Reviewing previous A2 coursework pieces

Above is a playlist of the A2 coursework from my school last year. With a group and then in a class discussion, we analysed and deconstructed these music videos so we could know what worked well, and what improvements we would make, which would therefore help us out on our own video.

The first thing we noticed watching the music videos was the importance of the song. 13B6, the top rated music video, had a fast paced and energetic song (Ike and Tina - Jamie T), leading to a lively and thoroughly entertaining video. This song had allowed them to use a wider range of editing techniques and let them create their video in a way that was unique and imaginative. This, however, was not the case with all the videos. Several of the groups chose a song that was slow, obviously focusing on the storyline rather than the beat, and this meant that the videos not only lacked the editing displayed in 13B6's video, but tended to be dull and tedious to watch. They didn't grab the audience's attention in the same way, and it led to us deciding that the story of a music video should be equally balanced with a performance to grab the viewer's attention.

It seemed to be common in the videos that whilst many techniques that a media student should have a firm grasp of were used, the performance in the videos were sub par. Obviously, as media students we may not possess the correct drama skills, but it seems that the videos that were the most entertaining to watch had an excellent lip sync-er who was charismatic and believable as the character they were playing on screen. The videos where the performer was out of sync (either not singing in time with the music or with bad editing) proved to be annoying to watch despite the otherwise good quality of the video. In a group discussion, we decided that it would be best if we asked a drama student at our school to be in our music video, as the performance would be a crucial element in all of our music videos.

Another problem we found in the music videos was the issue of copyright. In 13E9's video (Today I Cried - Professor Green), they decided to put in a storyline element by using clips from the film The Truman Show. Although the clips did make some sort of sense with the lyrics of the song, the energy of the film and the music did not match and it was unclear to us as an audience the thinking behind it without having it explained to us in written work. Aside from this, making a music video like this would also be a major problem as it is unlikely that these students will have received permission from Paramount Pictures to use their film in their video.

However, there were also many elements of this past coursework that were very well done. Most of the videos used a variety of shots and angles, using jump cuts to paste them together, which was important as music videos tend to have more edits in them to bring across a certain energy. Most of them also had a good balance of interior and exterior locations, which was important for keeping the video interesting. One group, 13E11 (Prisoner - Jeffree Star) did not do this, and it was an almost unanimous feeling in our class that this led to a bland video.

In 13B2's production we saw something that is common in music videos, but surprisingly not in the A2 coursework pieces: an instrument. We felt this really tied together the music video, and made it different to the other groups', which had obviously not managed to arrange someone to star in their videos and play an instrument simultaneously.