Q1.The inspiration of our music video initially came from the acclaimed Kanye West “My Beautiful Dark Fantasy” album. We thought the album is just the perfect product and genre for our type of video. Because of the variety in his music in terms of contrast and raving elements, we decided to use this genre for our music video, which is Hip-Hop.
Lost in the world in particular, come about because we wanted to make a unique an different type of video. This song contains more element than a normal Hip-Hop track nowadays. It features tribal drums, astonishing vocals, gospel-styled chorus and increased and final measured tempo. All of these features created the atmosphere of a really dynamic video. We knew that we had lots of ideas and creativity to include in it, and so we went for it.
Firstly, we took a look at the video made for the song originally. Apparently there wasn’t an official stand-alone video, instead there was a 34 minute long Full-length film made for the video album and so we took elements from the part we was interested in; which was the last seven minutes, in our video we knew we have to include a really thick woods in our shots. We had lots of establishing shots showing the environmental properly. This is a major factor, because the idea of the music video is about a teenager who is having fantasies about this girl and being lost in the world trying to find her.
Secondly, we can agree that our music video breaks away from the abnormal conventions. It stands out and alone in terms of textures, footage and narrative.
There were mostly few to no contrast used in most of the shots, which is one of the reasons of it being different from other types of videos. The way we used and merge dissolving effects in the video, to emphasize more of the important shots and images is a positive step that makes our video unique. One major reason behind this is that we know the lyrics has to nerve with the flow of the video, and so we made use of the cross dissolve allot.
Another effect mostly used that makes our video different is the use of slow motion. More than 60% of the video was in slow motion. This shows and emphasizes on the fact that the main performer is in a world that is well dead, no help, no clues and no one to cry out too, like also made the slow motion an important shot such as when clues and strange moments are shown.
Moreover, we think our music video consists of the 6 major conventions found that are meant to be found in a music video. Our video demonstrates Genre Characteristics in both the lyrics and video. The lyrics, if listened to properly, could be recognized straight away as an hip-hop type of music at the start of music. Our video also stresses on this by combining both fast paced shots and slow motions together. Fast paced shots mostly for when the beat goes fast, and we even try and make the editing and drums form together through use of Synchronized Editing. Although, this could be seen as a common feature amongst music videos, but we used it in a way to demonstrate our genre.
Another factor is the relationship between lyrics and visuals, which was mentioned earlier. This is a major, if not the most important feature/factor a music video should have. So we went for the idea of shooting in locations that rarely have audience or extras. Clayton, Manchester which was the location for most of the woods shots, is a very rare area with dense woods and we know it was the best idea and location for us to film in. For example, every time the lyrics is about “lost in the world”, we try and put in an establishing shot to show the location, more importantly to stress the fact he is all alone.
This is almost what we did regarding relationships, between music and visuals. We knew this is another important factor amongst music video conventions. Also we achieved this by the use of establishing shots, synchronized editing, close-ups and slow motion. This is where we knew close-ups were important. Because the artists have to develop themes and styles and so we had close-ups on him to create that image for the audience.
Normally, music videos often have intertextual reference to other music videos or films or even TV programmes. We could say out music video is a reference to or connected with the movie-like music video done by Kanye West for the whole album. This is because we took ideas from the video, which helped us a lot in our video.
However our video doesn’t compete the 6 theory of music video, as it lacks voyeuristic treatment of women’s bodies, we could not have achieved his because it was hard finding a female that will be willing to do the roles we had in mind. Because, the role has to depict and portray the female being Gory, Gruesome and brutal, it was hectic to find an outsider that will take up that role, as our group doesn’t have any female members.
By Mark
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