Directors

 ENDS

Zack Sekuler and Daniel Inglesias Jr. are a directing duo creating music videos such as Sweater Weather and Let it Go by The Neighbourhood, Unsociable by X Ambassadors and many more. The music videos they create are very stylistic and aesthetically pleasing to watch, which is inspiration to my music video as it creates a better watching experience.

Looking at their other videos such as Let it Go, the lighting is very interesting as it is the main element used to construct the mood and to create an atmosphere. The lighting used only highlights a small part of her face in the parts of the narrative that are darker emphasising the dark tones creating a more sinister effect. The way that the music video is lit creates an easier way for the audience to understand the narrative as she appears to be artificially happy in the sections where she is with other people suggesting she is pretending to be okay when she is around them and then when she's on her own she seems to go off the rails which is also shown through her make up and her gesture codes as well as the fact that the scenes are lit differently with high key lighting in the 'happy' scenes and low key lighting in the darker scenes. This is something that has inspired me for my music video as it has showed me the impact that the light has over creating a mood and atmosphere for the audience and although I many not have the same equipment, I can at least try to create a similar effect when choosing how to light my music video. 

The ENDS duo also created music videos for the band that created the track I am using for my music video, X ambassadors, which shows me the stylish and the techniques they use have an impact on the audience that I will be targeting my video to and therefore this will come into consideration and has given me a wider understanding of how to make a product that the audience will like and want to watch through seeing how they have constructed something that the audience likes. 

Editing Test Shots

Practice footage

Colour Correction 

Through practicing using Final Cut Pro 10, I discovered there are many different ways I can colour correct and adapt the appearance of my footage. My preferred way to colour correct the shots is through the colour board as I found this gave me more control than using the effects bar and choosing one. Although using the different effects is a faster way of adapting the shot, I want my music video to appear more realistic therefore I will be using the colour board to colour correct my shots. There are four different options of colour correction on the colour board as you can adapt the colour through global, the shadows, the mid-tones and the highlight. To get a more natural appearance I found that using the mid-tones and the shadows and highlights provide more of a natural appearance and I discovered not to change too many as that isn't the aesthetic i'm going for. 

Rhythmic Cutting 

One of the down sides of Final Cut Pro 10 is the magnetic timeline as I discovered especially when editing to music, not having the ability to move the footage around freely is irritating. Through practicing I discovered that the way to overcome this is to choose the position tool which allows you to move the footage around freely. This really helped me when practicing editing to the beat. It also showed me that I will need a large amount of shots to make sure I have enough footage to edit rhythmically as it requires a large number of shots filling a shorter period of time, which I need to take into account when filming. 

Digi Pack Analysis

The Neighbourhood

The Neighbourhood are an American alternative rock band. The album cover ins in black and white which is a theme that runs through their music videos as they are also in black and white. On the left, is the front album cover showing a shot of what appears to be storm clouds with three symbols that signifies three different messages. On the left is an upside down eye of providence symbol, which represents the eye of God and suggests that  he is watching over human kind. The lead singer of the band (Jesse Rutherford) has this symbol tattooed onto his neck which suggests that one of the reasons it is on the cover is because it holds personal significance to him. he is watching over human kind, the lead singer of the band (Jesse Rutherford) has the symbol as a tattoo on his neck, suggesting that it holds some sort of personal significance to him. In the middle of the album cover is a heart, which is used to represent love as the title of the album is 'I Love You'. Lastly the upside down house is the bands logo and is used to represent them. 

The music videos of the band suggest that they find simplism to be important as they go for a more artistic appearance of their music videos rather than a crazy appearance with a lot going on. This is a trait that the alternative/rock genre holds as one of the ideologies of rock music is that the music is what is most important therefore the simplistic nature of their texts enable audiences to focus on the music rather that the exterior appearance. 

There are aspects of the album cover that will definitely be carried through to mine as they are conventional aspects of all album covers. This includes the bar code and if my track had any explicit content I would also use a parental advisory lable however my track doesn't need this as it doesn't have any bad language or explicit content.

Storyboard

My storyboard

I decided to storyboard the narrative and the performance separately to make sure I have each planned out therefore I would  be more organised for both filming times and therefore would have less of a risk of having to re film since I have planned the narrative like a short film therefore there will be enough if not too much footage therefore preventing me having to go back and re film different sections.