Friday, May 9, 2008

Music Videos 2: Lyric Analysis and Planner

Part One

Because a large focus of my film class explored how words are translated into images, I wanted my students to think seriously about the meaning and imagery within their chosen lyrics. The lyric analysis sheet asks them to focus solely on the lyrics' words and intent, without worrying about the video at this point. You'll really need to emphasize that they shouldn't be thinking about the video yet, as they immediately want to start planning how to shoot it.

I realized the importance of this step as I wandered from group to group; several students completely missed the meaning behind some of their lyrics, and even ended up changing songs.

Once they've worked through the lyric analysis, they move on to the planner. This is where they start thinking visually. The planner moves them from the overall mood they want to create to more specific plans for creating that mood. It also asks them to create a story to tell--this can be directly related to their lyrics, or an idea taken from the lyrics.

In the planner, they'll develop the characters and setting, and brainstorm the types of images they plan to incorporate. They also need to describe the effect they think their images, characters, etc will have on the audience. The students struggled the most with this and, to be honest, I wasn't very happy with what they came up with. They're so anxious to get to the shooting, they wanted to rush through this, without putting much thought into the effect.

This should make it more interesting, however, when we do the feedback on their rough cut. As they hear responses from their audience and begin to recognize what does and doesn't work, I hope they'll realize it's worth while to spend more time planning.

Next post: the storyboard a great site for filming/editing tutorials.

No comments:

Post a Comment