ASFF: Aesthetica Short Film Festival

The ASFF is held in various locations around York city centre, and this year it ran from the 7th - 10th November. 

Firstly, we went to White Stuff to watch a variety of music videos. Personally, I only recognised one video and artist, as most of the artist were indie and have not yet been hugely recognised by the radio and TV. Despite this, there was a range of different techniques and effects used, although one element I noticed in all the videos was that they were all animated in some way. They all used special effects and animation which made the videos modern and therefore more engaging for a younger audience. From watching these videos I had a few ideas to incorporate different effects into our own music video, as I think that it would make the video more interesting and eye catching for our primary audience. 

Adele

After attending the first venue, we went to a masterclass given by Craig McNeil from the Beggars Group. The Beggars Group is an independent record company stemming from the Beggars Banquet record shops opened in London in 1973. It is a conglomerate, with Rough Trade Records, Matador Records, XL Recordings and 4AD as its subsidiaries. The group has signed a variety of artists such as The Horrors, Vampire Weekend and Biffy Clyro, as well as directing music videos for the likes of Adele, Basement Jaxx and Dizzee Rascal. 
   He spoke about the history of music videos, and how videos such as Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' are still influential to artists even today. He also talked about how platforms have developed from Top of the Pops to MTV and other music channels to allow artists to promote their music, and how YouTube is another huge platform for advertising and screening new material. Lyric videos are often created by both fans and the distributor themselves, to provide another way of promoting the video. 

Attending this talk and event as a whole has enabled me to view the ways in which music videos are created and promoted, and has given me some new ideas that we as a group can experiment with.