Our video shows the typical way a record company would want their artist to be represented because it specifically focuses on our performer, Alphie, for the majority of the video. It also shows Alphie spray painting graffiti onto a wall. This shows the way a record company would want to represent the band because it is displaying their ‘rock and roll’ behaviour.
When researching ideas for our video, and other videos that may be similar to ours, we looked at the band Paramore. In their video for ‘Misery Business’ the camera focused on the lead singer performing in front of a black and white graffitied background. By looking at videos such as this we decided it would look effective to include graffiti shots in our own music video.
In some ways our music video is also similar to other Garbage videos. For example in their video for ‘ I think I’m paranoid’, the video is very performance based. There are shots of the lead singer, Shirley Manson, performing alone to the camera, as Alphie did in our music video.
When we were filming our music video we used static shots and freehand shots to achieve the result we wanted. We found that the freehand shots worked better than the static shots because it meant that we could achieve a wider variety of angles, which was in keeping with the rock style of our song.
We used natural lighting throughout our video, rather than using staged lighting to make it brighter. We thought this worked well because the darker lighting kept with the dark heavy style of the rest of the song. Real music videos are less likely to use natural lighting, as there are larger budgets so stage lighting is easily affordable. When we were looking at the lighting in real music videos however, we did find that in Green Day’s video for ‘American Idiot’ the lighting looked natural, and quite dark, which is similar to the lighting in our video.
The setting for a large part of the video was a room at college with a wall covered in graffiti, however we also used some outdoor locations. Some of our shots show Alphie walking through a forest or through leaves. We think these brighter shots show a good contrast to the dark, heavy style of the graffiti shots.
When we were deciding on the costume choice for Alphie, we decided to try to make her look edgy and keeping with the rock theme. For the video she wore a white top with a graffiti print on it. This looked effective when she was performing in front of the graffiti wall. We also used props, such as the spray paint and had Alphie sitting on amplifiers to show the rock style of the video and the band.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
When looking at ideas for our digipack, we looked at ‘Green Day, Bullet in a Bible’. This gave us the idea of using a three fold album design. We also looked at Avril Lavigne’s Album ‘Let Go’. The cover shows her standing in a crowded road, but everything behind her is blurred. This makes the audience focus on the artist rather than the rest of the cover. This gave us a good idea on how to create our album cover as we want it to focus mainly on the artist.
The reason for creating a magazine advert is to promote the artist and to sell the song, aswell as giving the consumer information of when and where the product is available. We have used these advert conventions in our magazine advert by using bright colours and a large eye catching title to grab the consumers attention. We have also used images from the video on our advert. This shows a connection to the video, which also helps to advertise the product. We didn’t include large amounts of writing on our advert because too much text can be boring. We used the minimum amount of text but still gave the consumer all the information the need to buy the album.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
After we had finished our rough cut video, other groups in our class gave us feedback on it. Overall the groups were impressed with the video and said we had a good variety of shots in good locations, and that our lip syncing is good the whole way through the video. There were not many problems with our video but, even though some people said we had a good variety of shots, other groups said we needed more of a variety. Some groups also said they thought we needed to add some transitions, although we later decided that the choppy editing that we had already worked well with our video. Our teacher said that, even though our video was meant to be performance based, there was something missing and we needed another aspect to the video. With our teachers help we then came up with the idea to show shots of Alphie spray painting onto a wall with a stencil throughout the video, to then reveal what the stencil says at the end. After we had put these shots into our video we were a lot happier with the result.
After we had made the changes from the previous feedback, we put our final video on to facebook. We were also given feedback sheets, on which other groups had written feedback on our music video, magazine advert, digipack and our blog. From facebook and the feedback sheets we found that most of the feedback was positive. People said that we had a good variety of shot types and camera angles, and that our lip syncing was perfect. Some people said that Alphie gave a realistic performance, and in contrast to this other people said that the acting wasn’t convincing and could have been better. This shows that it is more peoples opinions than whether Alphie gave a good performance or not, and we were happy with the end result of our video. Groups also said that they liked our graffiti concept because it gave our video more depth and kept the audience more interested.
From our feedback on our digipack and magazine advert, people said that there was clear link between the two. This is because we used the same colour scheme and the same image of Alphie on the advert and the digipack cover. Groups said that our magazine advert includes all the conventions and key information of a real advert, such as the information about where the product is available. Some groups suggested that the left inside cover of our digipack did not fit in with the rest of the cover. This is because the rest of the cover is in darker colours and we decided to give the image for this section a negative effect. This made it bright when compared with the rest of the cover. Some groups thought that this didn’t work, however we thought that it created a good contrast.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used new media technologies throughout the process of creating our video. To begin with we used the internet, using websites such as Google and Youtube, to do research into the band and other bands and videos of a similar style. We then uploaded any images and wrote about what we found using a blogging website called blogger.com. After we had done our research and planning and filmed for our video, we used Final Cut to edit the footage and create the video we wanted to make. We also used Photoshop to create our digipack and magazine advert. Social networking websites, such as Facebook, were also useful for the evaluation stage of our product because, by uploading our video onto Facebook, it created an easy way to receive large amounts of feedback on our video.
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