What we would do for Every Breath You Take by Chase Holfelder

For this song, I feel that it would be important to get the instruments across, therefore, I would have a band performing this song, similarly to how The Police performed theirs, but with a modern twist. We would combine both of the videos, so that it would be in black and white, but would have the overlay effects on the singer's whole body.

Difference between videos of Every Breath You Take by Police and by Chase Holfelder

The song by The Police is upbeat and in major key, featuring a band performing a rock song, with different instruments and is all in black and white. The song is generally quite old and the instruments used are quite contemporary. This adds to the calmness of the song. Whereas, the song by Chase Holfelder starts off slow and then builds up in beat for parts of the song. It involves echoes and is in minor key. The song features one man singing and showing the audience how he has created the music video himself. He uses completely different instruments to The Police has put in effects of overlays, making his hands shake and seem ghostly. This makes it evident that the song is of the emo/rock genre as it is quite eerie.

Developing my idea for my music video

When listening to "Kiss The Girl", I could imagine people dancing very intensely to the music. From this thought, I immediately researched music videos that involve people dancing and found Ed Sheeran's music video for his song, "Thinking Out Loud". This form of dance in his video is incredibly intimate and is something that I want to include in my music video so I was inspired by the intensity of the dancing.

In creating the persona for the character in our artist's video, we want the intense dancing to reflect his persona and so we would want it to be slightly rough. The music video would be narrative driven as it would tell a story about a man who has some sort of a mental disorder and is slightly possessive over a girl that he loves, and who unfortunately, does not love him back. The lyrics telling him to "kiss the girl" could be his inner thoughts of his other self talking to him in his head and so he would try to kiss her but she would subtly turn away, and the dancing could help illustrate this.

Analysing other students music videos

I thought that this video was very effective as the performance was energetic and the shots cut to the beat of the song which made it a more attractive video to watch. I also thought that the whole concept of him getting frustrated with his work and the lights being trapped around him was very clever. The editing was also effective with the words of trip showing up as a blur on the lights. The narrative was that he was frustrated with work and felt like he was running out of time. The video was performance based as there was a band performing to the camera, with an element of narrative driven as the video cut to shots of the lead singer in a room doing work by himself. This made it interesting to watch as the switch made it different and fun. The mise-en-scene of the dark set, lighting and dark clothing reflected the indie-rock genre of the music video. The singer is portrayed as a frustrated teen and this is presented through the close up shots of him looking into the camera with his eyeliner and the medium shots of his hands on his head as he cannot do his work. Frustration and rebellion is also something that one would expect in a music video and his rock-ish dance moves reflects this.
 

I especially also thought that the simplicity of this video was what made it so effective. I like how they used a simple set with the lights coming down from the ceiling and the light on her face. I also liked how they used dancers to create a mood for the song.

Starting to think about the song for my music video

Even though it is still early days, I am far too excited to not start planning and brainstorming ideas for my music video. I want to break away from the norm of using popular original songs that are upbeat and are mainly in the rock genre. Instead, I have been researching covers of songs whereby artists have completely changed the songs and have made them their own.

Firstly, I came across the artist, Lo Fang who sang his own version of "You're the One That I Want", originally from the film/musical, Grease. I found that there was something about the key change in his version that made it sound slightly eerie and this was extremely intriguing. The fact that he slowed down the song completely and changed it to a minor key made me want to explore other artists who did the same.

From looking at this artist's song on YouTube, I came across an A2 media students music video for this song and just had to watch it. I was immediately inspired by the use of extremely dim lighting and the editing techniques with the overlays of different scenes into one. I especially liked how they used the change into a minor key as a way to create a sort of persona for their character, making him seem abusive and possessive. This further inspired me to research other songs that have been covered and changed into a minor key and potentially use them to create a possessive persona for the character in my video.

From researching covers that have been changed into a minor key, I discovered an artists named Chase Holfelder who just so happens to change his cover songs from their original major keys into a minor key. I listened to his songs with a member of my group and we decided that his style was perfect for our video and we short listed 3 of his songs.

The first, being "Every Breath You Take", originally by Police. We also really liked the way he edited this video with the overlays, making his hands to appear as if they were shaking, and his head moving quickly. However, we decided that the song included too much shouting and would not be appropriate for our video.

The second video was "Over The Rainbow", originally by The Wizard of Oz. However, we came to a conclusion that it was too slow and left the build up too late.

Lastly, we were a fan of his cover of "Kiss The Girl", originally from the film, The Little Mermaid. The build up is perfect and and the beats are so effective, especially with the slightly dub-step style of editing. Although it is still not our final decision, we would like this to be our song for our music video.

In Chase's videos, he uses an overlay effect to make his video more effective and slightly eerie. I would like to somehow incorporate this into my music video to give a cool effect.

Interviews about music videos

We asked a few people some questions about music videos for our potential target audience. We asked:

1. What is your favourite music video?

2. What do you like about this video?

3. What music videos do you not like?

4. What would you change in this video?

5. What would you like to see in a music video?

From this information in which we gathered, it has become apparent that a vast majority of the people in which we interviewed would prefer to see a music video that had a story-line and involved the story-line matching the lyrics, and the lyrics matching the visuals. Therefore, we feel that it would be appropriate to create a music video which has a narrative and matches the lyrics and the visuals. Also, due to most of our interviewees criticising music videos which involve women being sexualised and provocative, we will include men in our video instead to avoid this male gaze. Additionally, we will also avoid making our video black and white as a critic said he preferred music videos which involved colour. 

Our own lip syncing video

For practise on how to film someone lip syncing to a song, we made this short video. However, we were not able to get enough footage for it to last the entire duration of the song and were not able to edit it so that it cut to the beats of the song. For our actual music video, we will have a lot more footage and therefore, will be able to insert more cuts. instead of filming at our school, we would be filming outside somewhere. there would be a planned costume for the artist to wear and we would have had rehearsals to ensure that the artist knew the words properly. We would also have a structured schedule for the day so that we would be more organised and save more time.