When making my music video I had to consider whether or not it will use, develop or challenge the conventions of the pop/acoustic genre. After doing research and analysing real music videos, I found out that the main conventions of pop videos are the relationship between the lyrics and visuals, the relationship between the music and the visuals and also if the video has a narrative or is performance based. I took them into consideration and in my video I linked the music with the visuals. I believe that the song is very upbeat and is made for ‘girls who want to have fun’ so therefore I directed Becky to dance around and chose scenic environments to emphasise the colourfulness and the mood of the song.
I believe that my music video is narrative and performance based. The narrative of my video is that Becky is in a dream and finally wakes up at the end of the performance. As Steve Archer puts it:“Often, music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band. Additionally, a carefully choreographed dance might be a part of the artist’s performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualisation and the ‘repeatability’ factor. Sometimes, the artist (especially the singer) will be a part of the story, acting as narrator and participant at the same time." This applies to my video because Becky is the artist and she sings and acts throughout the whole video.
The camera shots and angles can distinguish between music videos and films. For example, in music videos there are a lot of fast cuts and close ups. Fraser talks about this in his book ‘Teaching Music Videos’, “Eye contact and facial gestures via the close up, role playing through the narrative and mise-en-scene will present the artist in a number of ways which would not be possible in a live concert.” This applies to my music video because I have used a range of shots in my music video including close ups. Also Shuker states “for the music video to create a connection with the audience. The lead singer will also sing directly to the camera, this then portrays the singer’s emotions and looks effective on camera.” In every shot of my video, Becky is singing at the camera and I believe this shows the audience it's all about the artist.
Steve Archer says “it is the lip-sync close-up and the mimed playing of instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band really can kick it.” This links with my music video because my artist lip syncs all the way through the video. All the focus is on her which is how it’s meant to be if you’re trying to promote a new artist.
Lighting is another convention of a music video, I chose to film all my video outside in the middle of the day where the lighting is natural and bright. If I had scheduled to re-film and the weather was bad, I would have rescheduled and filmed on a day which was more appropriate. This links to the theorist Richard Dyer- "The singer’s face is continually well lit, and therefore the audience can see clearly their idol."
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The combination of my ancillary texts and main product, I believe, has been quite effective. I did research into real music websites of the genre I chose which is pop. I found out that the websites were colourful and stood out. For example, I looked at Lily Allens (http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/lily/)and she had used a variety of colours which are also used on her CD, this is an effective way to promote the artist. Also they represented the artist/band. On most of the websites I analysed they had videos and audio of their new song. So with all this information, I started to create my website. On my website, I included a variety of fonts in different sizes, many of the fonts were ‘handwriting’ fonts to give the impression that the artist had done it herself, making the audience feel closer to her. The font also says “I am a girl” because it’s all fancy. I used hyperlinks to take you to different pages on the website and also used hyperlinks to direct you to Facebook, YouTube, Myspace etc where you could join her pages; this interaction will draw the audience in. I used the colour scheme black, white and grey because there neutral colours and can appeal to boys and girls. The images used are all original and are used on the CD cover also. I consider this to be effective.
I also did research into CD covers and something that kept popping up was they had used the same font from the website on the CD cover. With this in mind, I used a similar font, not the same (because font variety is good) on my CD cover. I also used one of the images as the front cover, but instead of it being in black and white it was in colour to give a more realistic effect. By using the same image and similar font it kind of gives the artist a brand image so therefore effective when trying advertising the artist/band.
The combination of both the main product and ancillary texts are that they both represent the artist and genre. For example, the music video is happy and reflects the colourful mood of the artist. On the other hand, the CD cover and website, I believe, come across as more sophisticated and therefore shows another side to the artist. My thoughts on a convention of the pop genre is that it has a relaxed feel to it, they're out there to have fun and it comes across in how they are promoted and presented. Therefore I took this into consideration and hopefully my products reflect this.
3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
For our audience feedback we watched the rest of our peers’ music videos and looked at their websites and CD covers and then fed back the good points and improvements we thought would help. I felt that this was the most effective way we would collect the comments. I received both positives and negatives for my video, some of the comments I agreed with and others not quite.
Firstly I received feedback on my video; my audience mentioned they liked the fact that it was all a daydream. This was great to hear because it shows your audience understand the narrative and it shows I used a typical convention of a music video. Other feedback was that there was a good use of shots which meant it was clear and effective. On my draft edit of my video, I hadn’t used that many different shots, but it just shows my re-filming paid off because quite a few people said I had a good use of shots. Another comment was that Becky performs well in it, so therefore she carried the song. This was cheering to know I had picked a great actor to be in my video.
I also received some constructive criticism for my video; my audience said that there is one part where the lip syncing is out but then on other comments I received they praised the lip syncing. It is always good to have different opinions though.
Another comment was the continuity error on her shoes, however, I would like to point out that the converse trainers are not supposed to be on her feet, they are just an image used to create a sense of youthfulness (and also to fill any blank spaces). One personsaid that they felt the shots changed too much, but then went on to say however, that shows good variety and fast cuts are a main convention of a real media product.
I also received feedback for my website; one person said it was nicely laid out and that there was good use of personal touches from the artist such as the smiley face and heart combined with the handwriting font makes it seem like a very personal connection between fan and artist. This was encouraging because that was the effect I was trying to go for as I mentioned in the previous question. The main positive comments were a good layout, good amount of texts, images etc. However, there were only a few negatives; one was that the links to other websites didn’t work and they showed me an alternative way in which they would work, which I did, and they worked fine. To do this all I had to do was add http:// to the beginning of every url.
The CD cover feedback was also positive; a few people said that there was good use of colourful locations used for the images on the inside of the CD; this reflects the upbeat and happy genre of the music. However, I did receive some constructive criticism, for example, I have the same picture on the front as I have on the back, so therefore they said a variety of images would have been better, in addition, someone commented I could flip the image on the back so it doesn’t look repeated.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Because the song had to be original, an unsigned artist, it was quite difficult to find one at the beginning, but then I was given a website called unsigned.com and then I found an artist whose song’s I really enjoyed, so then I emailed her to ask for her consent and she sent back the confirmation that I could use her song.
I mainly used the internet during my research stage of the course. I used http://www.google.co.uk/ quite a lot to look at other music websites and to look into the genre and conventions of a music video. Google was very helpful because you just typed in what you wanted and it would filter the results by popularity, so the best result would be at the top of the page. It is a lot easier than going to the library and searching through books. By researching and actually looking at music websites, it helped me with ideas and the construction of my actual website. When I did my research into real music videos I used http://www.youtube.com/ to analyse them. YouTube allowed me to look at any band I typed in which was helpful because it saved me watching the T.V to analyse the music videos; you could pause it whenever you wanted to write down any notes too. I analysed the shots, angles, lighting etc. and also compared them to theorists such as Dyer, Negus and Fraser.
When filming my music video, I used a Sony digital camera and tripod. After doing my AS course last year I was very fond of using the camera and tripod so this was easy to use for me. We used Adobe Premier Pro to edit our videos, which I also used when doing my thriller in my AS course. It is relatively easy to use and navigate to.
I used a programme called Dreamweaver to create my website. This year was the first time I had ever used it and therefore was difficult at the beginning, but when I started playing around, it was becoming easier to use. You weren’t allowed to put images anywhere you liked, so I had to make different tables for each image. For my two images at the top I edited them to go black and white in a programme called Paint Shop Pro. I also did a slideshow of images of the artist in Flash. I had to upload it to my website in a flash player which was fairly straight forward. Some problems I came across was that my website fit into the widescreen computers but on the smaller screened computers, you had to scroll across to see my website, this looked horrible so I had to resize my whole website which didn’t take that long.
The CD cover was created using Fireworks, I used the same picture from my website on the CD cover and also used some images of the artist for the inside. The main problem I had was the canvas size, for some reason it didn’t like the image on the front and back of it so it kept changing to different sizes which weren’t the correct CD cover size. I overcame this by using one of the inside panels (which were the right size), for example INSIDE1 and deleting all the images and writing off of that one and saving the canvas as something different, such as FRONT COVER, so therefore when I opened INSIDE1 all the information was still there and then when I opened FRONT COVER it was just a blank canvas and I could add the image from there.
For my evaluation I just used http://www.blogger.com/ to upload my progress and comment upon my music video and ancillary texts. On my blog I reviewed my research on real music videos and genres to help me with this evaluation. I also uploaded screenshots of my website and CD cover which was fairly easy because blogger.com has its own image uploader. I believe www.blogger.com to be a good useful form of media technology. It is organised and is probably the best way to present our work.
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