Deadlines/Brief

Music videos are so 80s/90s, right? They belong with the era when MTV screened wall-to-wall vids instead of 'reality' TV? Try telling that to the millions who bought Gangnam Style; were they really simply loving the music? 1.6bn (and still climbing) have viewed the video on YT, not to mention the many re-makes (school eg, eg2), viral ads + celeb link-ups (even political protest in Seoul) - and it doesn't matter how legit it is, this nightmare for daydream Beliebers is making a lot of money, even from the parodies + dislikes. All this for a simple dance track that wouldn't have sounded out of place in 1990 ... but had a fun vid. This meme itself was soon displaced by the Harlem Shake. Music vids even cause diseases it seems!
This blog explores every aspect of this most postmodern of media formats, including other print-based promo tools used by the industry, its fast-changing nature, + how fans/audiences create/interact. Posts are primarily written with Media students/educators in mind. Please acknowledge the blog author if using any resources from this blog - Mr Dave Burrowes

Monday 4 July 2011

Homeworks/deadlines through to end of year!

I can't help but notice many of you 'chilling' in the F Hall during your now plentiful frees...
You do have various ongoing pieces of work to do, and given that you're welcome to use F6 for work at any time you could quite easily complete all these - including the blogging that should follow a lesson - during your school day!
When you get to Uni you'll begin to appreciate the virtue of working ahead on some aspects, and I always try to enable you to do this with Media, so here are your final deadlines for this academic year:

BLOG SET UP + URL EMAILED TO ME + BROUGHT UP TO DATE: NOW/ONGOING
This is the single most important deadline of all. This was to be done for June 27th!!!
The A2 has started, and as before your blogging is where you evidence your R+P, with time management amongst those aspects which are formally assessed for your final mark. I've emailed + blogged on this:
Instructions on new blog; notes on what you can blog on; there are multiple posts on the topics we've touched on to date, such as this.
Some 2011 blogs scored 100% for R+P/Eval - will yours?!
You should be blogging on the mini-vid, including the original planning process, track selection, shoot and editing process; your initial thoughts on Final Cut; the prep and outcomes of/for Music Video Day, etc. You can blog on any videos, or aspects of the music biz, you want to from this point, in a similar vein to the exemplar film openings you scrutinised as part of the AS coursework research. You can of course make use, short of copy/pasting, of the detail on various MusiVidz blog posts.
As we finish each lesson, consider what key points you can blog on, perhaps adding your own examples to illustrate topics covered that day.


BLOG ON CHALLENGES/REQUIREMENTS OF BRITVID: Weds 6th [12A]; Thurs 7th [12D]
Aside from persuading JC to once more don a wig, what obstacles lie between you + a brilliant BritVid?!
We'll discuss this in the Tues 5th lesson: what will you need to consider for undertaking the Britney vid remake? Discuss what challenges you might face with regards to mise-en-scene (costume, make-up, location, props, general verisimilitude); dance choreography; directing actors; lip-synching; equipment on set (eg to access the track/vid), plus timing and planning. The combined Media classes will be shooting the entire vid in ONE day...
You will also be tasked with denoting a chunk of the Britney vid; if you wish to do this ahead of time see me and I'll allot you (this would be in pairs) a chunk of the vid to denote.

PRESENTATION ON MUSIC VIDS OF YOUR CHOICE: Thursday 7th + Friday 15th July
(By Thurs 7th: Decide + inform us which topic you've picked, which main videos you'll discuss and who you'll be working with - you can do this as a comment to this post. You could do this today...)
We will look to use these presentations in the final week. You can do this individually, or pairs or in a trio (no more!).
The idea is simply formalising part of what it is hoped you will independently engage in: closely analysing your own self-selected examples of music videos, noting conventions and perhaps anything fairly unique. As with film, you'll ultimately be wanting to justify your choices, no matter how left-field or unconventional, with reference to 'existing texts'.
You can pick a focus from the following, and will include a minimum of 3 video analyses within this:
The quiz touched upon the issue of representation (+ intertextuality); you could compare these 3 icons (Madonna on R!)
  • an act/band
  • a music vid director (eg Jonze, Corbijn, Cunningham - feel free to use the DVDs provided)
  • a (sub-)genre
  • a time period (dare you look way back at the 80s, the formative age for music vids, for example?!)
  • a particular aspect/convention of music vids
  • one of Goodwin's 3 types
  • representation issue/s (eg portrayal of women or youth ... or Yorkshire?!)
  • successful viral vids
Thats a very wide range you can choose from. A worksheet will be provided shortly with full details on this task. You don't have to use PowerPoint: a Prezi or film/vodcast would be interesting alternatives! You might even have used YouTube's annotation tools. Each group or individual (the choice is yours) is to provide a single A4 page of bullet points to summarize findings; I'll copy and staple a full pack of these from both classes.


MINI-VID: SHOT, EDITED, EXPORTED + SUBMITTED: Tuesday 19th July
ALL EDITING TASKS: Tuesday 19th July
The final 3 weeks will see you involved in the editing of 1 or more of: a mini-vid (each group splits into 2 to create 2 unique edits: more hands-on time with FCE thus guaranteed); BritneyVid section (there are 4 sections, 2 per class) + any doc/s on Music Vid Day; Month in Media (4 of you are involved in this 1st edition). Some of you are also looking to reshoot and recut your AS productions.
Much of the 'green' days has been set aside for this, but you could (and really should) use frees, lunch etc to advance this.
IGS at 1pm, Friday 22nd July?!
The following day is Celebration Day; if I have all your productions before then that gives me just enough time to create a DVD featuring all this work for the final Thursday or Friday.

No comments: