Michael Moursi: Rough Cut Analysis - Goodwins Points and Micro Elements

Rough Cut

 

Goodwins Points Analysis:

1. Genre Characteristics

The indie genre does not include that many characteristics, apart from two. Almost every indie music video includes methods of band performance. In our rough cut, we have managed to do this as a group. The music video consists of the band performing the song 'Stay At Home'. We managed to get instruments such as a drum kit, guitars and a bass. These are typical indie instruments so the match the genre nicely. Plus, we booked a room in which we can film the performance.To keep the viewer interested in the video, there is a narrative for the viewer to follow. The narrative cuts back and fourth from performance. This is another indie genre characteristic.

      2. Visuals/Lyrics

There is not too much of visuals matching the lyrics. This only happens when we want the artist to lip-sync to the song. However, there is one point in with the visuals match the lyrics. For example at 0:54, the singer leaves the house (you can see this with the sped up clip) whilst the lyrics go "You wanted me to stay at home, but I didn't want to". Therefore, the visuals match the lyrics. In the future, we will try to incorporate more matchmaking with the visuals and lyrics, by trying to have the singer outside with his friends with the lines "Because I wanted to go out" in the background.

       3. Visuals/Music

Editing on the beat is one of our main priorities, and we have managed to keep that consistant so far with our editing. Throughout the rough cut, you can see that almost every shot is edited to the beat. One example which really sells itself is at 0:21. The artist is sitting on the sofa, so when every time there is a snare drum being hit, the artist changes position on the sofa. Overall, this keeps the viewer interested as there are some elements of quirkiness in the video, yet it looks professional as the visuals and music match perfectly.

       4. Need To Sell Artist

To sell the artist, we have made sure that the singer is the main focus throughout the music video. The reason for making the singer the more important figure instead of making the whole band equally important is because our audience are usually more interested in the singer. We have done this by creating a narrative which is entirely about the singer, plus included the singer multiple times performing.

       5. Intertextuality

Unfortunately, we did not include much intertextuality in our music video, due to the fact that we could not see this video having references from another music video, as our music video is indie, therefore it should be different. However, there is one element of intertextuality used in our music video. During the performance sequences, the singer wears a T-shirt with a Nirvana print on it. This could symbolize the artist's influences as interests.

       6. Voyeurism

Throughout the video, there is some voyeurism used to keep our audience (mainly our female audience) interested. In the rough cut, the audience have unscripted social interaction with the artist as viewers can see what the artist does in his time, for example when the artist is at home laying down on the sofa. Once we edit some more, we would include the artist socializing with friends in narrative parts. So viewers would be able to see where the artist socializes.


Micro Elements Analysis:

1. Editing

In the rough cut, we have various types of editing techniques included to keep the viewer appealed and to make the music video professional. For example, we make sure that every clip is edited on the beat. This keeps the video at a professional standard which audiences like. Another technique we used is speeding up clips. This was used when the artist leaves home. The clips speed was increased by around 400% to make the process of the artist leaving the house quicker. The editing technique works as the sped up clip matches the beat of the music, plus it fits in nicely with the build up. Finally, we have incorporated filters in our piece. We have decided that all performance clips in the video are black and white, because the room we booked to capture footage for performance scenes did not look the part, as all the walls were bright green, therefore it would not look professional and would not appeal to the audience. To make the clips black and white, we put a desaturation filter over every single performance clip in our video.

      2. Cinematography

 To make our rough cut visually appealing, we managed to include different types of shots. We have used close up and extreme close up shots right from the start and throughout. This helps the viewer pay attention to specific things in the music video, plus every close up gives a lot of detail. To have more variety with shot distances, we included medium shots (one example of a use of a medium shot in our video is 0:23 where the artist is sitting on the sofa), and long shots of the singer. Different angles were used, varying from high angle, low angle and canted angle shots. These were mainly used in performance scenes. Over the shoulder shots were used when the artist is walking out of the house. There were a number of tracking shots used in the video, for example when the singer is walking on the street at 1:04. The shots taken were sometimes handheld and on a tripod. We wanted to include a wide range of shots and positions for this video. It keeps it sharp, enjoyable to watch and overall, professional.

       3. Sound

Obviously, the song 'Stay At Home' in the music video is the main sound. To include different types of sound, we have added diagetic sound in the beginning of the video. As the video starts, you hear a drummer ending his warm up. Next, you see and hear an amp being turned on by one of the band members. Finally, the lead from the guitar is plugged into the amp and once it is plugged in, the music starts, which is now non-diagetic.

       4. Mise-En-Scene

• Lighting: During filming, we wanted to use lighting to hopefully make the footage more professional. We tried a number of techniques. However, we found that natural lighting looked more suitable for our video, and surprisingly it looked extremely better than using unnatural lighting. On the other hand, we did use a street light over the singer in one clip (this is not on the rough cut but will be in the video), which gave a nice shadowy effect on the artist's face. We managed to add a nice touch to that particular clip with the lip syncing. Under the street light with an orange glow, the singer says "I started to smile as you put out the fire, because it feels right". This is perfect clip as the orange light represents fire, plus the shadow effects look great overall.
• Costume: As you can see in the rough cut, the artist and the band members wear typical indie clothing. The singer wears black skinny carrot trousers, a white Nirvana T-shirts and brown leather and suede chukkas in the performance sequences. For the narrative, he wears black skinny jeans, a dark blue duffle coat, a checkered shirt and some light blue Vans. The reason why we had different costumes for different locations is because we had to make sure that the video does not have any continuity errors.
•  Hair/Make up: This was not a main priority for our video as indie people are not really fussed with their look. We can see this with our singer as his hair is quite scruffy.
• Location: There are a number of locations used in the rough cut. For example, we have the house were the artist lives, the forest where the artist walks through to get to a certain location, various roads and streets, plus the performance area where we can see the whole band performing the song together. There are more locations we have used, but we have not yet included them. The locations we need to include are Christ Pieces and the Cambridge city centre and town.
• Props: The only props used in the rough cut so far are the instruments used in the performance sequence. There will be more props included later on in the editing process, such as alcohol used in the scene where the artist, one of his band members and a friend sit down and socialize.

Improvements:

1. We must keep up with pace of edits and editing on the beat. Therefore, we need to include more shots on the beat and make the video more thrilling and fast paced.
2. Reduce the length of clips. The reason for this is because the longer the clip, the more chance the viewer will get bored watching your video, unless if the clips have amazing content
3. Another way we could attract our audience is to use split screen in one part of our video. We thought of having this particular moment when the instrumental comes in where all the band go "Do-doo-do-do-do". So in this case, there is a split screen of four so each member of the band is doing that part of the song.
4. We need to include more intertextuality in the music video. This is because we only have one example of intertextuality; which is the Nirvana T-shirt the artist wears during performance.
5. Include more locations and performance spaces. This means that we would have a lot of diverse footage to work with in the editing stage. Also, with more locations, comes more interest from the audience.

Additional Time Usage:

If we were given additional time to go out and film some more footage, we would defiantly use this time wisely. In the additional time, we would film scenes which include more intertextuality, as we only have one reference. Some clips that we have filmed in town look really unprofessional as the typical accident of getting the camera equipment in shot arrived when we looked back at the town clips. Using this time, we would gladly re-film those scenes as they did not take much time to capture. Whilst filming, we could go to random locations for the artist to sing. Therefore when it comes down to editing, we have more footage we can work with