Video - Preliminary Music Video

I created a short music video using Creepin' Up the Backstairs by the Fratellis. The video was an attempt to demonstrate my initial understandings of music video conventions as well as my ability to plan and edit a video. In order to avoid copyright issues I also cut the song down, which also meant I didn't have to edit as much.

I tried to include some rough video ideas that I got from other music videos: the speeding up of the footage was done to match the song's fast tempo and is quite reminiscent of the Vampire Weekend music video for A-Punk; the use of the low and high angles as well as the fish eye lens are from many Punk and Hip-Hop videos such as Blink 182's Rock Show; similar use of transitions by zooming the camera on a subject have been done by the Strypes and Django Django.

I tried to create a visual contrast using different coloured shirts as well as the pig mask - most of the high-octane shots are done with the red shirt and pig mask, this was done to show that character was the guitarist. In many bands, the guitarist is very distinct and often accompanies the main singer at the front of posters and merchandise, additionally they tend to have distinct styles or gimmicks such as Slash's signature guitar and hat and hair or Angus Young's schoolboy outfit or Dominic Young's hat.

                                                                                                             

I managed to shoot and edit my video rather quickly, across two days. Despite what could be seen as a rushed job - given the poor lighting and perhaps how notably flushed I was - overall I think the video was quite well done, I think that the concept could be stronger and perhaps have more of a correlation to the lyrics though - the idea that the pig represents the person 'creepin' in the title seems like quite a stretch. Additionally, the shot with the red shirt playing the 'guitar' may be an issue; I intended to film the shot using a real guitar and while I don't know how to play one I thought I could fake it pretty well, however I discovered that the guitar had been thrown away and improvised using a BB gun AK-47. The use of the prop makes the shot seem more violent given the connotations of the gun and therefore add to the fast pace of the song, on the other hand it is such a random and abstract situation for a pig masked guitarist to play the gun and thus adds a degree of humour to the video. This humour can also be seen through my generally light-hearted performance in the video, which I intended to put across given how light-hearted the song's speed makes it.

The shot of me singing the chorus at 0:49 is done to help practice my ability to lip-sync or at least match up video and while there are bits to my lip-syncing that seem off, that isn't due to timing and more just my performance; the shots were filmed with the song playing in the background which helped with the syncing however the song is quite fast in places and I didn't know the words.

In terms of actual editing skill, I am quite proud of my editing. The video features me squatting in time with the beat of the song and I managed to do this 3 times - editing in 'clones' and speeding up footage to match the beat. In order to create the clones I had to seek advise from a Youtube video but essentially used Adobe Premiere Pro's Linear Wipe to create the first shot.

I feel that I adopted some features from the original music video such as the speeding up of the footage but the original includes more random close up and establishing shots of the band and their surroundings to edit to the beat. This creates a feeling of restlessness that comes with the quick pace of the song, in fact the handheld aspect also seems to carry the same tone which I included in my video too - although mine contains more use of the tripod for the various angled shots.

Preliminary Music Video from Eughan Wooding on Vimeo.