The first convention that we chose to use was to use performance shots of our artist singing the lyrics of the song and playing a including an instrument. This is one of the most important aspects of Indie videos as the artists want to be portrayed as credible musicians. Much like the David Grey video that i have previously analysed (insert link) we have created performance shots from lots of different angles to highlight the artist’s skills as a musician. We wanted to have close ups of the fret board of the guitar as well as the sound hole to show both pieces of a guitar. We also have a lot of close ups of our performer holding and playing the guitar. Also including the instrument is a very important part of the Indie genre because these artists want to be seen as convincing musicians. We thought that it was necessary to include a guitar to emulate this. We took this one step further by having our artist switch from an electric to acoustic guitar towards to end of the video. This adds variety and interest as well as highlighting that our artist is a versatile performer.
Another convention we used was Steve Archer’s theory of
integrating the performance aspects of our video with a narrative such as John
Mayer’s Shadow Days (http://youtu.be/daGcpvxPbCo1)
. This will help relate the lyrics to the visuals of the video and will give
the audience something to relate to. It also gives the artist a sense of
identity. We decided to amplify and illustrate some of the lyrics in the song.
For example “pass it up into the sky” is portrayed with a kite being thrown up
into the sky and the use of slow motion editing emphasizes this. We also had
the artist saying some of the lyrics to the girl in the video, again
illustrating the meaning. We also chose to amplify some lyrics such “whats the
point in this mystery”. The whole video revolves around the idea that nobody
knows why she is leaving. This follows the enigma code and keeps the audience interested.
We chose to have cross cuts between this story
and performance shots as well as adhering to Steve Archers theory it also
creates binary opposition between him being alone and with the girl. In one
particular scene we chose to use adjacent cross and additive dissolves which
fades between these two opposites making it more obvious.
We have developed the idea of the digipack showing our
artist in more details. We in fact have made our artist more mysterious as we
haven’t got a shot of his face in a single CD photo. As we have seen from
typical CD photo booklets and digipacks, including the John Mayer album I have
previously analysed, there is at least one shot where you can see the artist’s
face. This helps the audience to identify the artist and almost get to know
him. It also makes the album seem more personal. We decided that we didn’t want
to do this. We wanted to still have that sense of mystery that can be seen in
our video. Our artist is included in our CD photos: we see him from the back
and from a slight angle, but never from the front.
A convention that we have developed is the use of
intertexuality. We wanted to use the basic conventions of Romantic Comedy movies.
The way that we challenged this convention was to change the ending of our
narrative to contradict the usual convention of a happy ending. We wanted to do
this so that our audience would expect a happy ending throughout the video but
then surprise them by having the girl walk away and leave the boy. Much like
certain rom coms we wanted our video to reflect the “happy montage” scenes that
are typical in these movies. We did this by having our video in chronological
order from the morning to the evening. The use of the “home video” hand held
shots on the camera phone also give more of an insight into what seems
like a happy and playful day. We used fast cutting rates and mid shots of
the two characters together to emphasise this. To then contrast with this we
used a slower cutting rate and more additive and cross dissolves as well as a
lower key color filter to highlight the problems between the couple and create
a more melancholic atmosphere.
A convention we challenged was the use of point of view
shots. Most music videos will have an to objective to help to audience identify
and feel closer to the artist like in the Joshua Radin video where the subject is very personal to the artist. We took this a step further by introducing “home”
handheld footage shot by the artist. This allows the audience to see exactly
what the artist is seeing and help them feel closer to him. It also makes the
audience feel sympathetic towards him as they get to see what he is losing;
seeing him at his most vulnerable The use of the overlaying flashing credit
identifies the footage as being on a phone and we also lowered the resolution
to make the footage less high quality. This creates a contrast to the rest of
our footage. This is different from most music videos where the footage will be
filmed in the third person and the main focus will be the artist whereas we
chose to focus on the girl.
Another convention that we challenged that was also picked up on by our audience was the absence of the remaining instruments featured on the track. Even many solo artist have a band featured with them if there is a "band-like" arrangement in terms on instruments on the track. We decided not to have to so that there was sole focus on our artist. When we originally started planning our video we were going to include shots of a drumkit and other guitarists but then decided that it would detract from our artist and may also give the audience the impression that he was part of a band. This can be seen in the David Grey video that I had previously analysed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqIFYv1_yHI) where a drummer is featured even though the artist is solo. To compensate for this however we chose to use a variety of different camera angles including close up and mid shots of the acoustic guitar and then close ups on the bridge of the electric guitar. We thought it was important to emphasise the fact that the video is for a solo artist and we wanted to focus to be on the storyline.
;
Question2.
Question3.
As well as showing the video to peers from our target demographic I also showed the video to my family to get some initial response. Like some of our other audience members they were slightly confused as to what story we were trying to tell and were left needing to watch it a second time to understand it. Looking back, I think that we may have tried to convey too complicated a storyline and should have stuck to something simpler that we could have portrayed more effectively. They did however like the home footage that we shot as it gave a new and different perspective to the video. My mother in particular thought that some of the transitions we used could have been smoother or more thought about in terms of what dissolves we used as she found it a little repetitive.
Overall we have had mixed feedback, some audience members found it to be a very effective and well executed music video that they would watch again and some found it a little confusing. Obviously it is impossible to please everyone but I think that there are minor adjustments that we could have made to overall create a more authentic music video.
Question4.
Overall I used many different media technologies to plan, create and evaluate our media product.
Some of these technologies I had used before such as blogger and the HD cameras and final cut express but now I feel that I have developed these skills and have learnt new and more effective ways of using them such as opening numerous sequences in final cut express and adjusting the settings on the camera.
Using photoshop was a new experience for me as I had never used it before. Watching tutorials on youtube helped me understand the more advance skills that I would need to learn but ultimately playing around with the programme and creating practise images is how I got to grips with it. I now feel that I am pretty competent in using this programme.
Sliderocket and Slideshare were also new websites that I used and they became particularly useful in keeping all my presentations in one place and it made it easier for me to embed this information into blog posts via an embed code in the HTML box in blogger.
