As we are finishing up our music video unit, one of the assignment was to analyze a professional music video and give our thoughts on it. I chose the song "Happier by Marshmello ft. Bastille" because it is one of the songs stuck in my head right now. The lyrics of the song are something I feel are very strong just because it is talking about constantly wanting to make someone else happy.
The Story
The story being told is about a young girl who was not popular through school. She was one that was left out a lot and picked on, not popular. Her dog was one she relied on to make her happy because she was always accepted by her. There as a bond formed with her dog that changed her emotions in her home life. The story is shown through chronological events and aging shown in the video.
My work
The video shows a story that is crystal clear. It is not something you have to guess what's going on, everything is really clear because they directors took one simple concept and expanded it through the shots shown, not the actual story. That would be what I need to put into my own work. Usually I start with a concept that grows and grows until there is too much to even film. I try to put a lot of events in to tell a story and tiny amount of time when I need to work on telling the story through my shots. After watching this, the use of medium shots really helped convey the emotion of the character. We use those a lot in eComm which is something I fell is already added into my work.
The Creator
Within this, like I have already said - they did an amazing job telling a clear and simple story. It was straight to the point, nothing was confusing. The color theory was very good as well which I would like to give a round of applause on due to the simple fact yellow just represents happiness. There wasn't much I was critical on when watching this video simply because this is a song I really enjoy so it's difficult to depict things I do not like. Almost everyday someone in eComm hears me say "if the video has a dog in it, it automatically has my vote". I could have lived without the dog passing away in the video but in order to have to story be complete I understand why it was done.
Conclusion
I think watching a lot of these professional music videos allows us to really think about the stories being relayed and how well they go with the music. The story is the biggest part and the take away aside from the words being sang. As I have already said, I love this video just because it is one of my favorite songs at the moment. It makes me happy to watch the video, and considering it is called "Happier", I feel it was executed correctly.
Our music video unit has now concluded and this one seemed to be a lot more hectic than I remember from sophomore year.
The Process
Originally starting there were four people in our group: Addie, Evan, Reece, and myself. The concept started with the song "Dancing Queen by ABBA", and it was going to be more of a seventies vibe. Reece and I started playing around one day and decided we wanted to take the video a different direction. We split our groups and began planning another video, "Brother by Kodaline".
Concept
While this is not my story to tell, I was apart of the video process. Reece has a brother when he was younger that passed away from a drowning accident so we wanted to do a remembrance video in Logan's honor. The song was something that meant a lot to Reece so I really wanted the opportunity to be apart of the video. We had out favorite Alumni, Abbey Heller, help us with the cinematography on the video and I did the editing. Reece, of course, took the role as the director and also the main actor.
Pre-Production/Production
This portion of the video I was not a big part of. Reece had a solid idea in his head he was keeping to himself, and when it came to the filming it was something that he and Abbey did on their own. Looking back on it, I would have preferred to be there to do the cinematography. Much of the shots filmed were shakey or dark, and there were not a plethora of shots to work with which made editing limited.
Post-Production
When I was finally able to get my hands on the shots, the editing process became a lot smoother because everything went by really fast. I spent a Saturday afternoon editing it and was able to pull the whole video together to the best of my ability. The biggest complications that came from editing was the shaky shots. Warp stabilizer did no justice in this case and actually made the shots look worse so I had to shorten a lot of the shots as much as possible to avoid the look of warp or shakey-ness.
Take Aways:
Learning Curves:
Re-doing another music video made me realize a few different things: music videos are not my strong suit in eComm, editing shots I did not film seems to frustrate me a lot more than I thought, and there is no way to create a perfect music video.
I think the reason why I struggle with music videos is because much of what I gear my interest in towards video is very serious. Common issues going on within the world, client work for information, nothing that really allows to me know how to loosen up and film people having a good time. When it comes to editing, I prefer to do editing and cinematography because I'm familiar with all the shots that I am editing already. I know what sequence I want them in, as well as a couple additional shots for things like B-roll which would have really helped the video featured below. Finally, the biggest thing that I think I struggle with on all my projects in the idea that there is a way to make the video perfect. There is not! There will always be people that don't like your video, and you can not always please everyone which is hard for the perfectionist portion of me to understand. The more projects I spend editing the better I get about understanding is that all I can do is my best and that's the mind frame I need to keep. There is always room for improvement, but the perfect video does not exist and it is not one I will be able to create.
For the Future:
Given the opportunity, I would like to redo another music video, all by myself as an assignment because I want to see how it would turn out if it was only my view on things. I think everyone has their own idea of the ideal music video and their own view on what is visually pleasing to the eye. However, when it comes to any group project, I know the planning and time management is something that could always be improved. There are a few people in our class that I think do a very good job at keeping everything in order when it comes to planning and production. I am very good at getting everything organized but actually making everything follow plan during the shoot is where I lose my drive. After watching all the videos though and hearing the concepts I am extremely impressed with how well other eComm students did. I was so impressed with show many of the videos turned out. While it's easy to criticize as well as ignore my own video, I was very impressed with two videos from the afternoon eComm class: "Youth" and "Awake my Soul". It was so impressive to see how good of a grasp my other classmates have when it comes to making music videos, or videos alone.
Conclusion:
There are many things from this that can help me grow. Taking the feedback and putting it towards my next video, learning from my peers videos, as well as asking for help when needed. They are small things but in the long run they are always things that will make a big difference in the long run which I think is the most valuable take away form these projects.
