Lip Syncing Video

This is our lip-syncing video to Watercolour by Pendulum, we think that we got our editing pretty much spot on in this and we hope to transfer our skills over to our actual music video. Obviously in this piece, the locations weren't really meant to be considered and mise-en-scene wasn't either. This is purely because this was just us practising our lip syncing and to know how to edit the clips in time with the audio. We did sort of consider locations a bit because it would have been boring if the same location was used for every shot.

As covered in a recent post, we used the song Watercolour by Pendulum because we all knew the song and the lyrics so therefore, it was a lot easier for us to lip sync the lyrics for the song in our lip sync practice video.



By Connor Nagle, Reece Field and Jack Fanchette.

Target Audience Brief

To find out what our target audience would be, we devised a questionnaire about music videos with a few questions on Drum 'n' Bass. We handed these questionnaires out to a selection of people of different ages, including but not limited to teenagers, adults and the elderly. We then took in these questionnaires, totalled the results up and finally analysed them.

From our questionnaire results, we found that our target audience are teenagers, specifically aged 16-20 year olds. I think this is because drum and bass is considered to be quite cool at the moment and people like tapping their foot every time the bass drum is hit. We are being pretty specific with our target market audience because even though it is targeted primarily at them, it doesn't mean that other markets won't like drum and bass. Therefore we are just trying to make sure the audience that we are targeting is the 16-20 year olds but it will be a bonus if there are other groups interested. We think also that we would like to target our music video mainly at boys because we feel they will get more into it than females and they are more likely to like the video.

This picture below shows boys who we expect to like our music video, this is because they fit into our age and gender type, also the clothes that they are wearing are similar to the ones that we will use in our music video.

 

By Jack Fanchette and Connor Nagle

Research into Chosen Artist

Stan SB (aka. Stanley Stevenson Byrne) is a young pop/drum and bass/dubstep Singer songwriter with a cool new way of expressing music, mainly through the dance music medium. Stan SB has very recently changed his name to Fox Stevenson but we are going to stick with his old name because that is the name he used to do the song Flat Foot Face. With around 16,000 subscribers on YouTube and around 600,000 views on YouTube, he is a small yet high flying new artist with plenty to offer. Equipped with an awesome drummer (Stephen Heselton), an amazing guitarist (Timothy Reid) and an arsenal of beautiful synths, the army of three are ready for business. Flat Foot Face is his best song in terms of views on YouTube, racking in over 150,000 views on it's own which is not far off a third of all of his views on YouTube. With huge drums, brilliant bass sounds, incredible synth-lines and tremendous vocals, Stan SB will hook you in an instant and he is not someone to miss out on. Stan SB is an artist that is not really well known in respect to some of the bigger dum and bass artists but Stan SB in unique and we hope our music video is good enough to be used as his first music video for one of his most popular songs "Flat Foot Face" on YouTube.

This video below is his song Flat Foot Face and we feel it is a very good song to make a music video for because it has the right lyrics and we wanted to do a video for an artist that isn't really well known. The lyrics in this music video are very effective because the lyrics create a basis to create a music video from and this song is a very good example of that.



By Connor Nagle

Contacting Record Company for Use of Song

 This is our message to SubSphere records, we had to message them on YouTube because their website has been down for about a month now and we needeed to get through to them in some way and this was the only alternative. We tried to make the message as polite as possible but we also wanted them to respond so we put "Please reply as a matter of urgency".

 

 

By Connor Nagle, Reece Field and Jack Fanchette

Lip Syncing Practice - Chosen Video and Reasons Why We Are Doing It

Lip Syncing is the movement of lips to a pre recorded song to give the appearance that the person who is performing is the one who is singing.

The song that we chose to do our lip syncing practice on was Pendulum - Watercolour. The reason why we chose this song is because it is in the same sort of genre (D&B) that we want to do for our final music video. This song incorporates quite a lot of good shots and fast cuts in it which we hope to incorporate into our final music video to fit in with the D&B genre. The song in it's-self we thought is a good song and is a song that we all knew. This helped with being able to lip sync in time because it is easier if you know the lyrics of a song before you attempt to lip sync to it, especially if it is in front of a camera.

We thought that our lip syncing practice actually went better than expected but we have also realised now that the editing of the music video is going to take a long time because it took us a little while to even edit the lip syncing practice and that was pretty simple. We will need to allow enough time to edit the actual music video as it will take a long time to do and this has given us an insight into that.



By Connor Nagle

Our Favourite Music Videos and Why

Connor Nagle - Waiting all night - Rudimental

This is my favourite music video because I love how real the video is and it also relates to the lyrics well. The narrative is really good and is a life story of a BMX champion and actor Kurt Yaeger, who lost his lower leg in a motorcycle accident in 2006. This video is also inspired by the 2012 paralympic games in London and this video also links in with their other singles which are Not Giving In and Feel The Love and they are about overcoming struggles so they shot the piece in a home video style to fit in.

The shots are pretty simplistic but they are emphasised by the realistic element of the whole narrative which forms a good music video in this instance in my opinion. There is good use of clothing throughout to make it fit in with the narrative that they are going for. The settings are very realistic because the first one is in a hospital with the man laying on the bed, the second is at a skate park where he is trying to find his feet again after the fatal accident that ruined his career and the third one is where they are cycling through a storm drain in America. There is quite fast paced editing in this music video and this goes along with the song and fast beat of the song.




Jack Fanchette - Destabilise - Enter Shikari

This is my favourite music video because of how the editing is done. It is also well done from being in such a simple location (a warehouse). The album the song was eventually released on (A Flash Flood Of Colour) was all about the singers views on how our economy and politics has changed since the band's first album 'Take to the Skies' (2007).

The whole video consists of the band performing by themselves in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse. There is not much of a narrative in the video so it mainly relies on the shots used, the editing and the accuracy of the lip syncing. In my opinion, I believe these aspects were executed brilliantly. The editing is used to emphasise certain points in the video and the song (e.g. the start of the chorus). It also helps to relate to the album itself; there are many parts in the video where the colouring dramatically changes, relating to the album name 'Flash Flood Of Colour'.




Reece Field - Needing Getting - Ok Go

This is my favourite music video because I like the song but mostly because it is fascinating to watch and I like the way that it all flows. I am a fan of most of Ok Go music videos for this reason. There is no narrative shown in this video, like in many other Ok Go music videos. But just look at how clever this music video is, how many artists have a car playing their song. Their work is in a league of its own in the way that it is poles apart from anything your mainstream band, group or artist would do.

In Needing/Getting in particular the attention to detail is phenomenal. There is an endless list of things that could go wrong in this music video and yet nothing does. It is its complexity, diversity and originality which, in my opinion, make this the most entertaining music video in the world.




By Connor Nagle, Jack Fanchette and Reece Field.

Music Video Brief

Our brief is to produce a promotional package for the release of an album and it needs to include;

• A Music Promo Video (60%)
• A digipak for the albums release (20%)
• A magazine advertisement for the digipak (20%)

Music videos are show reels that can often be played with certain songs. Not all songs use music videos as it is up to the artist if they should wish to have one. Often, a music video will include the artist themselves lip-syncing to their track, whilst becoming part of a narrative specific to the video; this narrative will often have links to the song and its lyrics. It will also often include a number of actors to help portray the narrative, depending on the contents of the music video.

(Party In The USA music video)

For example, in Miley Cyrus’ song ‘Party in the USA’, there is not much of a storyline/narrative as the song is based around partying. Therefore there are a large amount of teenagers in the video doing just that; this has been done to help get across the message from the song, assuming that the message is somewhere along the lines of partying.

 
(Gangnam Style music video)

Music videos are also used to promote the artist as well as the song. This can be because something in the video causes some form of controversy with the viewers. This is often the case when something in the music video challenges societies outlooks on religion/creed, race or gender. In some cases, an artist or song can become successful and popular simply through their video (for example, Gangnam Style by PSY).

By Jack Fanchette

Questionnaire Analysis

This questionnaire was put online and also given out to people of different ages.

1. What is your gender?

• Female
• Male

This question just gives us a general idea of what genders the people were who answered the questionnaire.

2. What is your age?

• Under 16
• 16-20
• 21-24
• 25-29
• 30-34
• 35-39
• 40-44
• 45-49
• Over 50

The main group that answered the questionnaires were 16-20 yr olds and they were the people who also said they had heard drum and bass. This age group gave us an outline what sort of target audience to go for when making our own music video.

3. What is your current occupation? (open question)

• Tesco
• Asdas
• Student
• Retail Assistant
• Retail
• Cleaner
• Teacher
• Governor

This question gives us an outline of what sort of occupation someone is in and how this can affect their music/video genre preference.

4. What is your favourite music genre? (open question)

• Eighties
• Pop
• Drum & Bass
• Rock
• Dubstep
• Indie
• Singer/Songwriter
• Metal
• Hip-hop

This question gives us a really good idea on what genre of music people like, this is good because then we know what genre people of that target audience like and therefore our video can be sort of tailor made to fit in with the desired target audience.

5. Do you only listen to music from that genre?

• Yes
• No

This question gives us a really good idea whether people just listen to the sort of music genres they listed above, we want people who are open to listen to drum and bass and not just think its rubbish because of one song or music video. Most people said that they don't only listen to the genre of music that they listed which is good.

6. What are your 3 favourite music videos and why? (open question)

Music videos:

• Lazy song
• Wake me up when September ends
• Don't you worry child
• Still into you
• Closer
• Fun
• Nightmare
• Stand up and run
• A.M.E.R.I.C.A
• Club Tropicana
• Stay
• Like an prayer
• Lucky
• Mercy
• Seven Days
• Waiting all night
• End credits
• Gangnam style
• Thriller
• In the Navy
• The pretender
• Destabilise
• Banquet
• Its my life
• Teenage Dirtbag
• Radioactive
• Busy
• Need U 100%
• Jack
• So what
• Left behind
• Raise your glass
• Emergency
• Poker face
• This is war
• Sail
• Bounce
• Goodbye Mr A

Why?

Good editing
Simple but effective
Funny
Good video
Good narrative
Entertaining
Cool
Interesting
Funky
Emotional
Realistic
Good shots
True story
Different
Good costumes
Colourful
Dramatic
Good locations

This is a very good question because this gives us as a group a massive idea on what music videos people like and why they like them. We will have to consider including nearly all of the things they mentioned to properly entertain and keep our target audience watching our music video. Some of the music videos listed above are really good, mainly because they have a good narrative and we have found that it is really vital to have a good narrative to have a good and understandable music video, no matter what the genre is.

7. Do you watch any music channels?

• Yes
• No

This question gave us an idea on if the respondents watch any music videos, we wanted to know if they watched any music channels because most music channels show music videos instead of just listening to a song.

8. If so what music channels do you watch? (open question)

• MTV
• Kerrang
• Viva
• Magic
• 4Music
• Scuzz

This question tells us the music channels our respondents watch, most of them are channels which mainly play pop/drum and bass/dance/hip-hop and one of them shows rock/hardcore rock, we like the fact that the majority of ones chosen show drum and bass videos because then that means people have heard drum and bass as it isn't the biggest of genres but is definitely starting to make a come through. This leads us onto the next question;

9. Have you ever listened to drum and bass music?

• Yes
• No

Most of our respondents have heard drum and bass which is quite pleasing, our respondents were mainly in our age group of 16-18 and therefore drum and bass is played a lot on the radio channels that our age group listen too but we asked the older people and they didn't seem to know about it really which was a bit weird as it used to be very popular.

10. Do you like drum and bass music?

• Yes
• No

There were mixed opinions on drum and bass, some people like it and some people don't like it, the majority were people that liked it which is good for us.

By Connor Nagle

Questionnaire Answers

We conducted a questionnaire to ask people about what sort of music they like and if they know of or have heard of drum and bass. We did a paper copy and an online copy and there were 27 respondents.

This here shows the answers that were given by the respondents:

1. What is your gender?

• Female - 16
• Male - 11

2. What is your age?

• Under 16 - 0
• 16-20 - 23
• 21-24 - 0
• 25-29 - 0
• 30-34 - 1
• 35-39 - 0
• 40-44 - 1
• 45-49 - 1
• Over 50 - 1

3. What is your current occupation? (open question)

•  Tesco
• Asdas
• Student -20
• Retail Assistant
• Retail
• Cleaner
• Teacher
• Governor

4. What is your favourite music genre? (open question)

• Eighties
• Pop - 4
• Drum & Bass - 4
• Rock - 8
• Dubstep - 2
• Indie -3
• Singer/Songwriter - 2
• Metal
• Hip-hop - 2

5. Do you only listen to music from that genre?

• Yes - 4
• No - 23

6. What are your 3 favourite music videos and why? (open question)

Music videos:

• Lazy song
• Wake me up when September ends
• Don't you worry child
• Still into you
• Closer
• Fun
• Nightmare
• Stand up and run
• A.M.E.R.I.C.A
• Club Tropicana
• Stay
• Like an prayer
• Lucky
• Mercy
• Seven Days
• Waiting all night
• End credits
• Gangnam style
• Thriller
• In the Navy
• The pretender
• Destabilise
• Banquet
• Its my life
• Teenage dirtbag
• Radioactive
• Busy
• Need U 100%
• Jack
• So what
• Left behind
• Raise your glass
• Emergency
• Poker face
• This is war
• Sail
• Bounce
• Goodbye Mr A

Why?

Good editing
Simple but effective
Funny
Good video
Good narrative
Entertaining
Cool
Interesting
Funky
Emotional
Realistic
Good shots
True story
Different
Good costumes
Colourful
Dramatic
Good locations

7. Do you watch any music channels?

• Yes - 13
• No - 14

8. If so what music channels do you watch? (open question)

• MTV - 3
• Kerrang - 2
• Viva - 2
• Magic
• 4Music - 3
• Scuzz - 2

9. Have you ever listened to drum and bass music?

• Yes - 20
• No - 7

10. Do you like drum and bass music?

• Yes - 17
• No - 10

By Connor Nagle, Jack Fanchette and Reece Field