Starting A2

So we have started the A2 course. I will blog later in more detail on the task but a brief overview is to make a music video to an existing song. The song has to not have an existing video (this rules out pretty much all current songs). We also have to 2 ancillary texts which is a digipack and a magazine advert for the digi-pack.


In the first few lessons we learnt about some codes and conventions of music videos. We did this by looking at some examples of music videos, eg the couple from Albania as wel as the rap group from albania. We found that there are certain things we expect to see in a rap video such as violence, aggression, 'bling'. Another convention that is present in most videos but particularly genres that have a youth target audience is fast paced editing, this helps to keep the audience interested, this also helps with shot variety.


Another thing to mention is intertexuality. A point many music artists seem to use in their music videos, some times intertexuality can be used to pay homage to other artists they admire or it could be to make a joke at the expense of another artist. An example we looked at was Lady Gaga and her Bad Romaance video where she shows intertexual references to Madonna.


Music Videos are like mini films so in some ways they are very similar. They use the same camera shots (long, establishing, mid, and close-up) and angles (high, low, canted, POV).