The first company I looked at basically tried to cover all music videos from any artist in any genre and so for my second company I wanted to find a company that specialised in more classical/instrumental music videos. My client Sharon Martin although she would class herself as a singer/songwriter that genre is so huge in itself when I started to do research into it I mainly found artists like Ed Sheeran and Eds and Sharon's musical styles are very different. I then struggled to find videographers/companies that make this sort of music video so I instead went and found three Violin artists with music videos that I liked but ones that are slightly different to each other so that I could compare their styles. Through doing this and doing some digging I did manage to find who directed a couple of these music videos and I went and looked at their websites and portfolios.
Hilary Hahn- J.S Bach: Partita for Violin solo No.1 in B minor
The first video I wanted to look more into was a Hilary Hahn video that although very simple to make works for the piece of music she is playing. I wanted to start with Hilary as she is the most classic performer out of the three musicians I am going to look at, sadly this video was the only one out of the three where I could not find the director or production company of the video. The video itself is all about the camera movement, the video is literally just Hilary dressed up in her best clothes performing the song in the middle of a big room in what looks to me some sort of mansion. The camera movements are very fluid where as the performers movements are very static other than her natural movements of playing her Violin. The camera moves around her zooms in and out on her and her Violin and ultimately gives what would be a basic music video a sense of uniqueness which is what caught my attention. The only negative I have of the video is that the editing seems very choppy and just cuts at random times rather than editing to the beat, it's so bad in parts that it can distract from the camera movement. The video is however fairly easy to make and looks really professional as well as having some creativity with the camera movements. Something I will take from this video is that even if you do not have a huge budget you can make a professional looking music video just with camera movements.
Simply Three-Rain
Video
Produced by: Apairus Company
Directed by: Bret Kalmbach
VFX: Dan Fusselman
DP: Bret Kalmbach
The second video I wanted to look into is more cinematic than the first and has a whole production team behind it (Listed Above) that I also looked into. The first thing I noticed is that the video has fake black bars at the top and bottom that have been put in during post production I used these on my own last project and they straight away make any project look more cinematic. The story of the video itself is a simple premise of a girl who is clearly sad which is shown by her acting as well as it is raining throughout the video, she is seen catching a taxi into a city where she sees the band performing in the street and it makes her smile. The video features some impressive visual effects and you can see why the band spent extra money on bringing in a guy just to do those effects. The effect that impressed me most is at the end of the video everything is slowed down as we start to see the girls reaction to hearing the band and her smile starting to appear. The thing that made this so effective for me was the use of water because in these scenes even the rain is slowed down and we later on see the band still performing in slow mo and we can see each and every little rain drop on their instruments. I do not know how this effect was achieved and I am going to try and find ways of achieving this effect as I feel it could be useful for me for the future. The video also features a few other visual effects one notable one being an animation of a bike moving along on the inside of the taxi window. In conclusion I thought the visual effects were really impressive and not something I expected to find in a video from a band of this genre of music. I will be doing a profile on the production company but this will be in another post.
Lindsey Stirling ft. Sabrina Carpenter- You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch
Director: Joshua Shultz & Lindsey Stirling
Producer: Krizia Vega
Editor: Lindsey Stirling
Lindsey Stirling is the first artist that came to my mind when I thought of Violin music. She is probably the biggest artist within the singer/songwriter/violinist genre and has over 12 Million subscribers on youtube. She is known for her fast past music but is also notable for her high budget cinematic music videos as well. Her videos are always very preformative with choreographed dance sequences but also often feature a narrative as well. I also found it interesting that she seems to do a lot of the video work herself as she had a shared directing credit for this video as well as attributing the editing credit solely to herself. Her video for her cover of you're a mean one Mr. Grinch is no different through her video she changes the idea of Mr. Grinch being a creature who hates Christmas and heavily implies Mr.Grinch in her world to be a guy who wrecks relationships. She does this through having the video shot in a bar with some suggestive dance sequences and movements, Lindsey herself is also seen in a number of different outfits throughout the video some more suggestive than others and this helps add a sexiness to a genre that is often seen as being quite modest. There are also a couple of times throughout the video where it cuts to her on her own looking out the window almost searching for her next Mr. Grinch. Despite changing the songs meaning in this way the colouring of the video is very green to remind the audience that this is still a Christmas song juts with a twist. Changing the meaning of songs like this gives her more of a pop vibe compared to other more classical violinists like Hilary Hahn and this is why she is such a popular artist. Through her music videos and the pace of her music shes made the Violin cool and sexy and made that genre of music start to appeal more to a younger audience which is something I am hoping I can do with my client. I feel having really quick movements may not be appropriate for the piece of music I am editing with however and also the sexiness element may not be appropriate either but I can certainly look at making my video different to sensitising music video within this genre. Again i will be doing a separate post looking at the production company behind this video.
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