seem to look right for the video as she looked almost too innocent for the image we intended to portray.
As the artists hair is naturally curly, our audience suggested that we keep her hair natural and film with her hair curly
for the duration of the video instead. Once we went back for our second day of filming with the artist having her hair
curly, we felt that this fit the genre much better and created a better look for our artist.
When editing our music video we got feedback from various teachers who suggested that we had cuts in time to the
beat which we meant that we ensured that there were quick cuts resulted in the scenes being quick and snappy
which we were happy with as it would keep people watching. We attempted to cut our scenes at each beat as much
as possible in order for it to be visually appealing but as the beats were very quick in the music video we could not
do this at all times otherwise none of the lip syncing or scenes could properly be watched so we would have random
cuts throughout the music video too.
Similarly, we showed our peers the music video and asked if the lip syncing was all in sync and if there needed to be
any alterations. One of our peers who was in the process of making his own music video came up with ideas for
adding a transition into our music video in order to allow it to flow better in some places which helped it look much
more professional and suit the genre of music.
6. Moreover, we included a wide variety of shots in order to keep
the video different and interesting. We included a lot of close up
shots as this is a convention of R&B music videos as the focus
tends to be on the artists facial expression. Andrew Godwin
recommended that this was a good way to create a connection
between the audience and the artist, keeping them watching as
they would feel that they are personally being addressed by the
artist due to the fact that the artist is looking directly into the
eyes of the target audience.
Overall, our target audience had the same ideas as we did when
it came to planning, editing and filming so the changes that
were made were not drastic at all but definitely did improve the
quality and professionalism of our music video.
7. Feedback
The feedback we have had on our music video has been extremely
positive. Verbally the feedback we were given by our peers were
that it suited the artist. People said that it seemed natural to the
actor and the style of the actor fit the genre very well.
These are the comments we received on our video on YouTube.
They are positive comments and people loved our video.
The only thing I would change about the process of filming the
music video is the times we decided to film as the actor didn’t like
filming when other people were around as she didn’t want to
attract attention to herself. I would change the cinematography as
the person who filmed some of the shots wasn’t able to work with
the camera that well and pan the camera out which was
unfortunate. We tried to practice on this but my peer found this
difficult and was unable to do so without it looking unprofessional
majority of the time.
