Music Video

Evaluation

Cage the Elephant - Ain’t No

Rest for the Wicked

Feedback

Ellen, Abi, Jack, Josh.

James, Hazal, Scott.

Matt, Zoe, Ryan.

Feedback from Target Audience

Technical Quality

With regards to lip syncing in our music video, we made sure that Sam (our leader ‘singer’/ the guy miming) was precise and accurate with his lip syncing. Sam also had great timing and managed to keep in sync with the lyrics while they played during filming of our video. As a result, nobody had mentioned anything bad about the lip syncing in our video.

The composition of shots was important for telling the story of the song, and we made an effort to get a range of shots to the video. Close ups of various props such as the mobile phone were important parts of the video - and parts which helped tell a story. Editing to the beat was spot on, and this is highlighted in the introduction via the clinking of glasses in time with the music.

Improvements to be made would be the chronology of shots because the way the song starts with everything dark - and then jumps into a daytime shot seems to sit a little funny with the viewing experience. Other adjustments would be spending a little more on lighting equipment for the darker shots, but this is a minor issue.

Feedback from viewers:

“I liked the variety of shots, but thought the flip between night at the start and then a light shot was weird.

I didn’t get it.”

Creative Quality

Our video for Cage the Elephant’s - Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked is certainly a video that works well with the track. We made a conscious effort to tell the story of the song, and the feedback we got firmly reflects that.

Attention is held by introducing the video at a slow pace and then breaking into the song, this lets the view catch on to the story and the way Sam wakes up. The clothes of the actors and low budget style of the surroundings (rural areas with the smoking and alcohol) adds to the grungy feel of the track.

Improvements could be made by adding the band playing, in between the visuals, more often. Simply to reiterate the story. Maybe some added atmosphere with a smoke machine and higher quality lighting.

Feedback from viewers:

“The way the music video showed and matched the lyrics was really

cool, it was grungy and atmospheric like the track too.”

Nine Key Frames Comparison

In our original plan, we had our main protagonist (Sam) waking up and then walking down a street, and going about his day in the style of the lyrics. This wasn’t possible due to timing restraints and a lack of location. Ideally we would have shot Sam walking down the middle of the road, but we stuck because we couldn’t close the road.

This is the biggest cut and change to our original plan. Everything else matches our key frame plan from the beginning.

It would have been nice to achieve the street shot, but our alternative doesn’t take away from the video and we still create the effect of a character going about his day.

Compared to existing videos?

On the previous slide, there’s an example of a title card for another music video. OK GO recently released their video for ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ and it begins with the title of the band, and then the name of the song. While developing and planning our video for ‘Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked’, we decided to do our own version of this ‘title card’ technique.

OK GO are an alternative rock band, much like Cage the Elephant, so we felt this style was something appropriate to do for our own video.

For our video we chose to present the title card on a worn monopoly bank note - the theme of money and stealing runs throughout the track/video so this fits well.

Examples of similar video features

Team Evaluation

Sophie and I were the only two people who worked on the music video unit. We decided to share the work and utilize each of our skills to the best of their ability.

Sophie has the talent for video editing so she took the lead with that. and I carried out the planning and set up of the locations etc. I was responsible for the planning meetings, location surveys, risk assessments and organisation of actors. I also helped with the planning of shots and the storyboard process. Sophie then took on the job of editing the video and the tasks which were more technical. Good communication was key due to the fact we don’t live close to each other. Our restrictions with location were overcome together as we realised we couldn’t use the street for part of our video.

Overall, I feel we worked really well as a team/pair. We made the more of each others talents and achieved a very professional looking video. The feedback we received was very promising and some of our viewers even mistook our video for the real video from the actual band.

Personal Evaluation

My own contribution to the project was a more practical one. I organised the monopoly money that was used in the video - as well as for the title card. It was my responsibility to organise all the paperwork that’s comes with setting up a shoot, such as risk assessments, location surveys for all the various locations - such as train station, caravan, and the ‘man cave’. Below you’ll find a photo of my participation in the storyboarding process. I also played a big role in setting up the various shots and the preparation of all the locations that were used. I arrived before the shoot took place and made sure everywhere was suitable for the actors to come in and perform.

Sophie and I were aware of our individual skills from the start, and it was agreed that she used her talent in the post production process to achieve a video that was in keeping with the videos we had seen previously. This definitely worked well, and we ended up with a video that’s very much in with the style of other videos from the same genre of band.

Things that didn’t work as well were maybe the struggle with location. Sophie and I live a long way from each other, but we got around this by planning enough time for the shoot, and allocating enough time for editing.