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RMAs - Ending of Songs

As we had to cut the song of our music promo short, the music ended very suddenly and did not sound right. To improve this, I looked back at my RMA research to see how other indie music videos conventionally finish theirs.


Wild ~ Troye Sivan

The song fades out slowly during this shot and quickly cuts to black before they kiss. This is foreshadowing the next video as part of this trilogy, therefore works effectively in this sense. The elongated last note before the silence while still showing the shot is also significant to the storyline as it adds a sense of longing.
Therefore, for my music promo, I will link it to my storyline and see what themes there are to explore to finish it effectively.


Wake Me Up When September Ends ~ Green Day

This music video ends with a shot of the band playing the song and then finishing- emphasising the end of the song. The shot then fades to black. However, as this video started off with dialogue, it then cut to a pan shot of one of the characters who says dialogue, adding continuity.
As my music promo does not include dialogue, I will not be needing this, but ending on a shot that is significant to the story could also be a effective way to end it.


Born to Die ~ Lana Del Rey

This music video ends with a quick cut to black, rather than a fade. The last shot is a long slow zoom of her hugging the man, which is thought to be suggesting the afterlife - a key shot to the storyline. The cut to black, therefore, can represent life being harsh and sudden.
As the storyline of my music video is quite optimistic and hopeful, I do not think a quick cut to black would be effective to the storyline.


After conducting this research, I found that fade to blacks and the fade in music are significant to indie genre music videos. However, they need to be important to the storyline to represent continuity. As my music video is hopeful and ends on a positive note, I think that a fade transition would be effective as it is more of a lighter transition that ends smoothly, leaving the audience to think about the last shot. The last shot in my music promo is of the main protagonist laying in her bed, listening to her song happily - so a fade will elongate this shot to emphasise it.

Third Draft Music Promo

For the third draft of our music promo, I used the feedback we received from both our teacher and our focus group to improve it-

• I removed some of the shots that focused on her taking off and putting on her jumper and coat, as I agreed that these were unnecessary. 
• I found shots of her playing the guitar which we filmed on the first day but did not include, so I used these to replace the unneeded shots. 
• To make the beginning of the song more like real-life, I added the ambient sound of typing when she types on her phone. 
• In terms of the email, I added text to the shot of her reading the acceptance email, and added key frames to make it look like it is appearing while she is reading it.

Filming Journal - Day #4

Second Draft Music Promo

For our second draft, we took into consideration our feedback from our first draft and filmed more shots of the main protagonist playing her guitar, and writing lyrics. We then took our the irrelevant parts of her in the cafe and added these in instead. 

When she is reading the emails, I had an idea to add text next to her as she is reading, to also show the audience what the email says so they can understand clearer. After getting feedback on this, I may include this, however we did reshoot the parts with the email to make them easier to read. 

We filled in the blank gaps we had in our first draft, however this meant the shots we had did not fill the whole song, so I cut the instrumental at the end, which is something we thought of doing anyway if we did not have enough footage. 

Filming Journal - Day #3

First Draft Music Promo

This is a rough cut of our music video before we film shots recommended after we got feedback. There is a part that has no clips, however, we are going to film more shots for the second verse to fill this.

Filming Journal - Day #2

Filming Journal - Day #1