Erik question 2

The use of music video conventions in our video

Andrew Goodwin

• Andrew Goodwin suggested that all music videos have different purposes.

• Some are used to tell the story of the lyric (illustration)• Some are used to add meaning to the lyrics (Amplification)• And others have very little connection the the lyrics and

sometimes contradicts the lyrics (Disjuncture)

Which did our video fall under?• In our video we aimed to have some images that linked to the lyrics in the

video, while also adding what could be seen as a deeper meaning to the lyrics.

• We went with Amplification!• We chose a very flexible storyline that can be interpreted as insight to a

scenario that the lyrics could be covering (the right thing to do) in the end. Our lead singer ends up ‘doing the wrong thing’ (smoking) which could be seen as a slight element of Disjuncture.

Examples from the video.

This is the shot where you could argue for some disjuncture as she is contradicting what we established the ‘right thing to do’ is.

Here we have the lead singer looking very ‘different’ (top right) which, along with some other pictures, add meaning to the lyrics “walking alone” and “won’t mean I’ll come for you” especially because as time progresses throughout the video, she slowly starts to show signs of becoming more distant to the producer.

Laura Mulvey• Laura Mulvey focused on the representation of women in music videos.

She came up with a quote in 1992 “in a world order by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly.”

• In our video we chose to go against this theory as our female singer wasn’t dressed, nor was she dismembered in order to appeal to any males watching.

This is how most videos would have this theory proven right!

We felt like it was more appropriate that the female was fully dressed to keep focus on the story and not her body.

Carol Vernallis• Carol Vernallis studied the type of editing and camerawork in music

videos, in comparison to films. She looked into how things like continuity editing are often forgotten about in music videos as they want the audience to focus on what's on the screen. The camera may move in time with the music oppose to being remotely still. She also found that jump cuts and a lot of really obvious edits are used frequently. And a base track is used to give the video structure.

• Our video did have a lot of jump cuts, obvious edits and special effects.

These are a few of the edits and jump cuts that we used in our video, and small influences of where we got the ideas.

Additional proof of following most conventions of a music video.

We have the main singer looking into the camera quite often in the video.

So overall, our video follow most of the conventions of a music video. And some of the conventions helped put together certain ideas for our video, for example Andrew Goodwin’s theory guided us into thinking about what message we actually wanted to get across to our audience. Also Laura Mulvey helped us distinguish the types of shots that are conventional to the male gaze such as dismembering, which we didn’t use, but we did have a panning shot not to show the females body in the shot, it was used for the movement and flow that we were getting from the song.

Conventions of a DigipakUse colour effectively, try and keep it to 3 colours maximum. They also need to be presentable together so that they will be able to attract people. Include a barcode, record company logo and copyright information. Make sure that the pictures are as clear as possible, no stretching etc.Use a font that is appropriate for our genre and that it is clear for the audience to see. Maximum of two fonts is recommended so that it doesn't look messy.Make Sure you have the artists name on the spine and the record label company.Have the artists face clearly on the front cover and make sure there is no text over their face.Have a consistency of fonts keeping the variation under three fonts.Make sure that the artist name is bigger than the album name so the audience can tell the two apart clearly.

Conventions in the Ancillary work• In my Digipak, I had started off wanting to use the colours Blue, Black and Yellow

because they were colours that were used on the SBTRKT Album: SBTRKT.

I followed most of the conventions as you can see I have a large image of the artist and have no text over the artists face. I also have the artist name and record label on the spine.

I wanted to follow most of the conventions while still keeping the cover very similar to the original artist but then I went for something slightly more original (the colours)

I saw a common theme in some underground type of artists album covers so I though I’d follow. I have a very close shot of the main focus (in this case the artist) and had the text in bold on top of their head.

More on the conventions of a digipak

• My teacher had told me that I shouldn't have the track-list on the CD because she had never seen a CD like that before, but I showed her that 'SBTRKT' who are of the same genre as our artist had the track-list on their CD and I like the idea. This is breaking the convention that the track list doesn’t actually come up on the CD, just on the back panel. However I feel like I have a solid reason to have the track list on it and I have examples to show why I chose to do so.

Conventions on a advert• The main image on the magazine advertisement should follow the same

theme of the album cover, this is usually because they will be using similar images taken on the same photo-shoot as the album cover. The image for the magazine cover differ in some way, whether it has been enhanced, or only a portion of the same image has been used, they will also most commonly follow the same colour scheme.

• The largest text on the page will be the artists name: The second largest text will be the album name. Most of the time the words “new album” will feature somewhere.

• The advert will have an ‘includes’ list where it would name the big trakcs and possibly bonus features.

My Advert

• In my advert I manage to follow most of the main conventions such as having the similar themes and as the album cover. I also made sure the Artist name was biggest followed by the album name.

I have the conventional ‘new album’ mentioned. I even have the album cover on the advert, along with a bigger picture that is clearly related to the shot of the artist on the cover.

For the Advert• On my mock up for the advert I was told that the chosen review's were not very

believable for the genre of the album. As the biggest influence for our artist is SBTRKT I did some research into what type of websites and magazines were reviewing their album and chose two: Pitchfork and NME magazine.