My thoughts so far...

Returning to school after exams, Ms Blackborow introduced us to our new media course; music videos.

In lessons we were asked to think about the music industry as a whole, and the function music videos serve to the artist and record company, as well as others involved within the production of the video: directors, editors, producers etc.In the end, we came to the conclusion that music videos were in fact advertisements. They help to advertise the artist, the song and the album, the record company and directors etc.

Following this, we went on to analysing music videos and interpreting them. Ms Blackborow started us off by giving us lyrics to a song, withholding information regarding the artist or record company. From this, we learnt that directors would need to study the lyrics, the artist, the genre of their music as well as their past work before beginning to generate ideas for directing a new video. We learnt that the lyrics Ms Blackborow gave us were from the song, In the Sun, by She & Him (above) and that we would recreate the video as part of our preliminary task.

To get us stuck into the task, Ms B introduced us to Jake Wynne, who has directed music videos for artists such as Stereophonics and Geri Halliwell. What was interesting was that he told us the key to making a music video successful was to not concentrate too much on the lyrics, and to not use the video to reflect the literal meaning of the song. He also told us that the role of the director on the day of the shoot was to not take such as key role in the events of the day, but rather to take a step back and view the production from a distance. He also stressed the importance of being on friendly terms with not only the artist that you are working with, but your production team as well.

As well as having met Jake, we had several sessions with Jasmine, our choreographer and assisstant director. In these sessions, we were taught the routine to the dances in the music video, but we were mainly taught to loosen up and have fun- as that would in the end make the video seem more realistic and lively.

I'm really enjoying the course so far, espescially the workshops we have had and I'm looking forward to the others we will have. In particular, I'm espescially interested in seeing our final remake of the music video!