We Lived Music Video

Evaluation

In what ways does your media

product use, develop or

challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Each genre of music video’s has it’s own set of conventions. Typically there are so many sub-genres, directors have subverted some of the codes and conventions to suit the artists particular style. For example I chose to look at rock music which tends to show the performance of the band, sometimes including a storyline often featuring the singer as a main character. The first band I chose were of the sub-genre indie alternative rock so I decided to focus on the narrative aspects of music video’s. I analysed many video’s and found common features such as the use of lighting, the importance of styling and fashion, mise-en-scene behind the storyline often filmed outside in fairytale style locations or performance in studio style settings. Some even crossed the boundaries by setting the studio gig with instruments and lighting in an outside location. My first idea was to create this fantasy storyline following The girl the singer wrote the song about, using lights and outside locations but I felt it didn’t

fit the rock genre image.I discovered a more appropriate unsigned band called ‘Fancesqa’ and looked and their previous music videos and others of similar style such as Canterbury, another unsigned band. Being unsigned means low budgets and their video’s are simple yet effective. I looked as artist of the same alternative rock genre to see how the followed or converted typical music video conventions. Video’s were edited to the pace and beat of the music, keeping continuity and often featuring shot reverse shot’s. In slower tempo songs I found fades were used as well as pans whereas is fast tempo songs often hand held camera movements were used of emphasise the bands performance and movements.

Here are examples of videos I looked at that inspired my own work featured on the right hand side.

Paramore – Decode

Biffy Clyro – Bubbles

Adele –Rolling in the Deep

Canterbury - Gloria

Long shot – band and amp and guitar in a live performance setting

Close-up of singer so audience can see artist and feel involved with the

lyrics and song

Extreme Close-up of fingers strumming guitar in sync with

music

Cuts to long shot of dance in same setting to keep continuity, follows

convention of indie and alternative bands and keep female audience

interested

Mid shots of singer / main artist performing while giving eye

contact to the camera so audience connect with the video

When looking at popular rock bands such as Coldplay and their video Lovers in Japan, I found their unusual choice of text interesting and decided to develop this idea into my low budget video by having the artist hold the lyrics instead of mouthing them.

When performing, bands often jump, swing their instruments, smash their drums (or in my video a bin), and emphasise emotions through body language like spreading their arms out and singing to the world. I featured all of these in my video, also seen in Francesqa’s most recent video ‘All I Have’. I synchronised the dancers movements with the singers to connect the two seperates scenes together. At this point in the video I also used many cuts of different angles when he spins to slightly disorientate the audience.

I decided to only use one member of the band to give the impression of a one man band, adding to the feel of the rather solemn song. This challenges conventions of this type of music video as often a band performs together. As part of the ‘rock and roll’ feel to the one man band, I had him rebel a little in the chorus of the video as it’s heavier than the verses. This is stereotypical of rock video’s soI included him kicking the bucket he used as a seat, making a mess with his school work and shouting through a megaphone.

How effective Is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I looked at many indie rock alternative genre album art, and decided these were my main influences. It is extremely important to portray the bands identity through the CD front cover to entice new and existing customers and fans. The Verves cover draws the viewers attention to the text in the middle, so I centralised the bands name and album title. Kings of Leon caught a photo in motion, so I used light to create the feel of motion and music. Delphic, as well as centring the title, used a lightly mirrored image while photoshoping two images together like I have done with the piano and snake. The Pretty Reckless took a pretty image and turned it rock and roll by adding a symbolic leather biker jacket. I loved the shock factor to this and interpreted it into my work by adding snake skin to a classical instrument. The back Is kept simple, keeping continuity through using a similar image, same text and the title and including all the important information.

Photo of singer featured in video

Texture repeated throughout digi-pack design printed on CD

Inside featuring band members, their names and instraments

Flap continues image of piano and light effect before being opened to reveal CD

Copyright, band website, manager, producer ect.

Price and Barcode as if being sold in store

Binding replacates bands name and album title

with snakeskin texture as background

I completed the package of a music video and the Digi-pack it would be sold with in a store and a

poster that would promote it in a magazine such as NME.

It was most important to keep synergy between the two ancillary texts. I kept the colours simple like my black and white video. I also thought it was important to create the illusion of movement as my video features dancing and performance so I used the light effect same as on the digi-pack front cover. Typically the posters are to the point, simple, use same images as seen on album and defines the bands identity while giving the vital information of when it’s on release and what website to go to.

This is a shot from a practice I produced for my music video, but since I changed the style of my video but wanted to keep the use of lights in my work I used it in my photography for my ancillary texts. Looking back at the text used in the Coldplay video I took inspiration to create the album cover using a long shutter speed on the camera. I attempted to write the name but preferred the movement of the light, so I based it around a piano indicating to the audience it’s alternative/ popular music. To bring back the rock look I added texture from a venomous animal, a snake, to juxtapose the soft image behind with the heavy pattern people associate with fear, like many rock bands try to portray. Over all I kept the images dark as these colours are a convention of the genre.I am very pleased with the final resultand I believe it represents the Alternative Rock band wellThere for targeting the rightAudience. I felt the ancillaryTexts where of higher quality Than the result of myVideo, as it was a Very make-shift, Simple video whereasThe album coverIs quite busy. I Think the hand writtenTitle ‘Fancesqa’Shows the unsigned sideTo the band, keepingIt low budget and alternativeStyle.

What have you learnt from your

audience feedback?

“make the video more interactive with the audience”

“good shots but perhaps a bit more of a variety”

“The fades between the tree shots are good too”

“add performance into the video not just narrative alone”

After my first practice video, I got feedback from people within the target audience, ages 15-26, and interested in rock music. Their responses were positive but I felt the main issues that were repeatedly commented are featured in the above quotes. The shots of the teenage girl didn’t really tell a story and had no performance featured. After conducting a survey I realised how many people went to see bands live and wanted to see the in the music video. They wanted to see performance as well as a band, so that’s where I decided the teenage girl will be a dancer and I would feature the singer, making his part a one man show.

When producing my ancillary texts I referred to 5 members of my media class who fit the target audience to feedback on their favourite posters so i ended up with the most eye catching result. I gave a lot of options to choose from and used the most popular one as my final design.

It was difficult to synchronise the actor mining with the lyrics and the drumming to the beat, it was another media student who noticed the slight out of timing.

People liked the simple tones and adds to the quality of the music video.

This layering of shots was used to create interest for the audience

I used a mixture of steady and handheld shots depending on the tempo at the time of the song. I used this variety to appeal to a wider audience

From my research people like close ups of the singer so they connect with the character

The audience noticed the difference between the soft and heavier part so I suited the transitions to accompany that

This particular viewer enjoyed my take on a one man band

Here is an example of both teenage males and females enjoying the scenes of the dancer

The favourite part for this viewer was the kicking of the bucket. If I had asked more audience opinions before hand I would’ve shot more rebellious scenes

How did you use media technologies

in the research, planning,

construction and evaluation stages ?

During the research stage of this project, I used several forms of media, the internet being my main resource. I watched TV channels such as Kerrang and MTV which mainly focus on rock and popular music. Google search engine also specifies in searching videos so I could refer to a band i saw on the TV and find other videos of theirs. I also looked through Dazed&Confused magazine which has a music section and found Florence & The Machines personal website which had all their videos on a music player. You tube provided me channels for specific bands which helped greatly in my research stage. I was able to analyse many videos and take notes on common conventions features. They also have related links down the right hand side so I was able to find similar artists recommended by the website itself. www.myspace.com was also a useful website as there were times where I was blocked from using Youtube, and this was another means of viewing videos. Myspace allows bands to create profile pages announcing shows, releasing videos and new songs, as well as being able to view photo’s and reading about the band such as who influences them.

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This is Fancesqa’s personal website featuring their new video. It is currently in progess so it didn’t offer me a lot of information but other major bands websites were very useful. Even though it didn’t provide me with much resouces i could tell from the first page they like sharp and simple images to represent themselves.

Francesqa’s Myspace website provided me with so much information about the band. A bands image is very important in order to connect to the right target audience and this is a place they project that. The colours used were monochrome, the page was very neat and tidy. Here i found the managers contact info to ask permission to use the song. I could view their latest videos seeing they mainly feature performance. I could also see fans comments, getting a greater understanding of the type of audience who listen to this band.

FrancesqaTV is the Youtube channel they created to post all their latest videos. This also features behind the scenes footage and exclusive interviews and homemade video’s by the band themselves. I likes the whole do-it-yourself approach this band had, Staying unsigned, Filming themselves to keep their fans updated, so I tried to convert this into my own work.

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I invested in a new Nokia mobile which enabled me to access the internet wherever I was. This allowed me to send and view emails through Gmail to get permission to use the bands song. The manager also used his blackberry device to reply. It was also handy to send quick texts to friends around school to get them to come and fill in the questionnaires I had produced and part of my research. I highly relied on my mobile to contact and organising the actors and stages of producing the video as well. I could set alarms to notify myself of up coming shooting schedules.

In order to cretate professional looking ancillery text i used some of the latest technology and programs such as my digital Canon LSR, to get the images for my visual work. I then used photoshot to edit the images, add text to create a poster an Digi-pack. I used effects such as adjusting levels, changing the tones of the colours so they matched.

In this program I couldreplicate the images and move the aroundtesting what looked best, developing my work.

When producing my video I used lots of new programs to me. I had to upload the original footing I had shot on a HD Camera into I-Movie. I uploaded it onto an Apple Mac laptop as this enabled me to take it from home to school instead of using a computer. My post production work was done on Premier Pro, as it was suitable to edit movies and I have had a bit of practice using it from last year.

I then compressed the video and exported it so I could upload it onto Youtube. This enabled me to embed it into the Blogger website I have been keeping my progress work online. By using Youtube i could also post the link out onto Facebook, a social network site to get feedback from friends and the target audience. I got speicificChat boxs up to ask peopleDirectly as well as postingThe link on the wall for Everyone to see.

This is where I downloaded the original movie and sound clips to work from

When dragged here, I could clip the part I wanted. I could also adjust the effect such as the lighting, contrast and speed. I also changed the opacity so two clips could be seen at once

Here is where I would drag the effects such as video transitions, fades and dips to black. Here i also dragged the black & white effect onto the clips to make the movie monochrome.

This is where i detached the image from the sound and replaced it with the song music. Here is where i could adjust the order the clips were played in

This is where I could view what the video looked like so far

All of these new technologies and programs have been extremely vital to every stage of my work. I have explored new medias and realised how much we rely on these in this

digital modern world. Without websites such as Youtube and Facebook, where people can connect internationally, communicate and share information, I would not have got the

research, feedback and development needed. Blogs have become very popular over the past few years, like a digital book where the public can view your work. I allowed my

piers and friends to see my progression in order to move on and understand what they wanted to see. Slideshare even enabled me to upload the Powerpoint document on my

own laptop and share it on the internet. I have progressed greatly in the amount of work I blogged this year and I found there was a lot more resources to look at and review. My

skills in Premier Pro have moved on greatly from last year as I was working independently. I had to ask for help at several point to understand the formatting and

sizing of videos to keep it as best quality as possible. Overall I am most impressed with the ancillary texts I produced. Due to using Photoshop more this year due to being

interested in websites such as Flickr and Tumblr where i can also post my own art work, I was able to follow the needs of what an alternative indie rock album and poster would

look like to high standards.