Similar Product Research (5)

Framing and Editing 

Christina Aguilera & A Great Big World - Say Something 
Genre: Indie/Pop
Style: Performance 


This music video starts off with an upwards pan which then focuses on one of the artists, Ian Axel, playing the piano. The artist is playing the piano slowly, only using a couple of keys which matches the slow pan. The band we are recording also use a piano so this is something that we could consider replicating in our own video because the song we have chose also starts with two piano notes. 

For every other piano note there is a cut to another shot. It cuts to a high angle shot of a man and woman laid on a bed in silence, the woman has her hand on his but then slowly moves it away. It then cuts back to a shot of the artist who then begins to sing, when he sings 'say something I'm giving up on you' it cuts in the middle of the lyrics back to the man and woman. You then see her turn on her side away from the man, linking the lyrics and visuals together to show how she is giving up on him. Also, there is a close up of the woman's sad face which then cuts to droplets of water, I think that this could be representing tears.

Then it cuts back to one of the artists playing the piano. It is a close up of him whilst he sings, this is a convention of a music video so this is something that Ellie and I shall be using in our music video. There is also a see the other half of 'A Great Big World', Chad Vaccarino, although at this point he is not singing. 

At 0.57 we get a long shot of one of the other artists, Christina Aguilera, she walks out slowly from the darkness and into a spotlight, then joins in with the song. I think this is a good effect because of the contrast between light and dark. This is something we could recreate, possibly for the rap verses so it focuses the attention on one person. I think because our song is has quite serious lyrics, it would be work well. 

We then get a wide shot and a relationship between lyrics and visuals with 'I'm feeling so small' and then a close up of the little girl who is sat in bed looking scared and then 'over my head' as the girl pulls the duvet cover over her head. Ellie and I have already decided that we are going to have narrative shots like these in our videos because it helps the audience to understand the meaning of the song.











Next we have a high angle shot of an old man and lady who are in a hospital like setting. This is a very powerful shot as it is showing the relationship between them and linking to the meaning of the song of not giving up. There is a close up shot of the man which shows him sobbing, this links back to earlier in the song when the young woman looked sad and then the close up of the child who is looking scared. Then there is a link between lyrics and visuals because there is a medium to close up shot of the man blowing a kiss to the woman who is still laid in the bed as the song goes 'I'm saying goodbye'. 

Then for the first time we see a group shot of all the artists. I like this shot because they are all on different levels and in different positions. We could consider a shot like this with our band because it would be fairly easy to reconstruct.  

This shot type is one Ellie and I will be using because it is a performance based convention of a music video, for the artist to look into the camera.

Throughout the song, it shows three different beds with 3 different situations. Something like this helps the audience to relate to a song and understand the meaning. The ASL for this video was about 3-5 seconds, although the song was slow the shots were fairly fast. Also another convention was that the shots always cut on the beat.