Section 7: Evaluation

Evaluation for music video

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

In this essay, I will talk about making our music video and what inspired us to include the different techniques and song choice for it. We started off by watching different music videos in class and taking ideas from them. The first three we analyzed in class were Lily Allen- 'Smile', Red Hot Chili Peppers- 'Higher Ground' and Chemical Brothers- 'The Golden Path'. This was to give us an idea of what kind of conventions and techniques are used in music videos. They were very helpful because it showed us that music videos can have different kinds of narratives, not necessarily following the lyrics. Lily Allen's 'Smile' is a performance and has a clear narrative video, matching the lyrics with the video sometimes but also singing in the video, the main character being her. The genre of the video is British Pop. This differs with ours because we chose an acoustic/pop genre with mainly a guitar playing the song. This is because we preferred this genre. 'Higher Ground' is a performance video, typical to that of it's genre which is rock. We chose to have a clear narrative in our video because it suits the genre and is more clear to understand which was our intention. 'The Golden Path' had a narrative which didn't necessarily go along with the lyrics, but it had subliminal messages such as the photocopier was the 'evil demon force'. This influenced us to have 'secret' messages in our video because we wanted to create a different meaning to the lyrics, such as the girlfriend has died- shown by 'how are we to know that this is our last embrace' as she disappears in the video.

We then chose our own two videos which we believed complemented our video, these were Taylor Swifts 'Love story' and Paolo Nutinis 'New shoes'. We chose Swifts video because it had a clear narrative video, like ours, and the video includes placard's which we also used at the beginning and the end.

Nutini is an acoustic artist like ours and in the video the male is the main focus like in our video.

Andrew Goodwin's idea about illustration, amplification and disjuncture applies to all music videos. Illustration means when the video and lyrics tell a story normally leading to a clear narrative. Disjuncture is when the lyrics and video hardly match, having little purpose for one another with little connection to. Our video is an amplification video. This means that the video builds on the song adding something extra. The video matched some lyrics and then added the meaning that the main character in the video has lost his girlfriend. 'Try stopping us now' signifies that they can never be apart so he commits suicide also backing up 'its us against the world' showing no one can stop them. 'Drowned in waves of pure emotion' shows he is very upset.
Also because our video is an acoustic genre it doesn't always apply to amplification. Paolo's video is more of an illustration video because the lyrics match the video such as 'wake up' and he does and he has his 'new shoes' on and 'suddenly everything is right' because he has parties and everyone is happy. Pop videos generally have a clear narrative and an illustration video to make them easier to understand and this applies to their genre and their target audience range from all ages so the videos have to be easy to understand. We chose to make an amplification video because we wanted to give the audience something to think about, and leave them wondering throughout the video to what has happened, whilst also understanding that he has obviously lost his girlfriend and is very depressed. Although we do not see his girlfriend, apart from in the flashbacks, it is clear that she has died. I think the audience would be able to tell that she has died, rather than leave him because of the boyfriends drastic decision to take his own life showing he couldn't cope without her their anymore. We didn’t want to use the idea of a disjuncture video because that would get rid of all meanings in the video, not matching the lyrics and showing the audience what we wanted to achieve. Also I think that this type of video is normally the conventions of alternative rock/rock genre videos and not necessarily an acoustic genre. The video ‘fluorescent adolescent’ by Arctic Monkeys (alternative rock genre), has a load of clowns running around and fighting which has nothing to do with the lyrics making it a disjuncture video.
The narrative for our video is quite simple but effective. It starts off with a placard reading ‘once upon a time’ and then quickly fades to an older teenage boy singing along to the lyrics. This is our main character. We chose to have some parts of lip-syncing to add the conventions of an acoustic video, like our inspired video ‘new shoes’ when Paolo mimes.


We then have a set of flashbacks which were put in the effect of black and white, to portray old times and signify that these are happy memories for him.

We chose to do this because it would make the video easier to understand that this girl is no longer in his life and he is remembering the good times with her. At the end, after trying to seek help from a friend, he decides he her loss is no longer bearable and decides to commit suicide. I believe that the performance in the video was done very well and that we had chose a good actor, because he is currently doing performance arts at college so we thought he would be suited well to the role. The actress who we see is also studying drama at college so she, again, was suitable for the part. I think it is very important to choose the right people in your music video because it can make or break the performance over all. The music was just the soundtrack because in most music videos they mainly use the song and don’t really add sound effects. We didn’t add SFX because the music video didn’t really need them, and it could have took away the attention from the lyrics and video. The main piece of editing we done was when we made the actress disappear out of the actors arms. We done this on Adobe Premier, and we used a fade to create the effect she was no longer with him.

We done this by filming the two and then stopping it, then when she had removed herself, we filmed again giving the appearance she has gone. The clip began as a flashback but as she faded away we added in colour to show it moving to the present time.

In the bedroom we had red bed covers to connote love but also death. We chose this because of the situation between the couple. Also we filmed him in the park with lots of trees and greenery around him, to signify life and freedom which contradicts the video slightly however they’re both together in the end shown by the eerie shot of them walking down the corridor.

When filming, we used quite a few high angle shots on the main character to make him seem weak and powerless to the situation of losing his love. Near the end of the video, however, we used a low angle shot of the pills and man, to show his control, and now he has the power to make a change and he can decide whether he will or will not take his life. This was a strong change from beginning to end. We also used another low angle before this to show that he was getting stronger towards the end. In this shot he is stood in front of a large house, which hopefully shows that this was special to him and her, maybe where she lived or where they went together. As well as using still shots, we also used hand held shots with the camera. This was to show his instability. The end scene is also shot with a hand held camera and it follows him around the room and his eye contact with the draw (were the pills are). The camera is now at a low angle and still follows him up from looking down at the pills to his facial expression. This created drama because it was all quite fast paced. The camera could also be interpreted as the ghost of his girlfriend watching his every move and not wanting him to carry on by looking back up at his face. This end scene is very tense. The last shot is very effective and sums up his struggle throughout the video. It is a mid shot of his hand dropping off the bed, the pill bottle rolling towards the camera with a pill escaping and rolling away from the camera, signifying death and freedom.
Our approach to our video is similar to other videos I have watched. Like in many videos we include our main character walking down the road, which signifies confidence and that they are the main attention. This happens in ‘New Shoes’ and ‘Smile’ which we were inspired by.

As well as this we focused around the theme of boy-girl which a lot of songs and videos are about, because it is a popular subject that the audience can relate to.



How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipack and magazine advert)?

As well as a music video, we also had to create a digipak and a magazine article for our album. The digipak is an album cover, including the pages on the front and inside.

Front cover for the digipak. Back cover for the digipak

inside of the digipak inside the digipak

magazine article

Our original image was took from the video >

We cropped this image and then added in text and changed the colour for our magazine advert and the Digipack cover.

We chose the front cover shot (of the digipak) because it is the same as the magazine article (but with no colour) this is so the audience would be able to find the album they looked at in the magazine and recognise it in the shop. Also you can no longer see the field in the background which represented the freedom, unlike the magazine article does. This signifies lost hope maybe, but the back cover shows that he has taken control again.
We chose a black and white theme to go with the main tracks video (marching band) because of the flashbacks. Also black and white have connotations of life and death which is a theme within our video.
These products construct an image for our artist. The inside cover of the digipack does this by showing he has a female interest and he is quite loving which will attract the female audience because women have grown to like the loving caring music artists.

Our magazine article was made in colour because in most magazines music articles are eye catching and tend to be in colour. The bold black writing at the top makes the title of the album stand out. We also added in reviews to make it look popular and to make people want to buy it, because of the good reviews. The picture is of our actor stood against a tree, from the video. This is to signify the barrier he is stuck on and it seperates him from an empty free land on one side, to the crowded bushes on the other also signifying the freedom that comes after death and a trapped lifestyle.
The software we used to create these was adobe photoshop which allowed us to move images around and change them, adding things to them or text.

I think that our three products (video and ancillary texts) will appeal to our target audience of teenagers because we have focused around a main theme of love and tragedy, which everyone experiences and is effected by so the video can be related with them. Using teenagers in our video is something else that will appeal to the audience and also do justice for the singer of our song Joe Brooks. Joe Brooks is also young and fans of his will be around the same age as our target audience so i beileve it will appeal to his target audience and ours. The promoting of the video will also get attention, mainly from the target audience because it features a young good looking man on the front which is a popular choice of picture when advertising music, using someone who willl catch the audiences eye.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback for our video was very positive. People liked the way the music video was an amplification video, and that we used people our own age because they could relate with them. They also liked the way we used hand held shots to dramatise the scene and also make it seem like we were there walking with him and watching him. Our audience enjoyed watching the girl dissapear to teh lyrics, saying that it was effective and made it easier for them to understand she had died. Someone commented that it was in the style of Romeo and Juliet which is partially true because one died so the other killed themselves because they couldn't live without each other. A popular comment was how tasteful the suicide was. It wasn't graphic or disturbing to watch but the effective hand drop shown he had died. The audience we asked also enjoyed the dramatic ending and found that the pill roll was a nice, effective shot and they liked the way the camera was positioned to allow the pills and pill bottle roll towards it.

The only problem that some people had was the use of the palcards. Some found them unnecessary whilst others thought they should have been on the screen with the footage rather than on a black screen. We would probably change this if we had to do it again, but other than that i was very pleased with the feedback.

People were also fond of our ancillary products, commenting on the use of black and white and how they liked us using clips from the video. They didn't have much negative feedback, only that the magazine article was in coour and not black and white like the rest, but we explained it was to make it stand out.

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

Throughout making our video we used new software to help us. Adobe Premier was very helpful and enabled us to edit and move around different clips. We used the scissor tool to cut up different parts of the video and delete the ones that wern't useful and organise the ones that were. We also used a black and white effect for the flashbacks, which helped because we could make it look like they were past memories simply by editing the colour. Also, fades were added to exit the placards onto the video and also to make one of the actors dissapear, which was a very good effect.
Photoshop was again helpful by allowing us to overlap images and text and to move or select different parts of an image to focus on and change i.e the colour or gradiant. We made most of our work on photoshop black and white to reinforce the life and death connotations.
To record all of our work we used a site called 'Blogger' instead of writing everything down on paper. This had its good and bad points because it was time consuming to write the notes on paper, and then go away and type them all up on the blog, rather than just keeping your notes. However it was useful because we could illustrate our work using pictures or videos. Youtube was very handy also becaues we could access any music video and watch it numerous times and analyze them which we needed to do.
I think that the music video we produced was very successful in achieving our goals of producing an acoustic amplification video.