Music Video Evaluation Commentary Final- Naomi

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Once we had chosen our track for the project, "the hill, the view and the lights" it was important that we understood both the track and the bands genre, which in this case was Indie. To help us understand the Indie genre with confidence we used the Goodwin's theory to guide us. Goodwin's theory included the five main conventions in which a music video is made by.

The first convention is Notions of looking (such as using an direct gaze in our music video), which leads into looking at the generic conventions. To help us to be familiar with generic conventions in Indie music videos we researched a variety on you tube. Our results led us to recognizing that most commonly in Indie music videos young people (students, both male and female) are either apart of the band or are used to represent both the song and the band, this helped us to have a clear idea of the kind of person we would like to represent the song in our music video : a teenage girl. This also allowed us to look into costume (here introducing mise en scene), we noticed a trend in which was a quite contrasted fashion sense such as formal wear contrasting with "converses" keeping the style aesthetically appealing but still keeping a young, casual vibe. Leading us to get an image of having a female singer in a bright pink prom dress with very contrasting converses. Also, we looked carefully into obvious and repetitive locations used in Indie music videos, these normally are landscapes such as : fields, forests and busy cities (note that we noticed these trends in the Cajun Dance Party music videos). So using this knowledge we decided to use an open field, a forest and a shot in the city, and of course we also included a hill in some of our shots as this represented the song title well. I feel we researched well into looking at the expected mise en scene in previous Indie music videos, using the internet for websites such as you tube, the cajun dance parties myspace and google images; so we were able to portray our music video being in the Indie genre well. We also reflected the Indie type locations and costumes in our Ancillary products, by having one image of the main singer in the woods, and another in front of a calm, relaxed brick wall.

Intertextuality is another of Goodwin's conventions. Here we looked at trends and styles in established Indie music video, we also looked at female vocalist videos such as Beyonce, to have an idea of different appealing affects and ideas of location and contrast. We noticed that a lot of Indie music videos include a narrative, that is very obvious to the audience, they seem very natural and are the lyrics and the shots are very open to the audience - allowing the audience to be able to see and feel the emotions in which the band is trying to portray. Supporting this statement is that the person used in the music video is mostly always singing directly at the audience to the camera, drawing them in and making them feel apart of the situation that is presented in the music video. This almost makes the music video seem like a miniature film. Looking into colors and other themes myself and the group have noticed that bright colors are used a lot in front of a quite calm, relaxed background with very pastel, light colors - allowing the singers to stand out well. Again this supports my idea of Indie music videos being very contrasting, which may also be portrayed as being quite random and confusing which may perhaps reflect a teenagers life or thoughts. We have reflected this convention well in our own music video and ancillary products, having our singer in a bright prom dress in quite calm landscapes. We also included a lot of shot's in our music video that the singer was directly singing to the camera, again in our DVD cover the main image the singer is looking directly at the camera - creating an obvious link between all our products and other Indie media products.

Finally, lyrics and visuals/music and visuals is another of Goodwin's conventions that we had used to help us produce our music video. Looking at different Indie music videos we noticed a trend that a they most normally always had a strong narrative that linked well to the lyrics in the song. To help us to make sure we had strong links between the lyrics and the visuals we went through the actual lyrics of the song and highlighted all of the key words that we would use to visualize in our video, (a strong example of this is the multiple shot's of a hill and a variety of view shots, which was a effective link between lyrics and visuals as the song title is : "The Hill the View and the Lights). If we were to make our lyrics and visuals more an obvious link I feel having more sky shots would be appropriate and maybe even different types of skies e.g. sun, rain and clouds.

We also thought carefully about the Music and Video links in our music video. The majority of the music video is quite a slow, calm beat so we wanted to have quite long shot's with quite slow action, for example when the female vocalist is walking under the tree with the umbrella. We felt it would be quite random to have fast shots that seemed to busy. So we kept the majority of the shots really calm and relaxed, but made sure we had a variety of different locations and shot types to maintain the audiences attention. However about half way through the song, the music starts to become quite upbeat and sounds almost a little out of control. In this case we felt it was necessary to add some footage of our vocalists seeming a bit more "crazy" and having a lot more fun. So we added a lot shorter clips that we also had speeded up to emphasis the up beat tempo of the song. We had a lot of shots of the female vocalist running around in the leafs; creating the sense of the both the music video and the song becoming slightly out of control. As we choose a song in the Indie genre, we tried to give the impression to our audience that they are young, and do have fun and get a little out of control at times.

We looked carefully at costume and what age Indie is aimed at. We decided that the Indie genre is most targeted at a teenage audience, as many Indie bands are young adults themselves. What also helped us to realise this is the costume, as for example the Cajun Dance Party all wear quite preppy clothes such as; converses. They also wear "prom" clothes, but to keep it appealing to their audience they have contrasted ball dresses and suits well with accessories such as; converses. So we took on this idea, and also thought carefully about using bright colors, which appealing to our teenage audience.

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

In order to make sure that both our music video and the ancillary products linked together well as a whole we thought carefully about what we could use as a strong identification in each of the products, so that our audience would recognise them to be either made by the same production team or are used to represent the same band; The Cajun Dance Party. To achieve this we thought a prop would be quite an effective and easily recognizable technique, in the end we decided to use a large multi-coloured umbrella - which we got the idea from a current Cajun Dance Party photograph.

In the music video we made sure that we had enough shots of the umbrella (which we decided to use as our visual motif) throughout the timeline. So that the umbrella didn’t become the main attraction to the music video (as this would be quite unsatisfying) we decided that through about 2/3's of the video we would have only shots of the umbrella closed; then once the vocalist had finally met, we would show a majority of shots of the umbrella open. In a sense we used the umbrella to as a metaphor indicate and help guide the narrative; when the two vocalists were "looking for their love" the umbrella would be closed - giving a sense of closure and loneliness. Then once the two had finally met (the scene on top of the hill) we would suddenly use a variety of shots of the umbrella open - giving a much happier vibe.

After the audience had seen the music video they would automatically acknowledge that the umbrella is almost a trademark of the Cajun Dance Party products. So when it came to thinking about how we will make sure our two ancillary products would coincide well with the music video we decided that it would be so recognizable to the audience if we included somewhere an umbrella. On the DVD cover we decided to put a large colourful umbrella (the same as the one used in the music video) on the back, where all of the track list would be listed and other information. We used Photoshop to help us enhance the colours on the umbrella, making it even more outstanding and immediately grabbing the audiences attention. We also used an "paint" effect, making it seem more hand-drawn reflecting the teenage style; a little more messy and unorganized. We also thought carefully about font style, again we went for a "hand written" style (for the same reasons). We put the text in quite bright colours, which were all the same as the ones of the umbrella, keeping it quite organized so it didn't look too unprofessional. We also thought carefully about location, so we decided to shoot the photographic image in a forest, as we use Unfortunately, due to the course being quite time consuming we wasn’t able to spend a lot of time on our magazine cover. So I am not very pleased with our final. I feel it needs a lot more information, more bright colors and most importantly needs a image of an umbrella, as this is what we were using to link all our products together. Our final magazine cover in my opinion doesn’t really represent our production teams work or the band, so it wouldn’t be very recognizable to the audience. The only aspects that do link to our other ancillary product is the font style and having the same vocalist on the front. We also used an "urban" background, which relates to the city shots in the music video.

Overall I believe we did link our products well together, and our work would be easily recognizable by our audience. I also feel that we thought carefully about all our aspects in each of the products and represented the Indie style appropriately. I feel the only disadvantage to use is the magazine cover, as this doesn’t link together with our other two products, and I also feel it looks unprofessional. I feel we really represented our artist well and made sure they both aesthetically suited in the indie genre, such as having young vocalists helps our relate to our audience (as our target market is young adults) and also by costume, as a lot of young adults are seen wearing similar clothes today. These elements all help our audience to connect and interact more with our artists.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In my opinion feedback is what helped us to keep making improvements in our work and make our three products much more awarding than they were before we took on advice. We received feedback for both our pitch and our rough-cut music video.
Getting the feedback for our pitch helped us to address any problems we may have and think of alternative ideas if needed. The majority of our feedback was positive we were given comments such as ; "We showed good ideas for links between the music video and the ancillary products","The idea of contrasting colors and outfits seems like an interesting and effective idea", finally "we presented a clear understanding of what we wanted to achieve". This was really encouraging feedback to receive as it made us feel positive about our ideas and felt that if we worked hard we could come out with a high quality, appealing music video. However we did receive some advice in order to help organize our project better - resulting in a more professional music video; "We should think about writing shot lists", and also "props and costumes list to make sure that we can create this contrasting style we are visualizing". So we took on this advice and thought about what types of costume we would like to use in our music video, we also thought very carefully about props and if they were available to us. This feedback in conclusion helped us to be more organized, so that on the day of shooting we were able to have a more pleasant time, feeling in control and making sure that we would come out with the music video we had once planned.

Once we had made our rough cut, it was important that we got a variety of different feedback, both negative and positive to allow us to be able to adapt our ideas, improve areas and overall make a more successful music video. We got feedback from both our teacher and our class mates. Some of the feedback from our teacher included; The selection of your mise-en-scene in terms of the costume work well to create a strong star image - particularly for the female vocalist, more close-ups are necessary in order to "sell" our artist, I loved the high angled shot, it is a shame that there isn’t any more - maybe this would be something to think about including, The syncing is still slightly delayed which is quite distracting, Experimenting with filters will help to make the male vocalist shots more brighter - as the female vocalist is quite bright and outstanding in contrast. I feel the feedback was most helpful from our teacher, as she allowed us to outline our weaknesses so that we could address them. We decided that we did need more close ups, as it is important that we were able to sell the artist to our audience, so we managed to successfully get a few more close up shot's of the female vocalist - unfortunately we couldn’t shoot anymore of the male vocalist due to contact. I feel this helped us to provide a variety of different shots, so the product didn’t consist of only long shots, which was be quite bland. Unfortunately our syncing still isn’t perfect, this was due to bad organization - as we wasn’t able to have the track with us on the day of shooting, meaning that our vocalists had to mime by memory (resulting in parts of our music video being out of sync). We did however edit a lot more to get it to an reasonable standard, we felt the majority of the music video that was most out of sync was the male vocalist parts, so unfortunately we had to remove some of these shot's and replace them with some female vocalist shots without any miming included. It was quite disappointing that we couldnt re-shoot the male vocalist parts (this was due to time consumption). For the same reasons, we also couldnt shoot anymore high angled shots, as we was not able to get to our previous location.

Finally, we got a variety of different types of feedback from a sample group of a possible audience. Some of the positive feedback we received was; The music video portrays that of a typical Indie music video with key aspects such as younger actors being used, The clothing that they have choose represents Indie and the Indie genre, it follows the characteristics that Indie music videos generally show a narrative, The lyrics fit the visuals well for example when they are saying high up in the sky it is a high angle shot taken, the shots where the lead singer is dancing freely around the countryside and in a field reflects the timbre of the music and finally the use of long shots exaggerates the 'floaty' and playful elements of the song. I was particularly pleased with all the positive feedback we received, as we felt we had achieved what we had planned to do. I’m happy that people felt we represented the Indie genre well, as this was a key skill to had included in our project. Also because we spent a lot of time making sure the -costumes were exactly how we wanted them to be portrayed, so it was quite rewarding to encouraging feedback. Fortunately, The only negative feedback we received from the students was; Have more visuals associated with flying as the lyric about flying is repeated constantly through the song. We felt this was quite a true statement, but we was unable to think of how we could portray flying, as we cant physically make our vocalists fly - so unfortunately we could not address this problem.

I’m exceptionally happy with this feedback, as it shows we took on the advice and feedback once before given for the pitch, and managed to please everyone aesthetically with the final cut of our music video product.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies played an significant role in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages. As without it, our project wouldn’t be possible and our products would not be at their best.

The key new media technology to the research and planning sections of the project was the internet. We used a “blog” on the internet to present all our ideas and plans, using other websites such as You tube, Google and Wikipedia to do any type of research; from images to emailing the Cajun dance party through my space. Having the internet allowed us to be able to visit different websites to find out all the different types of information we needed to know, we used You tube quite frequently so we could look at different Indie artists music videos to help us get inspiration. We also used Google images to help us find examples of different artists DVD covers and magazine covers, so we had an idea of what people would expect from them, making sure we included all of the key elements such as; title, release date, track list and band name.

Final cut express was one of the most important new media technologies that we used to produce our music video. We used Final cut express mainly edit our footage. As without doing this our music video would be very basic including; bad syncing, cut jumps, bad lighting and with no transactions or effects. Final cut express allowed us to be able to add filters to the shots of the male vocalist, as we decided that he was too dull in comparison to the shots with the female vocalist. We also added a lot of fading transactions making the whole sequence seem a lot more smoother and professional. We also speeded up certain clips wear the tempo of the music became a slot more faster, we even had some shots that we had reversed when the female vocalist is walking in the trees and picking the flower petals off - which we felt looked quite interesting. Photoshop was what we used to construct both our magazine and DVD cover. We decided to use an “paintbrush” effect on the photographic images, to give it a feel of casualness (reflecting the teenage style), we also thought carefully about colours, using quite bright ones which all were taken from the colours of the umbrella. Photoshop allowed us to be able to play around with different effects, styles and colours, giving us an more professional aesthetic. For the evaluation I looked at examples of different established directors commentarys for their music videos, to get inspiration for our own.

In conclusion I am happy with how our music video has progressed, I feel we used final cut well with editing, making it look at a proffesional standard. I feel what made our music video so sucsessful was by included a variety of different shot types and locations. If I were to do it again, i would of suggested we had been more organized about the most obvious factors i.e having the track on the day. I also would of been more time wary and spent more time on the ancillary products, especially the magazine cover. If i was able to of spent my own time on the magazine cover (as i was not able to attend this lesson) I would of added more affects, color, made sure there was an umbrella image and had a lot of more information.