Song choice

To decide on the song that we will create our music video to we had to research different music videos and decide on the type of song in which a good storyline could be created for. I have decided to work in a group to create the actual music video as we decided together that to recreate a girl group it would enable us to pick from a wide variety of songs.
At first we thought of choosing this song:

However, as a group we decided we wanted a 'pop' type song but with not such a fast a beat, as this would make editing much more time consuming and may be harder to film. Although we are looking for a challenge when creating our music video we decided on a different song as in a group we all agreed it would be more suitable and we would enjoy recreating it more.We also found that the song we wanted to recreate would have to have a more distinct beat as well as it being slower so that when scene changes occur it will be easier to cut and create 'on the beat' editing.
This video is set in one scene and is a performative video, common in the 'pop' genre. There are mostly close up shots shown of the girls' faces and parts of their body when they are dancing, this is to show that the main focus of the video is on their performance. We see fast paced editing taking place throughout as it often cuts to one members face and then to another according to which one is dancing or singing the most. Although the scene is set in what appears to be a dark allyway the low key natural lighting appears on the bodies and faces of the band members, giving us a focus on them rather than the dancers in the background which aren't shown as much. All the members are shown to be very dominant, they are seen pushing away men as if they are in control of them and making them appear wanted and independant. Often it is men who appear dominant over women in music videos and this rejects Laura Mulveys theory that patriachal views on women in society are reflected through the media.

We also thought on using this song:

We came to the conclusion that only artist is shown in the video and as a group we didn't want just one member to be in the video and that different members with the same voice throughout would be confusing for an audience to watch or understand. It shows a narrative type video throughout as we see a story of the artist going to play Pool with a group of friends. The shots are often slow and unfrequent as they dont emphasise the artists' body and it isn't performative. There is low key lighting to reflect the natural scene she is in and to make it seem realistic possibly so the audience can relate to her. Arguably it doesn't fit the genre characteristics that you would expect to find when looking at a 'pop' music video.

We then thought of the girl group 'The Pussycat Dolls' as the wide variety of members would be more suitable as a group to recreate, however this song has gained so much recognition from the music video it would be very difficult to make better even with a different narrative or storyline. We found that our video would not be able to relate to the lyrics as we would not be able to afford expensive cars which would not reflect the 'glamourous' lifestyle portrayed in the video. We see many fast cuts in this video and the group is portrayed in a typical voyeuristic way that you'd expect to find in 'pop' music videos.


I thought that this new song from the girl group 'The Saturdays' would be an exciting video to remake, however we decided as a group that we'd prefer to recreate the other music video as this is a well known group and the other song we felt would be more fun to recreate as we enjoy listening to it more.


This song was the one our group had originally chosen to recreate, however we felt that another song had an easier beat to follow as well as lip-syncing being so challenging. The reason we did not choose a hip-hop style type song to recreate was due to the fast paced lip synching which would be very hard to perfect.

Music Videos

Investigating different music video styles and genres are important so that as well understanding the different shots, lighting, props and the way the music is edited I can see the difference between a music video media piece as opposed to a magazine advert or other form of advertising music.



This is a music video to Diana Vickers' song 'The Boy Who Murdered Love', I wanted to see how the video was made and so I tried as best I could to recreate the video, I had to consider different places to film,  lighting techniques, camera shots as well as matching the video footage to the actual track. I also re sang the song as if I was the artist and if you compare the official music video with the one I created you can see that each scene took a lot of time to plan mainly due to the props and costumes being made. I used windows movie maker to edit the video and I found that the software often crashed and became glitchy, which is why I have decided that for this years music video to make it using the mac computer software as I found through my AS course final cut pro easier to use and of a better quality with a wider variety of editing effects. Below is my attempt at recreating the music video.



Through my impersonations of Diana Vickers I found recreating her videos enjoyable and so decided to recreate her latest song 'My Wicked Heart', this time I made sure that the shots were exactly made at the same time as the official video and so when played simultaneously you can see when the scene changes the one in my parody also changes. Through recreating these music videos, I am looking forward to using professional software this year and to make a better quality video also through the camera I will be using as opposed to a cheap hand held one.





Through these music videos I have developed the hobby of impersonating people, this clip shows my Diana Vickers impression in a local talent show, through doing music videos it is clear that much inspiration can be gained.