The document provides guidance for stage 2 of a research and experimentation process. It instructs the reader to research potential production techniques for their project, looking at a minimum of 3 related products, and collecting relevant materials. It emphasizes linking investigations to production intentions. The reader is then directed to analyze 3 specific music videos or images, assessing techniques they may want to employ or disregard. They consider the videos' styles, editing, visuals, and how they could implement these while fitting genre conventions and their artist's characteristics. They plan to approach their project with an abstract, unique style influenced by the research, without taking itself too seriously. Experiments are documented testing color grading, animation, and tracking shots to include stylistic elements.

1. Stage 2
Research + Experiments
Your name here

2. Production techniques research
• Research potential production techniques you might want to use or
feel would be most appropriate – these can be related to camera,
editing, story, sound, etc
• You should look at a minimum of 3 related products in your research.
• You should collect clips/still images/how to guides/etc that might
help you. When watching scenes from films, etc you could also ask
potential target audience what they think.
• You may need to add extra slides!
• With each technique you should assess whether you can use it or
how you might employ or why you may want to disregard it
completely
• Always think about your investigations links to your intentions and
production!

3. Product 1
• The first product I want to look at and analyse is the music video for the song ‘Everybody’
by the band Don Broco.
This video very much conforms to the convention of using an abstract or weird element to create a very
entertaining and memorable music video. A lot of the music industry is very overly saturated, so in order
to stand out and gain attention, most bands often have memorable elements in their music and their
promotional materials, specifically music videos. The general public will see thousands of music videos in
their lifetime, with a huge amount of them being completely forgotten, so the purpose of having videos
and related material that help the band stand out and feel unique are very important to the success of a
band.

4. Production 1
• The technique used in this music video that I want to implement into my music video is it’s
style, the strange, abstract content that helps the memorability of the band and the music.
I want to imitate this style because I feel it gives me the most opportunity to make what I
want, and not feel restricted by the over-used, commonplace conventions used in music
videos of the same genre.
• As a big fan of the band, I can say that my opinion of the video and it’s style is very positive,
I love the band, the song and the video. However, as for the potential target audience for
the video, they may have a different opinion depending on what they like. The reception
for the song and video by the fan base was very positive, with a lot of people commenting
that they didn’t understand the video, but nonetheless enjoyed it, especially considering
that this is the first video the band bad used this style - the first of many.

5. Product 2
Product 2 is another music video, this time by the band Primus and their song ‘My Name is Mud’, this
video also uses a similar style to Don Broco’s, however I want to look at and analyse the editing and
some of the special effects and image effects present. This video has a very distinct and unique visual
style, with silhouetted figures against an orange sky, contrasted by the shots inside the ‘Spa’, which is
more full of slightly unnerving imagery, with the mud baths and clay pig appearing in cups. I also
want to implement this video’s formula, in relation to the pacing of showing the two different ‘plots’
and the intro shot with the bass slapping.

6. Product 2
• In terms of the editing and visual style, the video has a definite colour tone, with the colour
orange taking center stage whenever it can. I’m pretty confident that the use of orange
doesn’t have any deeper meaning in the video other than to perhaps make the silhouette's
stand out and amplify a particular southern, ‘hillbilly’ tone that you get from the vocalists
style of singing. This is something I want to use because I like changing the colour balance
of things, making things different colours and in turn potentially changing the tone or
emotion of the shot.
• The way the video paces the shots of the band, the titular ’Mud’, and the Spa throughout
itself is something that I want to implement in my music video, as I have a similar formula
of having three different types of shots, each with their own different content; and I feel
this video does a great job of showing them all pretty equally and in a way that makes
sense and doesn’t confuse the audience.

7. Product 3
This product is the image present on the cover of Danny Brown’s album ‘Atrocity Exhibition’,
I’m not looking at it to necessarily analyse the meaning of it or the album itself, just the
image on its own. This image has a very abstract and uniquely distorted look, with his face
being combined with brightly coloured graphics and motifs. This image does link back to the
same strange and unique style that the other two products had, however in contrast, this
image has a more darker tone as opposed to the other two; who have a relatively lighter
hearted tone. I wish to carry over a similar appearance to how Danny Brown is represented
on the cover, as I want to give everyone a distinct look, similar to this. As I feel it would make
the video look more interesting and help it to better fit the video into the same style as the
two music videos.

8. Product 3
• The feeling I get from looking at the image is a feeling of uncertain emotion, as most of the
colours aren’t congruent with each other with some standing out more than others. The
yellow graphic that appears like a skull, feels to me to be something of a mask, almost like
he’s hiding emotions or something from each other that don’t fit with how he presents
himself. The potential audience’s opinion or interpretation of the cover will be likely very
different from mine, perhaps associating the colour’s to that of a nightclub or party,
locations rappers are most frequently associated to hang out at. And have that fit into the
same genre conventions of other related rappers and artists.
• In terms of any techniques I would disregard in using in my music video, I would probably
say that the tone for it will be a lot lighter than what is shown on the cover, as it does look
quite macabre, and my video will have more of a focus on the facial distortion with the
colours and graphics along with a lighter tone.

9. Genre and artist breakdown
• Think about the conventions of music video and which of these you
feel are the most appropriate for you video and why
• Think about the genre characteristics for your chosen artist – how do
you plan to employ these?
• Which techniques and styles do you think fans of your chosen genre
prefer? What should you expect to see in that type of music video?
• Use the following slides to show your ideas and explain these using
good illustrative examples – this is where your research and
explorations should start. Remember to consider the aspects we
looked at in class [and the academic things from Goodwin, etc].

10. Conventions
• A main convention, mainly found in the rock genre and any other style of music that has
instrumentation, is a filmed performance. A simulated performance where the band or
whoever is not actually performing in front of anybody, or is pretending to do so, is a very
common convention found in music videos. Filmed performances are a common
convention because it offers the audience a visual correlation to what they are hearing, it
also works as a piece of advertisement as the footage, if impressive enough, could
communicate how exciting the band might be to see live, and in turn could make touring
more successful.
• Most music videos tend to have a narrative playing throughout the video, most of the time
it amplifies, develops or relates to the message of the song but sometimes can just relate
to the tone or feel. This is done because narratives/stories tend to have the effect of
investing the audience more, perhaps leading to the viewer staying and watching longer.
• Some music videos may be abstract, or have a weird or unique element to them, it doesn’t
always have to necessarily relate to the song but sometimes they do. This is done if the
band perhaps has a weird or unique or dark element to them; or if the production
company on the video wanted to create something a bit different. A reason for including a
unique element to your music video is mostly down to having people remember it, the
industry is pretty saturated, so most bands need something to help them stand out more
to receive attention.

11. Genre Characteristics
• There’s a frequent feeling of not taking themselves too seriously with how the band
presents themselves and makes music, shown through their characteristics of brevity and
cheekiness. I intend to employ this in my video, as I feel the content is the right amount of
absurd to warrant the feeling of not taking it too seriously and having some fun with it and
some fun with the concept.
• I want to employ these characteristics because it alleviates a lot of the pressure of trying to
make something feel genuinely serious, and in turn alleviates the potential fear of it turning
into something laughable.

12. Chosen approach/justification
• I plan on approaching this project with the vision of creating an abstract looking music
video, that for one, doesn’t take itself too seriously and will hopefully be memorable. With
influence from my three researched products, I want the video to fit into the same unique
style so that the video can emulate a lot of what makes them great and memorable. Apart
from the Danny Brown cover, I never really found much of a deeper meaning to any of the
products, however they are unusual and hence difficult to really analyse. This doesn’t mean
that my music video won’t necessarily have a deeper meaning, it’s just I haven’t begun to
plan one yet.

13. Experiments
Camera/Editing/Audio Experiments
This is for you to evidence the filming and editing tests we did.
Be prepared to add extra slides.
You can add more experiments as you do them as the project progresses.

14. Experiment 1 - Process
• I primarily want to experiment with video filters and effects for my experiments, such as
changing the colour balance of shots and making them look different, maybe even changing
the emotion of it in turn. There are a few different editing techniques I want to try out to
accomplish this, obviously I could just use the colour balance tool in Adobe Premiere,
however I want to further develop the look by using the sliders in the ‘Lumetri Colour’ tool,
to make a colour more dominant. For example, if I wanted to make the sky look like it’s a
pink-ish sunset I would use the Lumetri Colour tool to do it.

15. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you include in your final
product?
• I will include the colour grading and filters present in my experiments, including the
pink/blue colour tones due to me liking how they look and how they communicate an
interesting tone and link to the tone of the song. The lighting of the environment I’m
filming in is something I’ll have to consider when I actually get round to shooting, as I
found that my experiments looked a bit off if the weather was brighter, this probably
won’t end up being too big of a problem considering I live in England. My goal with this
experiment is to hopefully get good enough at it to a point where I can change the
colours of the sky or objects to look abstract or like a neon nightmare, which again
kinda fits with the tone of the song.

16. Experiment 2 - Process
• I want to experiment with specific types of animation and shot composition, specifically
tracking shots. For my video I will need a lot of tracking shots, where the camera follows the
character as they move, this is because I want the video to have a natural feel to it, and the
use of long shots have a natural effect to them. I also want to use Adobe After Effects to
animate over the clips, having drawn on highlights and such, mostly just to add a feeling of
motion and to have something interesting going on throughout the video.

17. Reflection
• What elements of your experiments will you include in your final
product? What about this process has been notable [positive and
negative]?
• An element from my experiment I will include in my final product will be the
scribbles/drawings present throughout the video, I feel this gives the clips a distinct style
and look. It also adds to the mise-en-scene as it makes the shots more interesting to look
at, as the bright fast moving illustrations keep the consumer’s attention on the video. I said
I wanted to use this experiment to learn different shot types, specifically tracking shots, I
feel I have accomplished this quite well, as nearly all the shots in my experiment were done
with the camera following a target as they moved around. With this I tried to avoid
common issues with this shot type, like shaky shots and the camera losing focus; I feel
those elements weren’t present in my experiment, at least to a point that they weren’t
distracting. I also experimented with medium and medium-long shots, to better film long
or wide distances, I used this shot to show the animation of the ‘pole explosion’, done so to
give the shot a lot of space to take in the information.