1.In what ways does your music promotion package use develop or challenge form and convention of real music videos?
The music video that we made follows the basic codes and conventions of a music video. Andrew Goodwin wrote a list of conventions he felt a music video should conform to, we tried to keep to these as this was our first music video and we wanted it to look professional. Some of the ways we fit the conventions were by having performance by use of actors, band footage and someone lip-syncing; we used the drummer of the band as the singer unavailable but we still wanted to represent the band. Goodwin also says that the Lyrics and the visuals have a bond with either illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics; ours amplifies as we took the idea of being trapped from the lyrics and made it bigger by adding things i.e. abuse. We also wanted it to fit the genre as this way we could better represent the bands personal style. We have challenged conventions slightly though as at the end of the video we show our actress with a black eye after having been hit by her boyfriend. This is a controversial topic to show and one that is often avoided in music videos. This gives our video a meaning whereas most videos tend to be meaningless. This idea of abuse does however seem to be linked the genre. It’s a dark topic and the genre can be seen as very dark so, in this light, it makes sense to show this kind of topic in this kind of genre, so it does challenge the convention, but in a way that fits the genre so it can be seen as a sort of conformed rebellion.
Our digipak also fits the general conventions of the genre. It has individual pictures of each band mate in black and white with the theme of ‘Hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil’ as we felt it related to them as a band and they also liked the idea.
We got some inspiration from the Kings of Leon video ‘Use somebody’ who used black and white as well as colour footage.
Parazali:
The music video that we made follows the basic codes and conventions of a music video. Andrew Goodwin wrote a list of conventions he felt a music video should conform to, we tried to keep to these as this was our first music video and we wanted it to look professional. Some of the ways we fit the conventions were by having performance by use of actors, band footage and someone lip-syncing; we used the drummer of the band as the singer unavailable but we still wanted to represent the band. Goodwin also says that the Lyrics and the visuals have a bond with either illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics; ours amplifies as we took the idea of being trapped from the lyrics and made it bigger by adding things i.e. abuse. We also wanted it to fit the genre as this way we could better represent the bands personal style. We have challenged conventions slightly though as at the end of the video we show our actress with a black eye after having been hit by her boyfriend. This is a controversial topic to show and one that is often avoided in music videos. This gives our video a meaning whereas most videos tend to be meaningless. This idea of abuse does however seem to be linked the genre. It’s a dark topic and the genre can be seen as very dark so, in this light, it makes sense to show this kind of topic in this kind of genre, so it does challenge the convention, but in a way that fits the genre so it can be seen as a sort of conformed rebellion.
Our digipak also fits the general conventions of the genre. It has individual pictures of each band mate in black and white with the theme of ‘Hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil’ as we felt it related to them as a band and they also liked the idea.
We got some inspiration from the Kings of Leon video ‘Use somebody’ who used black and white as well as colour footage.
Parazali:
Kings of Leon:
kings of leon - use somebody
Parazali - cell mate
2.How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
When it came to making our digipak, we decided that we wanted it to be coherent with our video. We thought this would create a link for people; if they saw the poster it would remind them of the CD, the CD reminds them of the video etc reminding them to buy the product. Many artists use this technique eg Gwen Steffani
The use of colour and black and white is a theme that we also used in our Video and our digipak; we got the idea for this after seeing the Kings of Leon video ‘Use somebody’. We felt this use of colour and greyscale was suitable for the genre as it is a concept that has featured in many Rock-Indie type videos. The colour and greyscale also gave us a way to differentiate between the story line and the band footage.
Although coherent with out video, we wanted the digipak to be more about the band and the album than the video itself as usually an album has a few singles and this way it would be more representative so with this in mind we did not use the actors from the video in the digipak and focused on the band
We did a band photo taken at one of their gigs as this way we could show their band culture and genre. The individual photos are in the theme ‘Hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil'we felt this was universal imagery that everyone can recognise and relate to. We also felt that it fitted with the genre in that it can be seen as dark imagery.
We also took inspiration from the Beetles 'A hard days night' Album cover and stills from the film. Although they have different themes, they have the same feel about them. We felt this would be good as the Beetles had massive success, so using something known to have worked before is helpful to bands starting out.
3. What did you learn from your Audience feedback?
From our Audience feedback we can see that our video generally worked well. After we gathered our feedback we placed them into pie charts to make the readings simpler.
The majority of people said that the location of our video did not match the genre. This is understandable as we just used a normal house. Generally in rock videos there is something unusual about the house.
65% of people said that the editing was good. This is one of the most important aspects of the video so to have a majority here is very important; it shows we did well in the construction part of our project.
editing
A large majority said the video looked professional, again this is important as if people feel it looks professional then we know that it is of a high standard. Of course the video could have looked more professional for example if we had had a better camera or a larger budget.
Just over hald of the people asked said they would not have changed anything. However, we feel that 55% is not a large enough percentage. This question shows that we obviously missed things out or did something differently to how viewers would like it to look. If we were to do this again this is an important statistic to keep in mind and an area that would be even further researched.
Most people felt that the actor’s portrayals were not believable. This is understandable as we did used friends and not professional actors. To make the video better we could have used professional actors.
Most people felt that a particular scene stood out. Examples of what people felt stood out are The Umbrella twist at the end and the close up of the key
When conducting our audience research, only 5% felt that the poster and Digipak did not compliment each other. This was good as it shows our plan to have the poster and the didpak the same worked.
85% of the people we asked said that having both band footage and a mimer worked well. We believe this is because the video flicks between the story and James lip-syncing as though he is the story teller.
"Although the actors were not very believeable, you could still grasp the story line and understand the video"
"I thought the editing was well done. It matched the timing and beat of the song well"
" I liked that you use a mix of acting, miming and band footage. It added different levels to it and made it interesting to watch."
"I like the back cover of the Digi pack, the sunset is really simple but effective. I also like how you've used the sunset again on the poster, it make its more coherent with each other"
"You used a variety of different shots which is good as it makes it very dynamic."
"I think the Digipack and video are very complementary of each other. They have the same feel to them and you can tell they're by the same band"
Over half of the people we asked said they liked the overall look of our digipak. This is good as it shows we have done what we set out to do
DEAR LINDSAY, I HAVE A VIDEO BUT FOR THE LIFE OF ME I CAN'T GET IT TO UPLOAD
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?
Before we started work on our music video, first we researched unsigned bands; both friends of ours and bands we did not know. We did this research via Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/parazali) and youtube. We decided to use a band that one of our group members knew, this way we could work with them in the video and therefore better represent them. Without this technology we would not have been able to research properally.
For the actual making of the video, we used a college video camera and tripod. Having learned how to use the camera and tripos in our first year, this was very easy for us as the camera is very easy to use. Without these camera our end product would have been much lower quality. We also took photos of ourselves working with a digital camera.
We then edited our video with the use of Premier pro software.Premiere pro is editing software by adobe. It is easy to use and perfect for students who are not used to editing equipment and so helped us immensely to create our video.
An example of some editing we did with Premier pro in terms of effects is we slowed down a part of the footage. We did this by right clicking the footae line and selecting 'speed/duration' then changing it to the speed we wanted.
The usage of blogs has enabled us to work from home whilst being able to quickly and efficiently share our work with the other members of our group and our teacher.
I used a steady cam to record someone answering questions on our video. This was useful as it allowed for the editing to be done at home rather than in college. However, the resolution is not as good.
We also used a Jib for part of our filming. It wasn't very easy to set up, and was rather heavy, so we did not use it very much.
