Evaluation of my final music video.

By Casey Brown.

Introduction.

Overall, I am extremely happy with our finished product. We had a few problems to deal with at first; our band pulled out, drama rehearsals took up a lot of time etc but thankfully we all pulled together and produced an effective and eye-catching video which shows off our editing and camera skills and techniques which have progressed from AS.

At AS we produced a magazine cover, article and a CD cover. So we did not gain many skills for filming and editing our music video from doing these projects, we could only use these skills for the design element of our music video. However, our summer induction project to A2 enabled us too star in, film and edit our own mini music video. So this was very helpful as we now knew the basic techniques you need to know when making a music video.

Our target audience when making our video was mainly teenagers of about 15-19 years old. So basically we had to think about what we would like to see in a music video. We made it young, fresh and energetic and I think the style of the video definitely suits the song.

We now had a new artist who would be featuring in our video, Elliot, and a brand new track-San Francisco's Earthquake. Originally, our band were the Howl Project and it was very hard to re-cover when they pulled out as we had already completed some work on them and started planning the music video. They had an Indie, original sound which was not as manic as the song we ended up using. So we had to totally re-think our ideas for the music video, e.g. location, genre, costume, make-up, style, mise-en-scene etc. However, I think we were very creative with the outcome and I styled the artist and did his make up- we took inspiration from The Joker in Batman and Keith from the Prodigy. We also put make-up on the doll to emphasise and shock. I took a lot of inspiration from The Aphex Twins as they had a low budget but were just so original and refused to go mainstream .

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

Our video challenges conventions of real media products because when editing, we decided to leave in a shot which was not planned and you would not normally use as it would look to messy. It was a whip pan of the artist behind a tree and somehow it really worked so we edited it in to the final product.

Our video uses conventions as the style and genre of the video suits the song. The song is fast –paced and manic so we did lots of sharp, strong cuts and overall it has quick edits. The make-up and doll add to the mayhem.

Our video develops conventions because we did not pick a typical place too shoot our video. Instead of going with a studio or gig arena we shot it outside in the woods to make it seem more dangerous and surreal.

Evaluating my music video using Andrew Goodwin’s forms and conventions.

There isn’t much of a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals as it is about San Francisco's Earthquake and the setting is in a forest. However, San Francisco’s earthquake is just a metaphor and if you read into the sub-text, you realise it is about a psychotic man who is on the edge. The make-up and styling of the artist and doll definitely emphasise this. I think if you do not think about the obvious, the line “I don’t know what I’ve done”, fits the visuals as it is not a calm video where the artist is just sitting down relaxing, he is manic and looks like he has, or is about to do something crazy.

There is definitely a relationship between the music and the visuals. The visuals amplify the music. The music is manic and so are the camera shots and fast-paced editing. The edits are cut on the beat and the camera shots are interesting as some look as if they are sneaking up on the artist while others are close ups to see his manic expressions.

I think the genre of music suits the video style. For example, RnB videos usually have men miming with lots of expensive clothes and jewellery on in a studio or a club surrounded by women. More Indie and rock videos tend to be in more original locations such as a forest or beach or urban building/underground. We didn’t want to film the video in a typical studio setting. The song and artist required freedom and I think shooting the video outside was more versatile while still keeping that manic edge we needed and the snow on the ground added to this effect. The iconography fits as-well as if you were watching the video without listening to the song, you would know straight away it was not a pop or RnB video just by looking at the unconventional make-up.

A narrative analysis of my video.

I think our video does not have the typical narrative structures such as binary oppositions and lots of characters. It is mainly performance based. There is no conflict with anyone and nothing is resolved at the end. There is no story or plot.

The only aspect which has binary oppositions is the character himself- he has a split personality and is very opposing to himself. He has a kind of angel/devil sitting on his shoulders.

There is no beginning, middle or end.

Feedback of my music video.

My audience said : What they liked best was how the manic

make-up suited the style of music. Thought I could have improved on the

location. Thought the quick editing suited the fast-

paced song.