Music video techniques

Music video techniques

When making a music video there are many techniques used to make the video to be at its best quality, some of these techniques are special effects, green screening, lip - syncing and ETC. in this document I am going to show an example’s of most of the techniques used in music videos and when doing this I will show a good and a bad example when doing this.

Special effects:

Special effects plays a big part in making a music video, with this an artist is able to create something that can be created in real life, although there are many types of special effects, the first one I am going to talk about is visual effects, with visual effects and graphics your able to make things that can’t be recorded with a camera, this also has a positive for the audience as it makes the music video more visually appealing.

The second one I am going to talk about is, editing effects, with this the quick scene changes are backed up through the human eye and audience ideas, for example when we see a bright light in a movie or music video this signifies death or a person going into a dream.

Stop motion animation is where a camera is used and takes photographs every second of the action going on that is being moved by a human. With this a producer and artist have no limitations of that they want to film, any movement is possible and can also be filmed, however if this is not filmed properly it looks terrible, and would be far from visually appealing.

With the video I have chosen "Story of my life - One Direction" you can clearly see these techniques being used, for example as soon as the video starts at 0:06 you can see the fade within the photograph on the paper. From this the artists will begin to gain a reputation were there music videos look good and people would want to come back and see these videos.

However looking at this example we can see that the special effects used in this video are not so good, looking at them today, you would most probably laugh and call the video pathetic, but from this we can see how music videos and there special effects have evolved and helped make the video and the artist look much better.For example if we look at 0:34 we see that the producer has involved aliens that are obviously made out of special effects. from this we can clearly see how special effects have evolved over time and how they now make the video look visually appealing. 

Green screening:

Green screening, this is something an artist can play with, they are able to be in a location without actually being in the location, this allows the artist to save money and allows them to have freedom when creating the video. As a viewer you most probably wouldn't know that the artist has used green screening if it is performed well, from this we can take that, green screening makes the video more visually appealing to the audience, looking at the video I have chosen, you can see that the green screening is professionally done and there is no see through parts were shadows are affecting the image, this is why it looks very good from the audiences point of view. Looking at Drop the world by Lil Wayne and Eminem at 3:04 we see the use of the green screening and how it makes the video seem so real and meets the needs of the artists so easily.

However if you look at this video, you can clearly see the difference between the quality of the Green screen, there is a slight fuzz behind Shakira  and around the inner background, this is due to the shadows not being cut out. From the audiences point of view this looks terrible and something you would not expect such a well know artist producing.  looking at 0.33 seconds into the video we can already see the poor green screening, this tells the audience that the video isn't going to be visually appealing.

Cutting to the beat and lip- syncing:

Cutting to the beat is probably the most important technique when creating as music video, this makes the video visually appealing, and without this it would look very unappealing to the audience. If the person lip syncing said the words 3 seconds before the actual lyrics are being said, it would look terrible from a human eye. Looking at the video I have chosen, we can see that the artists done this very well and there are no mistakes, this then leads to positive responses to the artists. Without this technique used in music videos, not many people would view them and this would be a bad thing for the artists.
But on this Particular video, we see a fairly long build up to the song, and the lip syncing begins at 0:46, however we manage to see a various amount of camera angles, so if the lip syncing was bad, the human eye wouldn't be able to pick up on it due to the camera angel changes being so quick.

Looking at this second video we can see the importance of lip- syncing and how it would look if it was not timed alongside the beat. This affects the public’s attitude towards the song and how it would not be liked, which could affect the artist sales on the sales of the song. As the song has a long intro, looking at 1:30 we see that her lip syncing is not so brilliant and can be improved.

Varied camera angles:

When creating a music video, the main thing you obviously need a camera, when recording it’s important for the producer to include a variety of shots, to make the video more exciting. Looking at the video, if we only had one view and the camera angle never changed, as a viewer you would get bored very bored, so to make the video more entertaining. Looking at the first 20 seconds of Rihanna's "We found love" we about 12 different camera angles being used, some of these varied from low shots, close ups and high angles. this gave the audience a better understanding of the music video and also helped the song cut to the beat as a angle was changed. This gives the audience a sense of the location being used and the emotions and mood of the actual music video.

Long cut scenes:

Having around about 4-5 second cuts in a music video is the average rate, this help the video to flow in a chronological way, almost as if the video is like a movie, looking at the video I have chosen we can see that the producer and artists have thought about this technique from the audiences point of view, this allows the video to look better and also make the artist look better as people would want to see other music videos that include videos of his, if there up to a good standards.

However when producers extend the clips for longer than they need to, it becomes boring and the audience would rather change the music video, this affects the artist as the public are used to seeing the same sort of things from the artist they know, and by doing this the audience would expect this and not view the video. Looking at 0:14 to 0:20 we see the girl and as a viewer I got the point of this music video and I think having to much of it is boring.