A2 Media - Preliminary Project

We finished the prelininary project creating a 1minute music video for the song raining blood by slayer. From this small task we have learned many things, one of these being to shoot from alot more angles, in out actual shoot we thought we had covered alot of angles using our experience from past projects, however we found upon reviewing the footage that we had not included a large enough variety of shots in the video, this being because it is the first music video we have created and so when we do our final project we now know to include a much wider range of shots in a music video than would be required for a normal video. Not only this but we also learned the importance of matching up the video to the music, this was not particulary done well when we did this video certain parts were synced up but then there were other parts of which didnt seem to fit with the track in anyway and so we know when we come to our final project to use footage of the band playing the actual song in the video, in this way it would ensure that we would be able to accurately and professionally be able to sync the music with the video. we now know how important the syncronization of music to video can be in improving the asthetics of the video and how professional it looks in general. Also we realised the setting in which we had choosen for our video was not actually suitable for what was happeneing in the video, being that it seemed like a live performance video, when there were in actual fact no shots of reaction from the audience which made it ultimately difficult to ulitmately depict a performance by the band. Futhermore upon futher study we realised during the original video there was a shot in the background that wasd in a constant motion and the video would be constantly referring back to this elongated shot which would withhold a motif within the video. Finally we have to come to the conclusion that for the video the inclusion of a narrative could be vital. In the video, the live perfomance can obviously not be replicated as we do not posses the means to do so, but we can recreate some sort of narrative to the video and for the song we choose, in order to do this for the fianl project we will ahve to study in depth the song and see what connotations we can gather from it and from that we can come to a conclusion of what sort of narrative would be appropriate for the song and moreover the video. As from suggestions we have heard we think it would be best to include a narrative over the band the playing so while jumping back to the band playing the song, we would also jump to the narrative that was behind the video in essence. However not all of our video was so bad, there were a few aspects of the video that were very comparable to other metal videos and the camera angles we used and the syncronization of the music to the video, an example of this being at the beginnning of the video where we had the drum beats perfectly synced up the the music itself and it looked really good and very effective. Also our use of lighting was something else that proved to look very qell done in the exported product, particulary the use of the red lighting at particular points making the video directly related to the song "raining blood"  the obvious relation to blood depicted from the red.

A2 Media

This is the finished preliminary task in doing this we have realised several things and factors of which contribute to quality of the video, tomorrow i will post an in depth entry detailing each of these and how we can repair them in order for the final task to be shot.

A2 Media - Preliminary Project

Me and james has completed all of the filming for our preliminary project, we went into the hall and set up a drumkit, guitar and bass. We had me plaing guitar with my long hair suited to the metal style video, jonathan moore on drums and greg wilson on the bass guitar. From there we began to shoot from multiple different angles posing and moving in different ways much alike to what we had seen from previous metal videos. We also included multiple close ups being either from one side of the guitar to another side of the badd created a angle of which destroyed the 180 degree rule in a way of making the video seem very quick and so in the edit we will actually be able to switch together shots from diffferent angles combining it into an edit whereby it will be extremely quick and fast paced creating a simalar effect to other metal videos we have viewed. One thing which we did not do was have a stack of amps avaliable to use, however we did incorporate many themes of metal videos such things like "headbanging" and "devil-horns". We will begin editng next week when we have had our videos converted to an editable format.

A2 Media - Preliminary Project

Today me and James went to the main hall and set up one of the school drum kits which we have gained permission to use, we set them up (see james blog for pictures) and then we filmed some test footage on them. We also got a guitar and filmed me doing the typical "headbanging" feature of metal video, we will post this kind of footage on the blog and we are planning on  filming tomorrow.

A2 Media - Research

Audience

Musician and filmmaker Rob Zombie observes, "Most of the kids who come to my shows seem like really imaginative kids with a lot of creative energy they don't know what to do with" and that metal is "outsider music for outsiders. Nobody wants to be the weird kid; you just somehow end up being the weird kid. It's kind of like that, but with metal you have all the weird kids in one place."

Heavy Metal fans often go by the name of "metalheads", "headbangers" or "thrashers". Each of these obviously has connotations to the music itself the music that these fans follow like a religion. Typically heavy metal fans have developed a culture of alienation in regards to the rest of society, they tend to see themselves as outcast and refuse to conform to mainstream traditions, espicially in regards to music. In many regards this is where the long hair, symbol of metal fans, comes in it is almost like a rebellion against the typical demands of society to have short and tidy hair, fans of metal feel that they need to rebal, if against nothing at all sometimes. The long hair, leather jacket, chains, studs and patches are what define metal fans, and the folow tradition by ritually going to concerts and taking part in onling band websites etc.

In regards to the music itself the term "sell-out" has become a term frequently used in representing people who turn away from metal music and drift toward lighter rock radio music. Using this we know that in order to target our intended audience we must actually represent the fans of the genre as well, by this we must make sure that our video is not a "sell-out" so its not mainstream and does not conform to mainstream tradititons.

A2 Media - Preliminary Task

While me and James have still more research to do we have now decided to begin our preliminary task which is a small snipit of a music video which we will create so we can get an idea of whether what we want to do is achievable or not. The video will be about 30-60 seconds, the idea so far that me and James have come up with is to use the song "Raining Blood" by Slayer, the video of which has been analysed in James Blog. We aim to prodce a piece which is similar to other videos of the same genre such as the anthrax video, and the two other videos which i am currently trying to upload on the blog but with much difficulty. Hopefully me and james will have looked at 6 videos between us, from this we should have good idea of how our final project will. We will also be able to determine the aspects of our final project purely from the aspects of our preliminary project as it will show to us how we need to film and how much we need to feel.