The task was to create a music video for the song "Sunny Afternoon" by The Kinks.
How have you used digital technology during the construction of the video?
We used iMac computers before the music video in order to view videos of songs from a similar genre to that of "Sunny Afternoon" so as to gain an idea of the conventions involved with this genre and general conventions of a music video. We also used iMac computers to edit the footage we had filmed using a program called iMovie.
Also, we used digital cameras in order to film the footage we needed prior to uploading it for use in iMovie.
Discuss the planning stage of your production and details of the steps you have taken
In the planning stage of our production, we looked at the original music video and the music videos of similar songs to understand how we should portray the song within our music video. We then printed off the lyrics and and tried to deconstruct them to find any hidden meanings behind the words. After both of these steps, we then started to think of ideas that could work for the music video and tried to expand upon each idea before settling on our main one. We then returned to the lyric sheet in order to work out the timings of our music video as accurately as we could so that we knew how long each shot we were going to film would take.
How did your research into music videos contribute to the development of your production?
Our research into music videos contributed slightly to the development of our music video as we were able to see that an element of irony and eccentricity would be required in order to make the video fit the music. We had viewed the original video to "Sunny Afternoon" and seen that The Kinks were singing about a lovely, sunny afternoon whilst in the snow, hence the irony and eccentricity.
What are the main strengths/weaknesses within your production?
The main strength of our production is its originality, as I doubt there are very many music videos that include a clown being followed everywhere he goes by a guitarist. However, we do believe the main weakness to be our lack of footage as some of our footage had to be used twice in order to make the production long enough for the song.
Audience Feedback?
The video has been posted on YouTube, whereby it has garnered negative reviews from the two people that have commented on it. Having said that, the majority of our peers have said that the music video is funny, which was what we were trying to achieve.
In conclusion, the completion of the practice music video proved to us just how difficult it is to firstly come up with ideas, but then also use the technology available to bring those ideas to life. After this, we realised that the main task would be incredibly challenging, and that it would take weeks and weeks of planning.
