Coursework Evaluation

Evaluation

Olli Murphy

Our music video strays away from many conventions of popular music videos, whilst also following some genre specific conventions. There is no lip syncing in our video as we decided it would not be suitable for our genre as there are minimal lyrics and the song and video are supposed to seem disjointed and trippy. There is also no live performance aspect to our video as it would contradict our artists style as his music was never intended to be played live. Andrew Goodwin’s theory of voyeurism is evident throughout our music video as most of the shots follow the attractive girl and the viewer feels as if they are with the masked people, watching her, this is a popular convention in many music videos. Goodwin’s theory is further continued in the video through the relationship between lyrics and visuals in the song; as the songs lyrics turn to ‘runaway, runaway, runaway breezeblock’ our main female protagonist speeds up and starts running away from the masked figures. Evidence of the Uses and Gratification is also in our video though the drug reference as people who don’t have negative views of drugs will relate to the video and protagonist and see the video as realistic rather than a mass produced commercial thing.

2

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

As the artist ‘XXYYXX’ is not well known and tries to remain underground there is no emphasis on the artist himself being featured which is a common convention of popular music videos, this is, however, suited to the genre of chillwave as they very rarely feature the artist in music videos, the emphasis instead usually being on attractive females. The music video content also differs from major pop video conventions by not showing the classic love story scene such as the one seen in ‘Bondax- Giving it All’ music video we evaluated. It is instead an original idea that suits the style of music, this is evidence of Steve Neale’s theory of differences being within genre. We had lots of cuts to the beat in our music video which is a convention for most genres. For our video we had originally planned to add in some strange hue’s and colours over the shots to make them look more trippy as we had seen in XXYYXX’s video for Even Though. In the end though we felt that combining weird effects on some of the shots and leaving others without effects, as we would have had to do, would have looked cheap and not been half as effective as how we actually did it. We decided to have a natural location for our video, giving it an ethereal feel with strong green colours, this is contrasted with the dark black worn by our protagonist which she is edgy and also adds a feel of mystery to her. The natural colours are more strongly contrasted by the harsh whiteness of the masks, showing man made influences invading the natural surroundings. The mise-en-scene through the forest setting also has further connotations of nature and natural things, this is sharply contrasted by the only man- made thing in the video- the masks. This binary opposition (Strauss) of purely natural setting and man made masks could also show how modern teenagers try and escape to a natural setting yet are dragged back to reality through man made objects ruining the nature.

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

Our media products have a coherent theme running throughout them. The music video follows the story of a girl walking through a forest whilst being stalked by people in white masks. White masks are featured both in our music video and CD/DVD digipak, connotations of white masks are mysteriousness and possibly some sort of hidden meaning. Hidden meanings are regularly in XXYYXX’s songs, most prominently in ‘About You’ where lyrics are reversed and edited to sound ominous. The theme of forests also runs throughout all of our products as it is the background for our magazine advert, CD/DVD Digipak and the location of our video.

XXYYXX describes his music as “tripping on a subway, underwater”, the fact that the girl in our video is tripping on drugs reinforces this image. The artist also portrays an image of not being mainstream or following classic conventions in his music, the music video and ancillary texts reflect this by not following conventions of pop music videos or advertisements such as how the artist himself is not shown on any of the texts. Steve Neale’s Theory of genres being ‘instances of repetition and differences’ is supported by our music video as it follows some features of the genre whilst also having differences.The CD/DVD cover and magazine advert both feature XXYYXX’s logo which promotes him and creates a sense of coherence between the products. The music video could be improved to sell the product more by having a short clip at the end or start showing the album, release date and point of purchase.

5

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

At the start of our production we carried out audience research through a SurveyMonkey questionnaire. From this we found out a range of things about our target audience including age, preferred music video viewing method, occupation and gender. We found that our audience was mostly a male 16-24 year old student audience who watched music videos on the internet. From this we were then able to find out what this audience wanted in a music video, they said they liked attractive female protagonists in music videos and they usually like videos to have at least a loose narrative. They also showed their preference for music videos with original, edgy and serious stories rather than ones that follow a cliché love story or silly story.

We incorporated all of this research into our music video. We had a main attractive female character featured throughout our video. Our music video also followed a serious, original story whilst avoiding being cliché or silly. We made our video edgy through the implication of drugs being used our protagonist and also by leaving the story unresolved. The video was made easily accessible to our target audience by uploading it to YouTube and by members of the production group sharing it on their social media pages including Facebook and Twitter.

Some areas for improvement commented by our audience were that some of the shots were a bit shaky and that some were re- used too much. One viewer also commented that whilst there was some evidence of a narrative, it was slightly too loose and could have been improved by following a stronger storyline. We felt, however, that too strong a storyline would detract from the trippy feel of the video which was meant to make the viewer feel like they were in the position of the protagonist, on drugs. One viewer also said that the edit needed minor tweaking as sometimes there was too much of a lack of action in some of the shots. We would improve on this next time by having a more concrete shooting schedule that we would stick too exactly so we weren’t left with gaps in our video.

Once we had finished our music video and published it on YouTube we received feedback with mostly positive opinions and a few ideas to improve our video. Our audience liked the fact that our music video was not babyish or scared of putting in controversial things such as the reference to drugs. They found that through this the video became more relatable and real, rather than being like a Hollywood production with no soul and a fairytale story. One viewer commented that she liked ‘The technically clever shots with the focus pulls’ in our video. Another viewer commented that ‘whilst the acting sometimes left a lot to be desired’ they liked the fact that an attractive female played the main role.

7

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

In the process of researching, planning and making my music video and digipaks I have furthered my knowledge in a number of technologies.

Here is a list of the technologies, both software and hard ware, that I have used:

-Final Cut Pro

ResearchI used many different technologies at each stage of my media coursework. As a group, we started off with coming up with our initial idea, we did this by brainstorming as a group and coming up with artists that we all like, we chose XXYYXX, and the song ‘Breeze’. We then began to research the artist and his other music. We used the internet to watch other XXYYXX videos on Youtube, as well as watching videos of artists of the same genre, such as Bonobo, Bondax and M83. This research was very helpful and gave us a great insight on the typical conventions of music videos of this chillwave genre. We found that most of the videos had a hallucinogenic/trippy feel to them. We also found the videos didn’t tend to follow a strict narrative and focused mostly on an attractive female protagonist. We used the information from this research to help construct our initial idea. It was very helpful to get a wider understanding of what other music videos of that genre contained, it allowed us to create a music video that followed some of the conventions of the genre and that we were happy with, which follows Steve Neale’s view that ‘genre’s are instances of repetition and difference’.

We used Google images to construct a mood board that gave us inspiration for our music video; pictures included masks, forests and woods, and smoke, all of which we had seen in other music videos of similar genres.

We also analysed digipaks of artists of other genres, such as The Killers and Rihanna. We used these to show how artists use colour schemes and fonts etc to present and sell their album. The images they used are also essential to attracting their audience. Each didipak was focused at their target audience, e.g Rihanna’s main colour used was red which has connotations of love and passion, which are more associated with females, whilst the digipak also had a large, provocative image of her on it to attract males. Whereas XXYYXX and the Chillwave genre is quite unknown and un-commercial making it hard to find existing digipaks from that genre; this made it more difficult for us to produce our digipak. However we incorporated images we associated with the chillwave genre, because of our research, into our digipak. I used a voice recorder to interview a person to get more in depth answers about what people who listen to the chillwave genre would enjoy. This was helpful to me as it allowed me to find out what qualities these people have. We asked our interviewee which music videos he had seen and enjoyed in the past and which qualities they liked in those music video so we could replicate them in our own. His responses showed us that he likes videos that have a fairly loose narrative yet are intriguing and easy to watch, with many quick shots.We wrote up all of the information we had gathered on Microsoft power point and then used Slideshare to convert them so they were able to embed on our blogs- blogger.com. The blogs are helpful as they allow us to store all of our information and make it possible for other people to look at the work we have done and give us feedback.

Planning

Our interviewee told us that in his spare time he liked going out with his friends, playing guitar and mixing music. We presented him with the hypothetical situation where he was given a sum of money and had to spend it, he said he would spend it on music downloads and on mixing gear. This interview was very helpful as it made it easier for us to understand the kind of things that people who we are aiming the video at would enjoy. We then incorporated these ideas in to our music video. I had little previous experience with using the voice recorder, but I found it simple and easy to record and then upload the data to the computer. On the computer I then uploaded it to youtube through windows media player.

For my preproduction planning I started by creating a short powerpoint which included a mood board of locations, styles, costumes etc. that we were planning to use in filming. We then used the social media application Facebook to get pictures of the actor we were intending to film. Our original actress couldn’t film for us in the end, so we had to go with the contingency plan we had set out. As a group we then made a storyboard which was around 20 pages long, from this we also made a shot-list which allowed us to easily remember the shots we had to capture on the day of filming.

Production/ Post Production

For the production of my music video we used a Canon DSLR Camera, we also used this camera to take stills for our magazine advert and digipak. This technology was relatively new to me but was easy to use. We set the camera to the Auto Focus setting which allowed us to give our music video a better depth of field making it seem more professional. We also used the manual focus setting to have focus shifts during our shots to give it a trippy feel.

To create our magazine advert and digipak we used Adobe Photoshop. For our advert we made use of lots of Photoshop’s functions such as the gradient tool for the bottom black section so it blends into the picture. We also applied a filter to the main back image in the forest to make it look more ethereal, as suited the house style of our products. We also put the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter logos on our advert so readers would know where to access XXYYXX’s music, this is an example of synergy in our work. We also used the opacity function for our digipak on the multi coloured page as the block colours were originally too bright to fit the house style and it also allowed us to add the white masks, used in the music video, to further the coherency of the products.

To edit our movie we used Final Cut Pro. This software was completely new to me however I quickly picked up the basics such as editing the clip lengths and changing the order of the clips. Once most of the edit was finished I added in some slide transitions, such as dissolve, which made the video flow more smoothly and fit with the mood of the clip. I also added text to the video at the start of the clip which showed the artist and song name, this was so anyone who came across the video would immediately know what the song was so they could then search for products after. Although we had originally planned to, we didn’t add in any strange effects to the shots as we felt that it wouldn’t work as intended and would just look cheap with the tools available.

We then uploaded our video to Youtube and shared the link on Social Media pages such as Facebook and Twitter to get feedback from our audience through the comments section. We used these comments, as well as comments from our peers in class, in our evaluation stage of coursework.