Challenges in remaking Britney Spears- Baby music video

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Filming and remaking Britney Spears music video - Baby, will come with challenges in which we need to consider. 

One of the main concerns is that in her music video there are many proffessional dancers who are skilled and us on the other hand do not have many people. However, we used our initiative and since there are two media classes we have combined for certain scenes to solve this problem.

Another one of the problems is the location. Seeing as in Britney's music video there are four main locations, the classroom, hallway, car park and gym, it will be hard for us to access these facilities as there might be people who interrupt the filming and also getting consent to use these facilities will be difficult.

Our third concern is being able to have matching school unfiorms in which they have in Britney's music video. Since we aren't on a budget it will be hard for us to get a complete matching uniform for 15 people. 

One of the main conventions of a music video is lip syncing. This could be a struggle for us seeing as it is very time consuming trying to get it perfectly in time with the music with actors who are not trained or skilled. We could solve this by playing 'Baby' on a phone in order to get it in time and for it to look believable.

Madness - One Step Beyond Music Video Idea

In order to get used to using the softwares, Final Cut Express and an HD Camera, for our final coursework, we were set a task to create a 30-60 second music video picking one of the 3 songs we could choose from. Our group chose the song One step Beyond by Madness. We decided to have a man running and knocking a drink out of someones hand, who then starts to chase him and more and more people begin to form creating a mob who is chasing after the man. Throughout we will have a man tapping on the walls to the beat and a man sat on a bench reading a newspaper.

This core idea started through discussing the potential of doing this song as a music video. We felt that it had a comedic feel and reminded us of the Three Stooges and Charlie Chaplin and silent movies. From this we then  envisioned how we wanted to edit the video. We thought that in order to carry on with the 1920's theme of comedy we would use black and white. However, one of the problems we faced was trying not to disturb the public while filming and also we had to plan ahead to a day that it wasn't raining or else the camera and equipment would get damaged.

Controversy in the Music Video Industry

In our next lesson we looked at controversy within the film industry and how specific music videos have become banned within certain countries. One of the controversies which was heavily focused on was when Lady Gaga was seen wearing a dress entirely out of meet to the 2010 MTV music awards. This attracted publicity as it went against animal rights and therefore people started to protest.  

Another controversy was Kanye West's music video for Monster which shows dead models hanging from nooses around their necks and dismembered heads littering the floor, Kanye West has produced what must surely be his most controversial video yet.

Kanye is shown in bed with a couple of apparently dead models, positioning their limp hands to touch one another.

Other scenes show a woman dragging a dead male model across the floor and a couple feasting on a bloody corpse.

The video comes with a disclaimer that says “The following content is in no way to be interpreted as misogynistic or negative towards any groups of people. It is an art piece and it shall be taken as such.”

Yana Walton of the Women’s Media Center said in an interview, “[West’s] imagery and lyrics go beyond legitimizing violence to women- they fetishize it. Since gender based violence is a daily reality in our country, I urge Kanye to examine the harmful effects of using his fame in this manner.”

However, Jenn Hoffman, a Los Angeles-based entertainment and pop culture expert supports West’s video. Hoffman says, “It is not misogynistic, it’s self indulgent. Kanye is obviously not advocating violence against women. He’s trying to make a statement about money, power, sex and fame that’s been made a million times before.”

Codes and Conventions

In our first media lesson of the A2 media course, we looked at the codes and conventions of making a music video. In order to do this, we were given 3 examples which were Albanian music videos.

From these we looked at globalization and how a music video is created to be made for a specific audience varying from age to a different country. We also looked at how other music videos contain intertextual reference, in particular Lady Gaga's video for Bad Romance, which in some parts were similar to Madonna's video. 

We then went on to look at codes and conventions such as narrative in which is used for the company to suceed in it's target audience, and another convention is the performance which is used to give a variety in various music videos. Some other codes and conventions also include how fast paced the shots are edited considering the genre or speed of the music. Another convention is lip syncing, dance routines, mise-en-scene, and shot variety.