Planning Cinematography

- What is the purpose of cinematography
- Include still images to support your points
- What cinematography will you include and why?
- How is your cinematography conventional to your music genre?
- How does it build a relationship with your target audience?

The purpose of cinematography is to help keep a music video flowing, whilst keeping it interesting. If a video was to have an interesting narrative, but only had one camera angle, and barely ever cut throughout the video, it would become boring and tedious. If the same video had many different camera angles, and cut at least every 3 seconds, even the slightest changes could make it that much more captivating for the viewer. Another purpose behind different camera angles, and filming styles is how it can relate to a target audience and draw them in. A clever technique in order to keep the audience interested is by using a hand held, first person camera shot, as it will allow anyone watching it to feel a sense of connection to the video.

Cinematography is also useful when trying to annotate a music video, i.e. it helps show power representation in shots that use high/low angles to show hierarchy between characters on screen.

Panning and static shots can also be very effective, especially when trying to establish a setting. Settings are very important, but will have no effect if they are not portrayed right, and in order to do this, the right camerawork must be used. Static shots are useful in a setting in which the mood may be being set, however panning shots may be more useful when using a slightly destructed setting.



We will use predominantly straight cuts throughout our music video, as we feel these will be the most subtle, and we want the focus to be on the performance and narrative in our music video as opposed to 'fancy' transitions.

The camera angles will consist of many low angle shots. As our video is about deceitfulness, and betrayal, it will show the power balance shifting from scene to scene, so will give us a chance to show the progression of the characters and how much control they may have over each other. We feel the low angle shot may be one of the best ways to represent the idea of power through cinematography. Throughout the performance sections of the video, we will use basic close ups, mid shots and long shots in order to focus on the setting and the artist.

Our cinematography will help the audience relate as it will be using shots that help humanise the characters as much as possible, and will hopefully allow people to understand the situation the characters are in, and empathise.