Task Four - Understanding the Techniques of Music Videos – “The Pretender”

For me to be able to understand the techniques of music video, I had to create an animatic for ‘The pretender’s by the Foo Fighters. I made a story board from a 27 second sequence of my choice to help create my animatic. Then I took individual pictures of each shot I wanted and then uploaded it and edited them together on software called premiere pro. I then inserted the soundtrack and ensured that the soundtrack was corresponding to the shots I took for my animatic. After doing that I then exported the completed editing onto Youtube and then uploading it onto my blog. After making my storyboard, I was able to understand that a number of different shots edited together at the right pace can create a right and smooth performance. For example the song I used was a bit fast paced and there were different shots being shown in seconds and these shots were changing at the right time with the music, in another words there were in sync. Therefore, this was able to create the right performance and made the animatic look more effective. However, if I use a slower song for my real music video, fewer shots would have to be used because of the slow pace of the music but the same effect would still be created because the shots would match the space of the song.

Therefore, when making my music video, it is a reliable idea to include a number of different shots which would make my video more memorable. There are different selection of shot to choose from and they are: low angle, high angle, close up, long shots, wide shot, 180 degree, extreme close up and tracking shot. Additionally, the mise-en-scene changes depending on the types of songs. For example, this song does not contain a lot props in it and the area in which the place is filmed seems like a big warehouse that gives them a lot of room, the warehouse contains lighting for the musicians and musician’s equipment such as drums, microphone stands and guitars.

There were many shots throughout the edit that the music video keeps editing back to which is the master shot which contains the whole band however through quick series of edits it seems as if the shot is new and really don't notice it.

The pace of the editing starts off slow changing to the second shot five seconds in, however once the music hits the 16-20 second mark the pace of editing becomes very quick changing between shots every second and even every half second. This makes the video look exciting and different as your watching as if the shots are all different in a way.

In conclusion, after creating this animatic, I learned that the pace of the song does actually have an effect on the editing. As the song I used was a fast paced song meaning that the editing is fast and different shots that is changing is syncing with the beat of the song that is being played.