Looking back at this project as a whole, there are several ways in which my understanding of music videos have changed. I learnt that music videos are not just about the good song choice or the way the cast dress or the amount of makeup they wear, it is more about the way it is produced. The camera shots and angles are key when it comes to recording a music video as the audience need to get a view of everything that is going on in the video and so that it looks effective and interesting for the audience to watch. I also gained more knowledge on the fact that music videos need to have a storyline so it can make sense and match the song, not just recording a video and choosing a song and lip-syncing to it because that way it will not make much sense and it will be useless. I was aware that there are certain styles and conventions of music videos which is why when I made my music video in my group, we made sure it was a certain style and fit the conventions.
My initial idea for a music video was to make the video match the lyrics of the song. Our chosen song as a group was Dua Lipa New Rules, my idea was to have a girl and a boy in a relationship however the girl finds out her boyfriend has been seeing other girls behind her back and therefore she makes new rules for girls when they are in a relationship (the rules are are sung in the song).
As a group, we chose Sayeems idea which is having two girls getting ready for a date to meet up with two boys, however one of the girls is cheating behind the other girls back by dating both of the boys making a new rule that you can cheat on your boyfriend/girlfriend. We chose this idea as we are trying to promote the message that people in relationships cheat in everyday life therefore promoting the idea of new rules as we thought it would make sense if the music video was based on a new rule to cheat. This is inspired by Michael Jacksons Thriller as he uses a short narrative within his music video and he surprises the audience with a lot of plot twists as well.
Our roles and responsibilities in the group were straight forward, the cameraman is Sayeem, he will be recording every scene for our music video and will use different types of shots and angles. there will be 4 actors which are Saquib, Arash, myself and Melisa. Melisa is not in out group however we needed another female actor so she did not mind helping us. Once the music video is shot and ready to edit, we said we will all help edit the video however Saquib will focus on it mainly.
The production was successful however, we took quite a while to record our music video as not everyone in the group had time as they had other things to do for our units. Also Melisa had her own music video to do and paperwork so we had to wait for her to be ready to help us with our video as well. During the filming there were no issues as everyone knew their roles and we all agreed with each other.
The strengths of the completed film is that it turned out the way we wanted it to and it had very good angles and camera shots which made it seem very effective.
However our weaknesses was that it took time to film it and edit it before the deadline as we filmed it last minute which made us rush it, but overall the video is good.
Others have responded to the video in both positive and negative ways, the majority say it has a good storyline and the shots are very good however some say it should not have been rushed and changed the storyline as it is a very common story that people are used to.
If I could do the project again I would do many things differently, the first thing I would change is not leave it to last minute as that is what made our music video not the best and looks rushed. Also, I would use 2 cameras instead of one as it would have made the video so much better by showing even more camera shots and different locations in a specific scene.
Caren Lamaa 