Education

2.  During the planning phase of our music
video we found several examples of poker
scenes from films. Most of our ideas were
original but we did adapt a couple of shots
from these clips to enhance the standard of
our music video.

4.  Our music video was entirely narrative
with no performance shots of the band
what so ever. In this way it challenges
Andrew Goodwin's theory on
amplification where it is narrative and
performance shots.
 An example of a narrative based music
video would be Ed Sheeran - Lego
House. One shot that I noticed was very
similar to ours was the opening shot on
the road.
 Although it is a narrative based video
ours challenges it in the sense there is
not miming in our video.
 The narrative of our music does however
follow typical conventions and
demonstrates a back alley poker game,
only breaking away twice to show the
back stories of both characters.

5.  Our music video is mainly based around a single
narrative, however it does have back stories for
each of the main characters.
 It goes against conventions because it does not
two separate narratives, instead gives you the
foundations of why each player is in the game.
The juxtaposition shown between the two players
is shown throughout the video. We purposefully
create empathy for the man in debt and the
audience wants him to win the final hand and
leave the ‘bad guy’ or antagonist of the video,
losing his money.
 This can be seen in Levi Strauss’ theory and the
‘binary opposites’ such as good vs evil. However
neither of the main characters as necessarily
‘good’ they are just in the game for different
reasons.
 An example of a multi-stranded narrative music
video would be ‘Your Life Is a Lie’ by MGMT. Our
video goes against this music video however
because it shows the story of several characters
throughout the video where as our is more
narrative based and only shows the main two.

6.  We made our video as real as we could,
with the low key lighting and the ‘back
alley’ poker game theme. We gained
most of our inspiration in terms of
characters from the film ‘Rounders’ as
there aren’t many poker themed music
videos.
 The film has the man in debt playing to
get his life back, and you have the
owner of the casino who is in the game
because poker is his hobby and he is
very good at what he does.
 Here we have used this existing product
as our inspiration for the stereotypes of
a typical back alley poker game. We
also have the idea of the ‘final hand’
being the deciding hand, and you are
drawn to the man in debt and want him
to win even thought the owner is very
confident in his actions. We did change
the costumes to show the binary
opposites more clearly.

8.  As a mentioned in my previous
slide, we made the entire mise en
scene like a back alley poker game,
we had props that you would
expect, such as the poker table,
chips and cards.
 The lighting was also a key part of
the music video, it was very dim
lighting to bring an eeriness to the
video to enhance the theme,
however when editing we did have
to increase the brightness of some
shots because it was too dark.

10.  We used these techniques
throughout the music video. We
used the slo-mo’s to add tension
and atmosphere.
 The fades and blurs were
necessary for some transitions.
For example we used a blur to
break away to the back story, the
blur provides the audience with a
flashback effect as it blurs into
black and white, signifying that it is
a different time period.
 We also cut some shots in time to
the music, for example right
before the chorus we made sure
that it cut when the beat kicked in.
This is very conventional part of a
music video because it gives the
audience personal satisfaction

11.  We edited over the opening sequence
with a pan of some cards. This is to show
that where that character is going, before
there was no hint until it started to cross
cut between the shuffling of cards and
him walking up the path.
 The chorus was a major part of the music
video because it was a time lapse of all
of us playing poker to show the time
passing. It is a common shot amongst
music videos because it is very effective.
 An example of this would be in Kings of
Leon ‘Use Somebody’. It challenges this
music video because it complies
completely with Goodwin’s theory of
amplification as it is a narrative and
performance video. The time lapse is of a
motorway and it does not go on for as
long as our time lapse and is not as
significant in their music video
 We only used to titles to introduce the
song and the band it is by, just so the
audience are aware of what the song is
and who is it buy in case they are unsure.

13.  We used a range of different shots to keep the music video
flowing and keep the audience interested.
 Close-ups, ECU’s and medium shots are all typical conventions
of a music video in order to show the characters expression, or
show the band playing, e.g ECU of hand playing the guitar.
 We did a 360 pan of all the players as it was an effective shot
that worked well.
 Our main inspiration for some of the shots was from the film
‘Casino Royale’. I found many of the poker shots very
interesting and we adapted some of the shots in our own music
video.
 Casino Royale has a very professional mise en scene, we
adapted these shots to fit the theme of a back alley poker
game. We challenged the hands played in Casio Royale
because we were aware not many audiences would understand
what a straight flush was, so we adapted it to fit out target
audience with the win of four aces.