Copyright

The Saturdays have copyright over their song, Ladykiller. Copyright is "the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material." It's a form of intellectual property, like a trademark. Due to copyright, we are unable to do a video to their song without permission. 

The consequences of copyright infringement in the UK:

"While there are many consequences of breaking copyright laws, the most common include monetary fines, loss of property, loss of freedom, or loss of employment. Typically, copyright law violations involve someone attempting to profit from, distribute, or claim material to which they have no rights. In some countries, copyright infringement — the use of copyrighted material without permission or the right of ownership — could carry the penalty of criminal and civil punishment if the copyright owner should choose to file a claim and take the guilty party to court"

(source: http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-consequences-of-breaking-copyright-laws.htm)

We have attempted to contact The Saturdays in order to ask permission that we are allowed to use their song in our music video for copyright reasons. For this, we made a fan account and tweeted The Saturdays joint official account in hope that we get a reply.

The Saturdays Music Video Analysis

The Saturdays - Higher Music Video Analysis

We like this shot because it shows the friendship between all of the girls as a group. They do the same movement in cannon with their arms and legs. If we were to re-film some of our footage, we will try to include some of these elements in our work.

We like this shot of The Saturdays particularly because of the positioning of them. They are sitting all together but in a sort of triangular shape. This looks appealing and engages the audience due to the variation of shots they have used. It also again, portrays the friendship between them all.

Their music video also includes a small storyline, where they are stuck in New York traffic, so get out of the car and start singing/having a party in the street.

Comparison with music videos

We were inspired to do fast paced cutting for the lip syncing scenes in a montage style by Wiz Khalifas music video: Work Hard Play Hard.

The use of montage editing in this sequence involving a club made us think that with faster paced editing you can make the audience feel like more is happening more quickly and make the music video more interesting to watch.

Of course with the comedy element in our video we were not going for a very serious sequence of events but the montage still helped with the comedy parts because it created the illusion of speeding up the time frame for the scenes. The impact of the pacing for scenes such as the chasing of the girls by the boys is that by shortening the cut time we create a tense atmosphere as the audience builds up to a point where the boys find the girls.

Another element we were encouraged to think about after watching a different music video (robin thicke- blurred lines) was how we were going to set up our scene for the lip syncing and what we decided was that it was best to have just a blank wall behind the two singers as we thought this was simple yet effective because we darkened the lighting to make the audience feel we were in a different location. As seen in the picture below a simple background can be improved with the addition of shadow positioning.

Advice given from peers

What we need to do to improve

-We didn't really vary the amount of shots of the girls lip-syncing, so taking some more shots of the them but from different angles to cut between them will keep the audience interested throughout.
- Along with this, we can also take some more close up shots of the girls to add even more variety.
-We are thinking of filming more shorter, snappy shots to go in between the singing shots.
- Add some more split screen affects to fit the 'comedy' theme- keep it running throughout so there is just one split screen that looks out of place.
-Look at adding text on the beat

What our Digi-pack and magazine advert should include

The digi-pack should contain:


- Cover (cover photo, band name, album title)

- Back (Image, tracklist, copyright text, barcode, record label)

- 4 other panes (all including original images, could credits or a personal thank you message

 from the artist/band)

- Spines (Could include band name and album title)

- There is usually an on going theme throughout a video, album and images.


The Magazine Advert should contain:

-Image of the album/album name

-Artists/band

- example songs from the album e.g. "Including the hit song..."

-Ratings

- Price

-Where the album is available, e.g. an iTunes logo

-Release date

Shot list

Analysis of filming of our music video so far

What went well
We experimented with the lighting when filming in front of the blank wall.
First we filmed the girls miming the song numerous times together and separately so that we could mix the shots in the video up instead of there being the same clip of both girls together.
After this, the torch seemed to be running low on battery so whilst it was charging we went on to filming the bathroom scene first, rather than the dinner scene. Again, we filmed a variety of shot types of both the girls and props which we plan to dot around the beginning of our video in between shots of the girls miming the song.
During filming of the footage outside, like with the other footage, we filmed a lot of the shots we planned to and even thought of some other shots we hadn't thought of previously when drawing our storyboard.

What didn't go so well
Towards the end of filming the miming footage, the battery for the torch was running low. We attempted to charge it whilst filming other footage that didn't require the use of a torch but unfortunately, half way through filming the footage outside, the battery had completely gone and as a result of this we were unable to film some decent footage unless under the light of a street lamp.
There were also a few shots when uploaded to the computer we were unhappy with because of reasons such as they were too dark or too blurry.

Particular shots that we aren't happy with and that we may choose to re-film

• The simple shot that we filmed of the clock was quite dark and the clock was not actually working and therefore we might retake this shot again or of a watch. We also could simply just leave it out as we have a clip of Peter looking at his watch.
• The shot reverse shot of walking into bathroom didn't really go as well as we planned. We haven't filmed the shot of the girls walking into the bathroom from the outside and the shot from the inside was way too dark because we were unable to use the torch at this point in time. We plan to redo this shot again with use of the torch and possibly film the shot from the outside of the bathroom to complete the shot reverse shot we planned to do.
• Again, because of the dull lighting in the bathroom, some clips weren't as good as we hoped they would be such as the close up of the girls picking up lipstick and the mirror shot of Brianna putting it on.
• We planned to take an over the shoulder phone shot of Siobhan's phone of the conversation between her and Brianna so that the audience were able to grasp the storyline. The footage that we have was taken too far from the phone so that it is impossible to read the texts. We definitely need to retake this shot because we have already have included footage of Brianna and Siobhan on their phones in the music video.
• Similar to problem with the shot of the clock, the footage of the boys looking at each other confused was also too dark. We may have to reshoot this footage if we are still unhappy with these shots after we have experimented with the levels of brightness and contrast.
• We planned to film footage of the two boys looking out door and seeing girls walking down road so that the storyline is easy to understand but we did not get this bit of footage. We may choose to film this shot if after we have completed our rough cut, we feel that the narrative is confusing for the audience.
• Due to the dilemma with the torch battery running low when filming the footage outside at night, some of the shots that we had filmed such as of the two girls running past camera and the girls hiding in telephone box are too dark. Like with footage of the boys at the dinner party scene, if we are still unhappy with the shot after we have changed the levels of brightness and contrast then we may choose to do these shots again.
• Finally, it would be ideal to refilm some of the lip-syncing shots from different angles to make the cuts more frequent and vary the amount of shots so the audience doesn't get bored.