I have used conventions of music videos so the text is recognisable to the audience as a music video. The first of which I used is close-ups within the cinematography. These are used to highlight the artist so the audience can remember their face and appearance. However I didn’t use that many close-ups and stuck to using medium shots of both band members together. I did this so the audience can focus on both members of the band equally as I did not want to create a video which features one band member more than another. Some may say showing close-ups of the lead singer is a convention of a music video as they are the main image of the band, I challenged this by showing them both together most of the time.
Editing is very important in music video as another convention of them is that it must be edited on the beat. Also it must match the pace of the song for example fast editing to a fast song. I feel that I did this effectively with longer edits for more relaxed instruments parts of the song such as the beginning and end. For parts such as the guitar solos I used fast paced editing to enhance that part of the song and I feel that I used this well during the guitar solos. I also synched the song to the lyrics and instruments and played certain shots such as someone clapping over the sound of clapping. Another example of this is when two glasses come together a cymbal is heard. This adds an extra link the song and video.
The lyrics must link to the visuals of the song and I did this literally by showing certain key lyrics on the screen. The song is also about a party so I used images which connotates parties such as glasses of alcohol, party poppers and feet dancing. The theme of parties is also used in the ancillary texts with party popper streamers over the band in the band photo and their instruments seen in the Digipak artwork.
Music videos are postmodern texts and I feature of post modernity is non linear narratives which I have used in my music video. Sven Carlson (1999) suggests that music videos can fall into the groups of performance, abstract or narrative. At first I planned to make a video with narrative but realised that my idea of a house party was not possible as I became unhappy with the narrative as a whole as I felt like not much was happening. I found it hard making a narrative for the music video as it is so short that there is no time for any character development. Also the objective of the music video is to focus on the artist itself and I was spending too much time thinking about changing my narrative, so I decided to make a mainly performance video. It also has aspects of abstract videos with the clips which connotate parties. Abstract videos use the stylistics to show the meaning of the song and can sometime be used to simply look good rather than fit any context. I wanted to keep everything I did to the theme of the song and made sure I could reference the song and its themes within all the shots I used. Some of these are sued literally with shot of people holding hands to the line ‘touching my hand’ and someone putting on sunglasses to ‘it’s cool’.
Michael Shore (1998) argues that music videos are surface without substance based on immediate gratification. To an extent this is true as they are meant to market the song and band to an audience within an average of four minutes. To do this they must be instantly aesthetically pleasing for it to have an impact on contemporary active audiences. I feel like I grabbed the audience’s attention by showing the lyrics onscreen using bright primary colours, this also matches the name and logo of the band CMYK. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black which are the colours used for printing. Because of this the use of strong colours was a motif I have been using when creating all my products.
The genre of the band MGMT whose song I have used is psychedelic rock although the song Boogie Down on its own is more pop and electronic than their other songs. I have still used psychedelic imagery in the video such as the background projections onto the bands face, the bright and random images used for the green screen shots and the images which are filtered over the top of the other party shots. This makes still makes it recognisable as psychedelic rock even if the song in particular isn’t, the band are still represented correctly.
However to suit the song I looked at the party lifestyle associated with the band rather than their ties to hippie culture and ideology. This is clearly shown through the shots of alcohol and party poppers to connotate parties, this party band representation also matches the lyrics of the song.
As my video focuses on the party lifestyle of the band it more likely to appeal to and represent young adults and students aged from sixteen to early twenties. I have chosen specifically students as they typically known for going out a lot with of friends and having fun which is what my chosen song is about. The video and ancillary texts will appeal to them as it expresses their party lifestyle or the lifestyle they wish to lead. This leads to the voyeuristic nature of the music video, the audience will be attracted to the artist if they want to become the artist and live their lifestyle. The target audience is both male and female and there is a male and female member of the band for each group to identify themselves with.
The girl is wearing a pretty and feminine outfit and has long hair which adds to her feminine appearance. But whereas most girls in bands are simply the singer she plays an instrument herself which gives her credibility to the audience. This shows her as pretty and also smart which would appeal to girls and boys. Being in a band that are represented with a party lifestyle shows likes to have fun and being in a band with a male shows she is not a traditional female and can have fun being around males as the traditional male stereotype does. This shows she is independent and strong. Altogether she is represented as a modern female who is not just seen as the ‘pretty face’ of the band. The boy is wearing casual clothes which make him look down to earth and he is also wearing a Smiths T-shirt. This shows he likes highly regarded bands such as The Smiths which shows he has good music taste from an audience’s point of view. From the outfit he looks like someone who is approachable and has good knowledge of music. Throughout the video he often looks bored which connotates a ‘too cool to care’ attitude. Overall the band are represented in a way which would appeal to my target audience as they are interested in the ‘rock star’ lifestyle of playing music and going out.
For my planning and research I analysed three different music videos. Firstly I analysed ‘Look for the Woman’ by Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, which is a narrative video. I liked the idea of the artist following the characters in the video around and this was part of my first video idea. However I had to change my idea as I was unable to get my cast together at the same time so had to go for a simpler idea. The other two videos were by MGMT and this established the psychedelic imagery and surreal themes they use in their videos. I incorporated this into my own videos with the band performance scene.
When creating my Digipak I looked at the conventions of Digipak and CD’s such as were the barcodes are placed and what the main images look like by analysing existing Digipaks, using a range of music genres such as My Chemical Romance and The Killers. For my CD artwork I took pictures of the bands and their instruments covered in party poppers to give the impression of a party. Empty bottles of alcohol were used to frame the song titles on the back cover which gives the impression that it is the morning after a party. The band are also covered in party poppers which connotates that they were at the party the night before. When editing the photos I changed everything to black and white apart from the band so that they stand out. I also found a font from 'Yo La Tengo' from http://www.dafont.com/. I chose this font as it looks hand drawn and childlike which represents the band as childlike and fun themselves. It also shows they don't take themselves too seriously as say an italic font would connotate. This is also conveyed by the bright colours which are used throughout the ancillary texts and music video.
For the magazine advertisement I again analysed existing texts to make my own look believable, I did this by including the record company logo and HMV logo in the bottom corners. I used the same picture which I used for the Digipak cover so that the two products are instantly recognisable as being part of the same promotional campaign. I kept it simple by focusing on the image and including small captions of reviews from well known magazines underneath.
My magazine advertisement, Digipak and music video all use the same motif of bright coloured text which relate them all together. They all show the band wearing the same outfits so they are easily recognisable in all of my media texts. Overall I feel that they all link together very effectively to form a strong image for the promotional campaign. In my audience feedback 60% of the twenty people I asked rated the effectiveness of all the products as a whole 4 out of 5. 20% rated it 3 out of 5 and the remaining 20% rated it 5 out of 5.
For my audience feedback I gave a short page long questionnaire to a class of twenty AS students. My audience were between 16 and 19 and this age group would typically be interested in social events, music and parties and they would have some disposable income which would be spent on these. I gave them the questionnaire and music video link through the teacher so I had no contact with them so there would be no bias in the answers. Therefore I feel like I have valid results from which I can determine the audience reaction to my music video. For the question ‘How effective do you find the onscreen text?’ 45% rated it 3 out of 5 and 45% rated it 4 out of 5. Out of the remaining students 5% rated it 2 and 5% gave it 5 out of 5. I am happy with result and believe the text connects the song and video and splits up some of the band performance scenes. I left a space at the bottom of the page for any additional comments and here someone wrote ‘I think that the effects with the bright coloured writing worked well’.
For the question ‘How effective do you find the green screen clips and other clips?’ 50% rated 3 our of 5, 33% rated it 4, 15% rated 2 and 5% rated 5 out of 5. Again I am happy with this as everyone rated it 3 or above apart from one person. If I were to do this again I would film more short clips as I found I had to repeat some towards the end of the video which may of caused some people to rate it lower. Someone wrote ‘Too much going on at once’, this could mean that they found that I have too many different clips or that the images over the top of the clips made the screen too busy. Another person answered ‘some stop motion fell short however the editing was in sync and the images were relevant and interesting.’ I think the stop motion they mentioned would have been when the glass of alcohol was being drained and refilled, when doing this the camera moved so that the last half of the shots were on a slant. However I did not notice this until I put it on the editing suite and it was too late. If I were to do this again I would check my footage more closely after filming so I would not have to think about any re-shoots. However on the questionnaire they gave a positive response to my music video.
The next question was ‘Overall do you think the video enhanced the song?’ 45% of the students rated 3 out of 5, 33% rated it 4, 15% rated it 5 and 10% rated it 2 out of 5. Here I felt that these results could have been improved if I had spent more time with the actors I used when planning the video so they could sing the lyrics. At times in the video it is obvious that they are not singing as they cannot remember the words. This problem is made apparent with the feedback from the question ‘How effective do you find the band performance scene?’ 50% rated it 2 out of 5, 25% rated it 3, 10% rated 4 and 5% rated 5 out of 5. As I mentioned I feel like the main problem with this is the actors. I am happy with the projected images and felt that they were effective, but the fact that the actors did not know the words brought it down. Another factor could be that for the majority of the video it was one shot, if there was more close ups it could of improved the band performance scenes by keeping it more interesting. You could of also seen the psychedelic imagery over their faces clearer which would of made them more effective.
On the other hand for the question ‘Do you think this appeals to your age group (16-19)?’ 70% rated it 4 out of 5, 15% 3 out of 5 and 15% 2 out of 5. This means my video has reached its target audience of young adults which I tried to achieve using the bright colours to grab their attention and party imagery. The party lifestyle appeals to the stereotypical young adult which is one reason why I used it and I feel that it has achieved its purpose well. From the audience feedback I found the weak point of my video was the band performance scene and the strong point was the editing which I received positive comments at the end on including ‘good camera editing’ and ‘it was timed very well’.
When planning my music video I uploaded all my drafts and storyboards onto www.blogger.com. This helped me see everything I had done so I could see what I had to do next, it was also easy to let other people see my work as I could just give them the URL. When filming I used a HD camera so that I would have high quality images which made the projected images on the band performance scene stand out more. HD cameras are suitable in lower light situations so was useful for this scene. Overall the images were high resolution and crisper video images than non-HD cameras. I used an electronic projector to project the images onto the band directly from my computer. I did this instead of using the imagery as a filter in post production so the audience can see the patterns moving around the faces of the band. I also used the green screen room for certain small clips as I could put bright images behind, this goes with the imagery used in the band performance scene so it does not look out of place.
When editing I used Adobe Premier Pro so I could use non-linear editing. This allowed me to take different clips and paste them on a timeline wherever I wanted them and could easily crop them down. I could start editing the video wherever I wanted to on the timeline and didn’t have to start at the beginning, this let me go back and forth making changes to my video without having to start from the beginning again. I could also extend or cut clips just by dragging the mouse and pulling the clip left or right. This again made it much easier and quicker to edit and I could go through my video making small changes when I watched it back. I started by picking sections from the band performance scene and fitting them into the correct parts of the song so the lip syncing was correct. I did this by listening to the sound on the original clip and matching it up with the song. It could sometimes take a few times to get it right but through trial and error I managed to sync the lips to the song. I then put in the words which flash up onscreen on the timeline which again would match the timing of the song. Finally I added the different short clips in the spaces left and made sure that the editing was on the beat.
When creating my Digipak and magazine advertisement I used Adobe Photoshop, this let me easily change things such as the contrast and brightness of the photos. I used the curves tool to increase the contrast further. Photoshop also lets me have each image in layers so I can move around the barcode or text without moving the rest of the image. I could use the clone stamp to get rid of unwanted things in the picture such as the photo frame at the top. For the inside artwork I cropped the picture of the band so each member is at a medium shot and placed more psychedelic imagery over the top. I edited the magazine advertisement in the same way but added reviews of the album to make it a conventional magazine advertisement.
In conclusion I feel like I have made an effective promotional campaign and that the music video clearly represents the band and their ideology. It also appeals to my target audience of young adults. If I were to do the music video again I would take longer filming the band performance scene and shoot more close ups of the band so the projector images have a bigger impact.
