Media Studies Evaluation - Charmaine Christie

Music videos are seen as distinct art forms, which either follow or challenge specific genre conventions, which allow directors to produce creative products for artists. During the 1970s ‘Top of the Pops’ used music videos as a substitute for when the bands weren’t able to perform live. After this saw the beginnings of music channel ‘MTV’ and there was a boom of music video promos during the 1980s. This resulted in many spin off channels such as ‘Smash Hits’, ‘Q’ and further more specific channels such as ‘MTV Base’ and ‘MTV 2’.

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

The music video we made was a complimentary representation of an indie soundtrack for the artist ‘Butch Walker’. A convention of indie genre music videos that we drew on was to focus on capturing natural footage, which appears to follow the artist on a normal day. We focused on a single main artist lip-synching to the soundtrack, who also has a band which performs with him. We tried to follow typical conventions of an indie genre by opening the video with an establishing shot of the drums which turns into footage of a band performing. We also filmed close-up shots of typical rock instruments such as guitar and drums, to have a strong visual link to the indie rock genre.

We chose to dress the artist in casual, indie clothing to appeal to the target audience of teenagers and young adults who like indie culture. However, we chose to challenge the general gender form of bands, seen in most music videos, by using a mixture of male and female band members, as rock bands and rock music are stereotypically male dominated. This helps make the band more appealing to both genders of the target audience, as female fans would be attracted to the boys in the band, whilst aspiring to be like the girls, and vice versa for male fans.

The video is performance based, including many shots of the artist in a variety of costumes, filmed form different angles. The footage of the artist performing with a band makes him instantly desirable to an indie audience, which stereotypically enjoys band music. As well as this we made sure to single the artist out for most of the video to make him ‘special’ and to make sure the viewer recognises him as the main artist. The use of different angles is used to show the artist in a variety of ways, using close-ups of the artist singing focuses on the artist’s emotion and is good for marketing purposes as people will recognise him. As well as this we used side shots and front shots of him walking down the streets. The variety of shots sells the artist to the audience and conforms to the demands of the record label, which wants the artist to be shown in different ways that will attract the audience to him.

The video is very voyeuristic as the audience are invited to watch what looks like a private band performance, which was filmed within the music room. The video is also mainly made up of footage of the artist walking down different streets towards the camera, which we filmed using a dolly. This is also a good example of voyeurism that we used as it gives an impression of paparazzi following the artist, or that the viewer themselves is walking down the street with him. As well as this, the artist uses a lot of direct gaze in order to engage the viewer and make them feel connected. This again conforms with the demands of the record label as the viewer feels special, so is more likely to remember the artist and buy the record.

To make the video stand out, I added some effects to the footage using a feature within final cut, which multiplied the image within the same screen, which I then cut this to the beat. This created a strong link between music and visuals. There are links between lyrics and visuals, such as when the line such as when the line ‘so put in your ski cap and maybe a vest’ is sung, the artist is seen wearing a ski cap and pulls at his jumper. As the line ‘you hair is a fucking mess’ is sung, the artist runs his hand over his hair to mess it up and when the line ‘I can’t find my shoes’ is sung there is a close-up of the artist’s feet walking along the street barefoot.

However, our main idea to create a strong relationship between visuals and lyrics was to overlay text that spells out the lyrics as they are sung around the footage. Something that I also suggested to make the video appear more professional was to add the title of the track and the artist to the corner of the video in the beginning of the video, as it appears on video’s seen on music channels.

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

We had to produce two ancillary products to coincide with our main media product, these were a DVD cover and a magazine advert. Although we create the products as a group, I managed the production of the DVD cover, whilst another member of the group managed the making of the magazine advert.

Using screen grabs for the images would be too blurry, so we decided to choose to use images that were all taken within a single photo shoot. Although we used different images, we made sure they were similar enough to have a strong visual link. All of the images featured on the ancillary tasks were of the artist for the purpose of the demands of the record label. He is featured as an ordinary person, posed in a relaxed, cool way against the wall, which would make the target audience feel attracted to him as an artist. Both the tasks had the same text font and colour for the song and artist titles and other text to link them together.

In an initial idea I created for the magazine cover, I used a colour image and edited it to black and white in Photoshop. I decided to keep the leaves and shirt in colour to make the image different and quirky and edited them so that the colour was brighter with more contrast to make them more eye-catching to the magazine reader. The blue accent of the shirt works well with the blue writing, that I put in bold and added an effect of shadowing to make it stand out. I then added a banner in the corner of the advert, advertising when the DVD becomes available for purchase.

However, we decided that this was not bright enough because of the black and white background, which also made the artist appear a bit ghostly. Therefore went with a bright option that fitted with the DVD cover.

As well as this, the DVD cover included a barcode, the record label ‘Regular Records’, the DVD symbol, a track listing, a list of special features, a recommendation from ‘NME’, general DVD icons such as ‘Fact’ and ‘Ministry of Sound’, stills from the music video and an age certificate of 15, plus a parental guidance icon due to the swearing on the track. Special features and extra features, such as an interview with the artist, add value to the DVD which means it could be sold at a higher price than normal. I decided to add a live version of the track onto the track listing, because research into current indie DVDs proves that live versions of songs and live footage are popular amongst the indie audience, so it is something that would make the DVD desirable for our target audience.

The magazine advert included the date of the DVD release, the artist website, where the DVD could be found, the record label and like on the DVD, general icons linked to the track such as ‘Ministry of Sound’.

The products were created in Photoshop and we edited the images using a ‘posterization’ feature within the programme. We decided to use this feature to edit all images so that it acts as a motif between the products and links them to one another easily as a promotional package. The use of this edit also fit with the indie genre as it makes the images stand out and appear quirky and different.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our original pitch for the track was for the video to be a mixture of performance and narrative, following the artist through his day after a party, adding in footage of him walking down streets singing into the camera and performing within a band. However, during our overnight use of filming equipment, we experienced problems with the weather that made it difficult for us to film overall and prevented us from following our original idea, for example we could not have the band performing in a field.

We uploaded a rough-cut video which included the footage we had obtained from that filming session. Our feedback from that video said that ‘performance is typical of this genre and this music video includes a lot of varying performance which is good. It is good that it shows the whole band as well as the lead vocalist’ but suggested that we should replace our narrative footage and turn our video into a performance based concept, ‘I think the band performance is the strongest footage you have, along with the walking shots’. We needed to introduce footage of the artist walking down streets earlier on within the video to set up the main idea of the video, and then cut between this footage and footage of the band performing.

We also needed a series of main scenes that we could cut back to throughout the video. In order to do this, we had to spend another session on filming more footage of the artist walking down different streets. The feedback liked the close-ups of the instruments ‘I really like the close-ups of the instruments’ and suggested that we also add in more close-ups of the artist ‘I would also advise you to have more close-ups’ in order to ‘sell the artist’. Therefore we also made sure we filmed more close-ups on our last shoot.

After re-shooting some more footage we re-edited the video using the new footage and turned it into a performance based concept video. After posting it on our blog, we received some further feedback on our final video. It stated that our video used genre characteristics that are ‘typical of a rock/pop song as there is performance from the band as well as the main artist’. It was implied that our use of lyrics and visuals were effective as they stated that ‘the visuals within the music video illustrate the lyrics; an example of this is the line “I can’t find my shoes” the visuals show the artist walking along the pavement without shoes on. Another example of this is that the lyrics state “hair is a mess” and the main artist is playing with his hair but also there is text saying the lyrics within the frame’.

The feedback also commented on how ‘the visuals and music within the video complement each other’, for example with the way that ‘the artist is walking down the street and on the beat each time the image is doubled it starts out with the image, it is then doubled and ends up with many copies of the same image’. They also say that the ‘demand of the record label would have been met as the video completely focuses on the main artist and the band’, which is also what we intended as a performance video.

More general comments were also made on how the video was filmed well, stating that ‘the camera work used within the video is very effective’ and that ‘even though the camera is moving it is still steady as the artist is walking’.

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

Before beginning our project we researched into different music directors, by watching DVDs featuring some of the music videos they have directed and watching interviews with them. We also watched different music videos and analysed them using Goodwin’s theory, which is what we would be using in order to create our own video. We created PowerPoint presentations on the information we had found out about the directors and music video analysis and posted them on our blog once we had become a group, to share our information.

The internet was an important part of our research as we used the internet in order to research the indie genre in order to help us create our video. We collected images from www.google.co.uk and created a mood board from them, in order to give a general representation of the mise-en-scene of the type of video we wanted to make. We used the video hosting site www.youtube.com to research into indie music videos and get an idea of what they feature, such as a band performance and what types of instruments.

To research into our target audience we got feedback from our class which was posted on www.blogger.com. As well as this we used Blogger to host all of our work on, so we could keep track of how we were progressing throughout the project. It was also somewhere where we could easily share information with one another and could all quickly obtain information from. Having all of our work from the project posted in one placed helped us stay organised as a group and could split off and post blogs separately in order to move on faster. By posting images and videos that tracked our progress, such as the rough-cut video, on the blog, we could get feedback on them which intern helped us to move onto the next stage with some helpful guidance.

In order to create our music video we used the programme Final Cut, which allowed us to cut and edit our footage together as we wished. As well as this it gave us the opportunity to apply effects to change the quality of the footage, by making it lighter, and to multiply the scene to give our video a bit of edge.

The other programme we used was Photoshop, which we used to create our ancillary tasks in. Photoshop allowed us to edit the images we had chosen for the magazine advert and the DVD cover, for example to make the colour within the DVD cover image brighter, to make the leaves stand out more and make the image more effective. The ‘posterization’ effect was also very useful as it helped us to link the tasks together in a way that also made them edgy and eye-catching, as parts of the image were made to appear cartoon like, whilst the rest of the image remains normal.

Overall, I do not think that we would have been able to produce our music video or ancillary tasks as easily as we did without the use of new technologies such as what I have mentioned.