Evaluation

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

As a group, we looked at other music videos, including those in the same genre of the video we were producing. Rather than challenging the forms and conventions of these videos, we decided to gain experience from them and use them in our piece. This would create a video that used conventions which an audience would be familiar with, perticularly fans of the genre we were using. The genres we looked at centered around rock music, with our video also falling into alternative and acoustic. These genres all seemed to feature a focus on performance, with a small narrative included that may, or may not, link with the lyrics of the song.

We decided on making a video that mixed the two elements of performance and narrative. Our narrative was linked to the lyrics in the song though didn't follow them chronologically. The whole video was also created in a black and white tone to comply with the mood and emotions from the music. By not challenging the forms and conventions of real media products, we created a piece that was more mainstream and more realistically likely to appear in the media.

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

Our main ancillary text, the DVD cover, follows the theme of the music video. The background uses plain gray colours, as well as focusing on the performance side, with some inclusion of the narrative on the back of the cover. The cover also lists similar sounding, melancholy songs that would be expected on this type of DVD. Like the video, the DVD cover does not go against any common features for this type of music. This simplicity would easily grab the right audience's attention and ensure they develop an interest in the music and our video.

Our advertisment for the DVD seemed very realistic, and one you would expect to see in a magazine such as NME or Q. The advert featured all the important details of the release, as well as feedback to encourage an audience that the product is of good quality. However, compared to the DVD cover, i felt it did not fully represent the right genre, as the poster in the advert was on a brighter background, which goes against the grey colour scheme that was a constant through the project.

• What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Although only small, the feedback on our piece seemed postive. It seemed that the genre and expected style of this genre was recognised easily. This was encouraging as it means our video would fit well with other, more popular, music videos that are more mainstream. This achieved our main objective of making a video that would be as close to a real media product as possible.

Unfortunatly, with the minimal feedback, we had few comments on how to improve our project. But, we still knew as a group where we could change things, such as the syncing and camera work, which would have made our piece even better.

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

New technologies helped us plan, create and finish our project. To find a song to use, websites such as myspace and youtube were helpful as we could listen to, and watch in some cases, unsigned musicians and immediatly get ideas of what we could do with each song for our video. We also were able to contact these artists through emails to express our interest in using their music. Through email, we managed to get hold of the musician we used, agnostic clown, and get ideas for our video as well as lyrics and song chords to the song we used.

All our planning and research has also been kept up to date on sites such as this lovely one (blogger). By using blogger, the whole group has the project up to date and safely saved online, as well as commuicate with other members of our group, and other groups. It has also been another way to keep in contact with our artist.

During production of the video, we used digital cameras that could easily be connected to the computers, making a project easy to upload and edit. On the computers, we used software such as Adobe premier and Movie maker to create our video and edit what we had filmed. Both these softwares had different features we could use to create our final video. However, as we chose movie maker over adobe, wedid not use the full potential of our editing software, making some of our editing look a lower quality.

Our ancillery texts were created using the programmes paint and publisher. These were ideal, as they had templates we could use for our advert and DVD cover, making putting them together easy. Unfortunatly, we left these texts until last, so did not have enough time to put them together to the highest quality we would have liked, and instead tried to include as many features as possible in the time we had.

This is our final ancillery text, advertising the DVD. The advert features the DVD cover, important so the audience know what to be looking out for. There are also details of the release and a release date, informing the audience as much as possible. Quotes are used from magazines in order to publicise the DVD and give the audience some expert advice before making the purchase. The layout is very bold and clear, with the brick background contrasting with the cover in the middle, making the cover look like a poster on a wall.

This sort of advert would appear in music magazines, such as NME or Ultimate Guitar, who specialise in rock and acoustic music, reaching out to the right target audience.

DVD Cover

This is our final DVD cover. The colour scheme focuses on Grey, Black and White, reflecting the mood of the songs and the style of the music. The spine is blurred to imply the colour has run, or it has been rained upon, fitting the theme of the main song.

Final Video

Our final music video

Chords to the song

hi lewis

the chords are:verses/chorus - G C Am7 D Gbridge - C G C G C G D

as simple as that...i put a capo on the 6th fret cos my voice has changed since i wrote it :)

Agnostic clown sent me the chords to the song we are doing. This has helped make the performance side of our piece seem more genuine, as we can also use some close up shots of the instruments. Which we have.

And now...

Our first attempt at a video.

Good Points:

• It's a good mix of performance and narrative
• Some good shots/transistions used

Now for the bad...:

• We need more footage. The story remains unfinished, seeming pointless at the moment.
• There is not enough variety in the shots of the performance.

So for an action plan:

• Complete filming of a story, to tie into the narrative of the song.
• Film performances, getting more shots to make the performance more interesting to watch along side the narrative.

Still. Not bad for a first try.

Update

We've now got over 8 minutes of footage, which is brilliant as the song only last around 4 minutes. However, this doesn't mean we have finished our story, or got a wide enough range of shots for our performance. Therefore, we are hoping to film a bit more in the near future in order to give us as much material as possible to edit.

Progress check

After my little moan the other day, things are looking up. We have 3 (soon to be 4) minutes for our story. When edited, this should equal a 2 minute or so story we can weave into our performance.

Tommorow, we shall look at filming the performance side of our piece. Hopefully, film enough in various locations in order to get plenty of footage to edit down.

Also, to make a tidy storyboard, we shall take snapshots of the film. Its tidier and will look alot better :)

A progress check (that will hopefully be better!)

Ok, so things we've done:

• Began filming- several shots of the charcter in our storyline done, plenty of close ups filmed indoors.
• Storyboard taking shape- Few more shots discussesd and badly sketched. Storyboard for performance complete, to be uploaded shortly.

Problems we've encountered:

• Lack of equipment- Only the other day did we finally get hold of a camera and tripod for filming and, even then, the camera had little battery. Now charged. Problem solved.
• People skills- While others edit, we haven't even got our group together to film yet. Proper shouting required at those who have let the side down. Problem solved.
• Performance- Yet to be filmed, as lacking instruments. Ask music department to borrow tambourine and bring in my guitar. Problem solved.

Plan:

• Film story
• Film peformance
• Upload storyboards

The song lyrics!

Girl...
I’ve got the feeling that there’s some else,
I guess I’ll be here all by myself;
Just standing in the rain.
Girl...
I’ve got the feeling that there’s someone new,
I don’t know why nor I don’t know who;
But I know I’ll feel the pain.
And I try, try and I try to understand,
And I cry, cry and I cry cos I’m only a man,
And I try, try and I try;
But look at the state I’m in.....
Oh Girl...
I’ve got the feeling that there’s some else,
I guess I’ll be here all by myself;
Just standing in the rain.
And I try, try and I try to understand,
And I cry, cry and I cry cos I’m only a man,
And I try, try and I try;
But look at the state I’m in.....
Oh Girl...
I’ve got the feeling that there’s someone new,
I don’t know why nor I don’t know who;
But I know I’ll feel the pain.
Oh girl….. I’m standing in the rain.
Oh girl…. I’m standing in the rain.
Oh my girl…..
I’m standing in the rain.

We got a response from agnostic clown.

We did, you know!!

He's given us some ideas for the video, which work with our idea of mixing narrative and performance. Our next tasks are:

-Listen to the song alot
-Get the lyrics on the blog
-Upload storyboard
-Film the performance (Date of filming: next week)
-Film the story (Date: Feb Half term)

A letter to the Artist

Dear Agnostic Clown

After carefully browsing through Myspace, we listened to your song (standing in the rain), and immediately thought of ideas of how what we could use in the video. If you would like to see the ideas we've got, please visit our blogs:
http://theadambrownexperience.blogspot.com/
http://lewisholifield.blogspot.com/
http://tomwilloughbya2.blogspot.com/

We would also be interested in any feedback you have too offer, or like to hear any ideas you may have.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Adam, Lewis and Tom

Research- other music videos

To make a good music video, it was a good idea to look at some that have already been done and get ideas like "Oh i like that, we'll use it" or "Thats awful, we won't do that!".



One video i looked at was Songbird, by Oasis, a British rock band. The song is actually an acoustic song, rather than an electric guitar lead rock song like they normally do. Oasis songs normally feature little or no narrative and focus more on performance, and this video is no different. The video focuses around Liam Gallagher on his guitar while singing too. There are very few other people in the video, leaving Liam isolated in the video, which is an idea that my group have had for our video. I like the setting as it's simple and very few locations are used, keeping the video easy to follow.

I also liked some of the shots used, like the long shots of him walking and some of the close ups of Liam and the guitar. These are shots we may use in our piece, as they are easy to do and can tell the story of the song (example: long shot shows isolation/location, close ups show character emotions).

I think this video is very good: it's simple and focuses more on performance as a lot of rock music videos do. It also uses the idea of loneliness well, and how someone on their own can still make the video flow and keep it interesting. However, I feel our piece will be much more different as the lyrics of the song can be more easily interpreted and put into a narrative better than the lyrics to Songbird can.

Alright our kid :)

Agnostic Clown- Standing in the Rain

This is the song we're using for our music video. Its an acoustic song that that could be put into the genre of:

-Acoustic
-Pop/Rock
-Alternative

We've started to get some ideas of where we'd like to film the video. Our video will have a narrative/story that relates to the song lyrics. We want to film on the beach, because it'll be a good place to contrast the lyrics. What we're going to try and do a mix of story (to create a narrative) and performance (popular with the rock genre).

NEXT POST: Storyboarding and look at other clever videos to songs I like :)

Music Video analysis

The music video i am analysing is Jesus he knows me, a song and video created by the group Genesis in 1991. The song, and group, are based in the pop/rock genre, a genre which uses music videos primarily to promote the songs they use, which is why they are normally performance based and may feature footage from gigs the band have done. However some videos, like this one, use a narrative and feature little performance of the song, except the singing the band members occasionally fit into the video's narrative flow. The band uses the video to illustrate the narrative of the song, that looks at paid for religion, known as 'televangelism'. In fact, at the time of release, two of these 'televangelist' were under investigation about the ways they got the public to send them money in return for 'financial success', or so they were told.

The lyrics of the song focus around the ideas of these televangelists being made up more like celebrities than preachers. It's also implys that maybe these people are not even religious and are just using religion as a way of making easy money. This is represented in the video by making the group (perticularly Phil Collins) seem to be living a luxury lifestyle while making occasional appearances on TV shows and in magazines in order to keep himself known to the public. Lines like "Won't find me practising what i'm preaching, won't find me making no sacrifice" are sung while the main characters are shown relaxing in a luxurious setting, creating a video narrative to the song's lyrics as they are used. As the video is used as a narrative, its important for it to keep up with the music and keep a general pace with the song.

The video itself focuses mainly on the three members of the group, who are playing characters. Close ups are used frequently on them, as a way of establishing the group despite them not strictly performing the song. By playing different roles, it allows the group to seem more fun and down to earth than a true performance of the track would.

The video uses no sexual ideas in the notion of looking, but strongly uses other forms of media. TV screens, magazines and billboards are used in the video as if the story is real life as opposed to a music video. This is especially evident at the end of the film when Collins' character invites the 'viewers' to put their hands on the screen to be 'healed'. Using these ideas highlights the idea of religion in the media and how its now creating opportunities for wannabe celebrities to make some quick money.

The video makes no direct references to other music videos but uses one or two play on words in reference to the group. In the video, a banner appears reading "Genesis 3:25" which sounds like its referring to a verse from the bible. It is in fact the group's name(Genesis), number of members in Genesis (3) and the amount of years they had been together at the time (25). By writing it to seem like a bible verse reference, it fits perfectly with the religious tones in the video.

The music video is a mixture of performance, concept and narrative:

• 20% Performance- No instruments are used, but the group do still sing along to the majority of the song.
  
• 20% Narrative- The video does illustrate certain parts of the lyrics, but does sometimes keep it more general, especially during the chorus
  
• 60% Concept- The whole concept of religion in the media and 'televangelists' is strongly used throughout the video, shown in various ways and forms.

As a usual pop/rock video, it doesn't meet up to the normal amount of performance from this genre. However, with strong concepts and narrative taken from the lyrics, it still makes the video an entertaining and well presented way to put the song to video.

Music Videos

Pop/Rock

Most music videos that are considered Pop or Rock videos will usually feature the group performing their song. This can be done in several different ways:

-The group together performing the song with their instruments (e.g The Beatles-Paperback Writer)
-The group acting for the video with various references back to the performing of the song (e.g Madness-Baggy Trousers)

Some videos also will just have the group perform the vocals rather than the music aswell (e.g Genesis-Jesus he knows me) while some videos may only use one or two instruments as opposed to the whole band (e.g Oasis-Don't look back in anger).

Several music videos also use the lyrics to make a story or theme for their video (e.g Jesus he knows me uses the idea of 'preachers' and making money from organised religion). Some music videos, however will relate very few, if any, lyrics and just be used as a promotional film with the song as its soundtrack (e.g Arctic Monkeys- Flourescent Adolescence)