Media - Music Video Evaluation

Media Advanced Portfolio Evaluation

Question One;In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

When planning the video we wanted to play close attention to the lyrics of the song, as a result we needed to cast both a boy and a girl role. Now did not want to follow Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘male gaze’ which essentially points out that most music videos use women as objects by dressing them in very little and using them passively without any other reason than to look attractive. A good example of this can be seen in my music video analysis for Oasis - Wonderwall (Post Two on my blog).

We challenged this convention by focussing the narrative of the video on the girl instead of using her as a passive object. We were able to do this with a fair amount of ease by dressing her in clothes that are fairly generic within the context of a Pulp music video and by not focusing on parts of her that were unnecessary.

The use of subverting conventions within our media product;

Examples;

Early in the project I analysed three music videos from the Britpop era (Pulp - Babies, Oasis - Champagne Supernova and Blur - Parklife), the rest of the group also did the same with different songs. This gave us a clear understanding of what conventions to include such as creating a 90s aesthetic along with using a somewhat similar structure for the video by keeping both a narrative and band segments.

The use of structure within our media product;

We challenged the concept of the segmented structure however by keeping the footage of the band that we had until the end of the video, this was done originally because the boy in the narrative was supposed to be the Jarvis esque lead singer in the band, but due to scheduling conflicts we were unable to use one actor for both parts. We could have intercut the band with the narrative but we had a large amount of footage of the boy and the girl and not a great deal of other footage to use for the second segment, it would have also greatly affected our production planning such as the storyboards and initial pitch idea.

The use of locations within our media product;The key and underlining themes of Britpop focus around the concept of unionism along with being British and young, because of this bands of the time such as Pulp would often focus on these concepts in their videos. Because Pulp are a Sheffield rooted band they often would tackle videos based around working class people for the narrative based portions of their videos, Babies (a song and video by Pulp) being a great example of this with it being filmed in a working class looking area of Sheffield itself (image below). For our own video because principal photography

mostly took place in York city center trying to encapsulate a more working class town proved a slight challenge due to its historical architecture. So during the location planning and scouting phase of pre-production we thought about mise en scene, specifically locations, and chose streets and locations that reflected the song's lyrics and Pulp’s overall aesthetic for their videos. This was in many ways a make or break aspect of the final product as if we had included environments that did not relate to the story that we have tried to produce around the narrative of the song’s lyrics then it would have broken the viewer's immersion.

In many ways we followed Andrew Goodwin’s key element of constructing relevance between the lyrics and visuals by creating context to the locations that were being used, in an effort to follow the conventions that were being used within the era. Another example of using locations to reflect the lyrics of the band as well as their place of origin would be Britpop band Blur’s Parklife, which follows similar ideologies in terms of creating a visual and lyrical connection (look at post two on my blog, for my music video analysis slideshare) .

Creating homages within the music video was something that we wanted to include in an attempt to make a conclusive link between our own piece of work and the videos that were being produced within the era that Britpop was popular (1990s). For instance when I looked at the music video for Champagne Supernova by Oasis there were quite a few shots of the lead singer Liam Gallagher laid looking directly at the camera from an aerial position as it slowly moves away from him. If you look at the locations used both are filmed in bedrooms, this was a conscious decision made to create a sense of relatability towards our target demographic which proved most popular amongst, under 18s along with the 18 to 24 year old age range as it is an environment that all of us are comfortable in.

Even though the shot in our video only lasts a few seconds and is only used once unlike in Oasis’s video, it was subtle references like this that we wanted to include to ground the product within the genre of Britpop.

The use of references within our media product;

With our media products genre being mostly relevant within the 1990s we wanted to ground it within that era, so when considering the actor's clothing we thought it would be appropriate for them to be wearing outfits that fitted into the time period where the genre was most popular along with the rest of the video’s ‘retro’ style and Pulp aesthetic .

Even though we were not trying to completely convince viewers that our video was made in the 90s due to the fact that the candid speeded up video did not feature the same dress code for instance because of the fact it was something that we could not control, however we could of course decide prior to filming what the key members of both the narrative and the band would wear. If you look at almost any Pulp music video you can see that they are not wearing popular fashion from the 1990s but instead look like they are dressed from the 70s/80s, I believe this was done to emulate their influences such as The Who and The Smiths so it following this convention was something that we wanted include so that hopefully it would make it more identifiable as a Pulp music video.

The use of wardrobe within our media product;

The use of camera within our media product;When filming the the video we wanted to put as much emphasis on the boy and girl characters as possible as it they were creating a visual representation of the lyrics and this had to be relayed to the viewer in a clear and concise manner. To do this we used medium close-ups and closeups for a large portion of the video to make sure they are the main focal point of the frame. Because a majority of the narrative segment was filmed on the street, composition took an impact due to not having access to a steadicam grip to counteract shakiness, however for the interior scenes of the girls house a tripod was used to create some better composed shots.

Pulp as a band rely heavily on the presence of their lead singer Jarvis Cocker to bring a certain level of charisma to their music videos, they often use close ups of him directly addressing the camera, examples of this can be seen in their videos for Disco 2000 and Babies. So for our own music video we decided to keep this convention to follow Andrew Goodwin's theory of creating a visual motif throughout our video along with the rest of Pulp’s videography to fortify its identity as a Pulp product.

The use of promotional material within our media product;

The background for both the promotional poster and the Digipak were kept similar in an attempt to create a sense of synergy between the two. It also follows conventions in that regard, with most album posters featuring the same artwork as the album cover itself (like the Kasabian album, bottom left), this is done to make the product more identifiable in a retail environment. Unfortunately we could not use the exact same brickwork for both due to the fact that the digipak background could not be blown up to the size required for the poster, however it was important to keep the consistent theme for the aforementioned points.

We placed the same poster and logo that was used at the beginning of the music video (for the reasons mentioned on the previous slide) at the top of the page, this was done so that it was the main focal point of the poster itself and drew people’s attention to it.

The use of promotional material within our media product;

It is a common convention to include examples of popular singles included within the album. This is all about trying to sell the album to the consumer by making them aware of singles that are or in our case were popular. We included the lead singer of our fictional version of Pulp. This was done as like Pulp themselves they often use Jarvis Cocker (lead singer of Pulp) for promotional purposes as he is the most recognizable member of the band, so again it is about creating a strong link between our own work and Pulps overall aesthetic in every possible way. The release date is featured clearly at the bottom of the page for the simple purpose of making consumers aware of it’s availability. Because this is an anniversary album we wanted to aline the date with it’s original release date 20 years prior (30th Oct 95), this was done to play into the album's concept and for promotional purposes revolving around it’s anniversary.

We also included the platforms that it would be a released on to follow the conventions of promotional posters. When thinking about this we thought about what the most popular ways to consume music are and we came to the conclusion from our research that offering it on both a physical CD and through digital download (Itunes, Spotify, etc) as it would offer multiple ways for the consumer to buy the product.

-) We wanted to include a lyrics sheet as I noticed when looking at a few Digipaks (like the Drenge album featured in my Digipak analysis) that it was a fairly cost effective way at adding contents to the product and it was something that people wanted to have included in the package. (survey results)

-) For the Digipak cover and contents we kept the brickwork background consistent for the aforementioned points of keeping a sense of synergy between the music video, digipak and promotional material.

-) When we looked at other digipaks we noticed that most of them featured artwork behind the CD discs, prior to noticing this our mock ups only featured the brick background which looked plain and did not seem that it would have the appearance of a premium product.

-) The bottom left panel features items related to our ‘common people’ music video alongside the notion of class in an effort to keep a concise product identity. This panel used to be dedicated to the DVD contents but we looked at conventions of other Digipak designs and most of them featured both the song list and DVD content on the same panel, something that we thought would streamline the product.

-) For the songlist we kept the same tracklisting as the original album. We also includes the contents of the DVD as it would be visible without having to open the product, which is ideal for a retail environment as the consumer can clearly see what is featured within the product.

-) We used the opening shot for our music video as the cover of the Digipak as it sets the brick aesthetic which is used throughout the product and also creates synergy between the two media texts.