Music Video Evaluation Writing
1. In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Throughout our video we attempted to fit the lyrics to the visuals of the song. To start we downloaded the lyrics and then made points as to the possible ideas to fit with them. In our final video we used the concept of miming or lip synching to math the singer with the lyrics, also some of the stop-motion that was in the stop-motion notebook read ‘so much to tell you…to fill you in’, this directly imitated the lyrics creating a connection. In this particular parts the words have denotations of cute and girly, therefore these also create a connection with the visuals, the music and the overall genre and representation of the band. Other connections include the lyrics such as ‘I met you at a party’, fit in with the party scenes. This shows there is a ‘link between lyrics and visuals’ as quoted by Andrew Goodwin writing in ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ (Routledge 1992)
The above representations show the character as innocent, girly and sweet. Other ways this can be seen it through the girly, childish doodles and the scratchy effects on the video creating a vintage feel. Also the sepia tone makes the whole feel of the video calm and soft. This is unique and exploits the bands USP.
The genre of the band and this song in particular is very out there Indie pop. The video incorporates some typical conventions of this genre, such as the girl singing to a blank wall is popular for this genre. Although, the genre has been challenged by giving the video a slight narrative, almost turning it into a story or a diary of the girls day. Also visual Indie pop conventions are expressed through the miss-en-scene: vintage style dress, mirror (old style frame), plain room with hard and clear flooring.
There are some inter-textual reference to our video that represent comparisons to other videos, some of which are a completely different genres and some are also indie pop. This shows how we have enhanced our video the use of other typical genre conventions. Kate Nash is also an Indie pop singer and therefore some features of her video can be seen as similar to features of our video. For example Kate Nash ‘Foundations’ video (25/5/07) had a very vintage theme, her costume (old style dress) is similar to the look we attempted achieving. It incorporates also stop-motion in the form of socks dancing on the floor, showing a connection to our stop-motion tights scene. Overall the whole miss-en-scene is similar to what we tried achieving in our music video. Some videos from different genres that have inter-textual references to our video include ‘Sigar Ross - Hoppipola. This video has a very effective scratchy/ sepia effect, same as the one we have used. There are also some black edges like the ones we used in our lip synching scenes. In both the videos this is very effective and gives the impression it has been shot through an old camera lens, adding to the vintage feel in our particular video.
Throughout filming we used both a digital camera for the stop-motion scene and a camera for the main film. Mostly the camera is a mid-shot or close up angled at the singer rested on a tripod. Although during a party scene it is hand held, creating an edgey feel and showing a connection between music and visuals.
The lighting slightly alters throughout. The curtains opening and closing represent time of day. Also the sunset feel gives almost a romantic feel, showing again a connection to the lyrics, and fits in well with the genre. This also shows some variation. We darkened the stairs when shooting to show night and in the party scene, adding to an effective miss-en-scene. We got the perfect lighting when shooting against a blank wall so that it wasn’t too dark or light, also avoiding exposure of shadows. Other factors also created an effective video such as the miss-en-scene, the field was empty therefore representing loneliness and searching, connecting visuals to lyrics.
We can see through the shots used that we have used typical music video conventions through watching other videos. For example Will Young ‘You and I’ shows a singer singing at the camera against a blank background. Also Lady Gaga ‘Just Dance’ (17/6/08) shows a hand held party scene, just like our video. Katy Perry (who is in the same genre of our video) also uses a shot of the singer singing into a mirror, this is a clever shot that successfully captures emotion.
Our Digipack design is also similar to others, Christina Aguilera’s ‘Come on Over’ shows a face as a main focus on a plain background and Beyonce ‘B-day’ has a similar swirly pattern to the one we used around the edge. J-lo also has 3 bonus disks with a darkened/ softened face image on a neutral background. Showing it’s a popular way to display female artists. Our advert shows typical conventions e.g large band name, ‘Coming Soon’ and natural, neutral images that match the image of the band. It also shows the date of release and a review.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Both the digipack and the poster have the same colours, orange rustic, showing they connect. They both also use the same band name ‘Au Revoir Simone’ taken from the official website and therefore uses the style of the official band, this shows that we are trying to create an overall package that has the same feel that the band themselves have created. This works well as the bands image incorporates successfully with the genre style. This also shows a connection between the ancillary tasks. The colours are also good for the band because they are calm and natural. As well as the colours there are other visual links between the two tasks including images of the actress's face, whereby on both she is holding a calm, simple pose. As the actress is the girl we used in the music video and not the actual band, it shows a connection between visuals and ancillary texts. Both the digipack and the poster use swirly/flower images that where taken from the Au Revoir Simone official website. The link between the two therefore show strong connections, yet also denotes a sly connection between the official band and the way they are shown or perceived, very girly. We also used some music notes onto our poster which represents the passion for music. Overall with both the tasks we where trying to achieve a calm and peaceful diary like video of the girls day. Through the ancillary texts we have used very girly themes with neutral colours, this both shows they connect and represent the girl In the innocent yet elegant way we wanted her to be portrayed.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Feedback from our class on our roughcut was mostly negative as the roughcut was not great. Some of the things commonly commented on included: lack of scene variation, repetition of scenes and unprofessional laughing and smiling. There was also comments on it jumping from light to dark dramatically and a point that there was room for more performance. Although some of the positive feedback included speeding up of the street scenes as it successfully fitted with the music, although again this was repeated.
We took this all into context and changed some of the final to make it appeal better to the audience, including: complete change of actress and scenes, shot types and incorporation of stop motion, lighting and complete improvement of miss-en-scene. This was successful and our final-cut feedback was much more positive, 'The idea is good, I really like when Hannah walks towards the trees and the camera turns, also when the effect of when shes dancing by the trees', this was one of the comments received from Facebook. As we had connections with the band, the bands representative left this comment ' looks great!'. Through the production process we had many comments from our teacher advising us. When we first starting adding effects to the piece we received some constructive feedback from our teacher who discussed the old style effect. We where told that putting the effect across the whole of the piece would not look very creative, also when we did this we discovered many of the scenes (especially with the singer on a blank canvas) became almost orange. As a result and as advised we reduced the sepia tones on many of the scenes and reduced/ increased the scratchy effect where needed. Through experimentation we also discovered that adding the scratchy effect twice helped increased the creation of the old style image. Also through teacher feedback we where encouraged to change some of the dancing scenes as they where a bit slow and lacked variation. Through experimenting with this we found the ‘Stop-Motion’ effect on Final Cut and used this to double the girls image, or overlay the image making it appear there was more then one actress spinning.
Our class feedback for the final cut left the following comments:
Blog- very visual, lots of writing, good explanations, all fits together, good evidence of research.
Ancillary texts- Good ideas, good colours, tie in very well together, not too much information, possibility for more images.
Video- Good effects (especially old style), clubbing random, good lip synching, good idea and animation.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used many online sites to help with the production, planning and research and development. We used 'Youtube' as a way of researching into other music videos, this was an extremely useful source of ideas and helped us research other songs by the band. 'Blogger' was a way of documenting our development so far and research we had done on other videos, also as a way of uploading our video and other tasks.This we regularly updated to make it as successful as possible. The social networking sites 'Facebook' and 'Myspace' as a source of contacting the band, this was our only source of communication and we regularly checked to see if we had any feedback from the band and used it as a way of gaining permission and gaining feedback for our video. Final Cut was used in the production of the video. We used it to piece together our video and then add effects: such as Sepia, Old Scratchy Style (which had to be downloaded from the internet) and a stop motion effect that is available. This was used in both our roughcut and final cut. We also used it to speed up/ slow down parts of our movie such as the dancing scenes, therefore it is a very useful application to use as helped successfully create the video. Other applications we used was Photoshop, this was used to create both the digipack and the magazine article, both of which used images dragged from the music video and downloaded from the internet, in particular the Au Revoir Simone website. We also downloaded the font for the didgipak from ‘www.dafont.com’ which was ‘Hannahs messy handwriting’ and worked very well with the effect we where going for as it was swirly yet childish. We also used the internet to download the old style effect used across the majority of the video.
