In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Music videos in general have the same basic idea. Performance or Narrative is always used on top of music to create an image of the genre or the star. We decided to use both as the song had a clear meaning which could easily be interpreted by a narrative but we didn’t want to lose the performance aspect that is often used with this genre of rock. Lyrics in songs tend to establish a general feeling and mood to the song for example the Avril Lavigne song ’when your gone’ makes the audience feel the emotions of the title trough the narrative. For our video we have developed this, as a sad song of heartbreak, we created the mood firstly with the colour of the video, black and white, and also with the visual narrative of the relationship break up. The story line used to show the heartbreak was simply that of two young lovers fighting and arguing which has been used in a few videos including Avril Lavigne.
Often there is a direct link between the lyrics and the visuals for example in evanesences video she is having a nightmare in her room while the lyrics say 'my spirit sleeping somewhere cold'. We decided to illustrate this by using the lyric ‘you throw stones’ and a long shot of stones being thrown with rage. Music videos also use the pace of the video to show a relationship between the music and the visuals. For our video I edited the beginning sequence by slowing it down as the tempo of the track at the beginning is very slow and sad. This was contrasted by the quick pace and more cuts used in the editing for the chorus which had an electrical guitar and loud rock base. The cuts therefore became shorter than the beginning making the video look faster. We tried to include the video style and iconography often used in rock videos by using shots of a live stage performance. The singing on the stage and head banging is typical of this genre and we felt that we had to include this.
Music videos are designed not only to sell the song but also the artist. For this reason most record companies demand close ups of the artist we can see this in avril lavignes video were there are constant close-ups of her singing. By using close ups of the singer we aimed to make the audience aware of her look and also create a sense of intimacy for the viewer. These shots were mainly used to show her sadness and by showing her crying we wanted to make the viewer share the emotions with the artist. We also tried to create a star iconography feel to her by making her wear black which is typical of the rock genre and also big silver earrings which are typical of the hip-hop/soul culture; this showed the contrast of her sound. However most rock videos have a band with instruments and are only performance based, I noticed this a lot in evanescence’s video. This means we have challenged the conventions of the genre of this music video as we didn’t have any instruments and a band.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The house style of my ancillary text was black with red and white. I chose this because the black represented the dark, rock style and image of the artist. However the red was used to represent the song name; heartbeat was represented with the colour as it symbolizes the blood that is in your heart. The white was used to contrast both colours and make the title and name stand out. The video also included this house style as it was black and white however we couldn’t use the colour as it wouldn’t be as effective at giving it an edgy, modern and sad look. The ancillary text and the video both had images of the artist however the difference was that in the video her hair was out and she has big earrings whereas in the cover she has her hair back and no earrings. This therefore doesn’t show the iconography that is surrounding even though her face is recognizable. Another form of conventions I noticed on digipaks and cd covers was that they often kept the font the same for everything with the artists name on it. I tried to do this as much as possible to create an iconography look to her name itself. I also tried to do this with the name heartbeat as the symbol which is in the writing makes it look more professional. I think that my video combined with the ancillary text was effective at showing the brand of the singer. This is because I kept to the house style of black and white as much as I could to represent her dark style of music: - rock in both the video and the Cd whilst always keeping the hip hop/soul style in her voice trough her appearance. For example, by her use of big earrings and trainers.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The audience feedback gave me a wide range of opinions. First of all it is clear that everyone loved the video and that they thought highly of it. Some of the comments were: - ’I thought it was excellent’, ‘video was very creative and professional, you could see how much hard work and thought was put into it. I liked the fact that it wasn’t stereotypical and matched the style of the song’, ‘it actually looked like a real music video, the storyline suited the song’,’ it looks like you put a lot of effort into it and the results were awesome’ and ‘I like the way the song showed the story behind it’ however they did find some flaws. For example the first person we asked said that ‘it was just black and white’ this might put off some members of the audience as they find this style outdated. We could have instead used a contrast of colours to show the contrast in style of the song. The second person also said that ‘maybe you should stick to the conventions of your genre a little bit more ‘this was something we had a problem in doing as the song has a mixture of two genres, Rock and hip hop/soul. However as the instrumental is rock we could have used instruments to make it a rock video. A convention often used in this genre. The third person added by saying ‘I found it a little scary ‘ this could be a problem if we were to target a younger audience but as most rock videos are aimed at teens I don’t think this was a big problem. The main criticism came from the last person questioned who found that ‘the camera was shaking a little’ this was used by us purposely when she began to dance to the music and head bang as well as when we see the ‘before’ shots of the couple filming themselves and being happy. Next time we could leave this out and use clips filmed from different angles by a camera on a tripod.
this is what the youtube page looks like :-
How did you use media technologies in the construction,planning and research stages?
The research and planning
After downloading the track on ‘itunes’, which is an internet software ,I began my research by going on the internet to search the artist. This helped me to grasp the concept of the song and allowed me to watch the original video on ‘youtube’ which I didn’t like much. Next I analysed two videos which I found to have a similar concept and genre. We used cameras to take pictures of possible locations and then used the memory card slots on my laptop to upload them. After this I created a blog on blogspot.com which I later used to upload all my work on. I created the production schedule again using Microsoft word as it allowed me to make a table. We also researched stuff like looks for the artist, props we could use and other ideas on the internet, which consisted of a lot of searching on Google. For my ancillary text I used real digipak’s as well as images of digipak’s from online sources.
The production
As I was playing Nneka in the video I didn’t get to shoot much of the video. However I did learn how to use the video camera to shoot the bedroom scène of ‘the boyfriend having a nightmare‘. This was great fun and I loved playing with the angles. I also used a tripod which was very useful as it helped me keep it the shots steady. After uploading these shots and the rest that my group had made of me, we began to edit them. We used ‘imovie’ by Apple. You can see how much I loved this software in my article ‘how to make a music video’ as it was so simple and allowed me to make the video and music go together. We also used it to slow and fasten the pace of the video to make it go with the pace of the music. After this I had the option of exporting the video onto you tube or onto the desktop. I decided to do both although they took a long time. After the video was uploaded onto you tube I copied and pasted the link onto my blog so that the examiner could watch it on the blog rather than having to look for it on you tube. For my ancillary text I used illustrator and Photoshop. First of all I had to Photoshop the images , cut out the background, feather it and edit the colours. Then I created the backrounds for the poster and digital using photoshop’s brushes. After this they were imported onto illustrator where I put them together with all the writing and information it needed.
this is an image of what imovie looks like :-
Evaluation
To be able to evaluate my work I realised I needed some audience feedback. I decided to upload my video to ‘facebook’ and ‘youtube’ where anyone could watch it and give us any critism. This was helpful as it was already typed up and wasn’t biased as they didn’t know who made it. I also used the polls to gain feedback although this limited the comments as I could only include questions that had yes and no answers.
this is what the facebook page looked like :-
