A2 MEDIA STUDIES

Daniel Jackson

CHOSEN BRIEF – Music Video

Some of my influences included powerful female artists to begin with because they are well known for having fun, interesting but strong music videos.

But as I wanted to show a different side of me, I looked into the music of Sam Smith.

First of all I listened to ‘Stay With Me’, and began thinking about how I was going to depict myself doing the same kind of video, then after I thought about ‘I’m Not The Only One’ which is one of my favourite songs, but this video seemed too busy as it was too much of a storyline and I thought I would find it difficult to portray the storyline alongside lip-synching too.

CHOSEN SONG: Leave Your Lover – Sam Smith

I chose this song because of its slow-paced melody, and amazing construction of the video. I found it quite difficult to watch in some respects as it’s quite an emotional video. The narrative helps portray the message of the song and the lyrics are quite powerful too.

The Video ItselfInitially, I wanted to create a video which had a 50/50 split between lip-synching

and a visual narrative (a story alongside)

I want to star in the video myself, for the parts that are stationery, and do not require movement of the camera. And also, I have invited some friends to take

part in the video too, especially during the more fun aspects, where I portray the banter and the friendship they have.

In Sam Smith’s video, it’s quite episodic in its structure. It has a narrative for most of the story which is something I found intriguing. But as I am actually really goof

at lip-synching myself I thought that a bit more of that needed to be included.

How are you going to be in it, and film it?

I researched into self-directed music videos. This is where the artist performing in the video is also the cameraman

and director. Obviously there is a large support team, which I do not have, but for parts where the camera angle is

normal, aligned and focuses only on one particular piece of the narrative – it will be easy to perform in the video too.

One thing with this thought is that the editing process will be more difficult as it will involve piecing together lots of smaller scenes, but I feel that this can be achieved as Sam

Smith’s video for ‘Leave Your Lover’ conveys this too.