We decided that it would be a good idea to make a video where the visuals and lyrics contradicted each other; this idea came from theorist Andrew Goodwin. We opted to do this as we felt as a small low budget project it would look much more professional than trying to link the lyrics and visuals. I felt that this would have a rather cheesy and tacky outcome.
Indie/rock music is one of the most popular types of music in the world today so we thought it would be a good idea to use this genre of music as it would appeal to a wide range of people.As the tempo of this song is very quick we decided to edit the video so that it cut from shots quickly to keep up with the pace of the song and make it flow, an example of this can seen in the scene below.
We wanted to make our video repeatable so people didn't get bored if they watched it for a second time we done this by making it entertaining and adding in things that may be missed if you were viewing it for the first time, we also made it so each character was different and exciting
The song that we used was in the traditional form of intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus, its very clear when the chorus of the song is about to start and this gave us a better chance of getting good lip sync in our final video, there is a guitar solo in the song that fits in perfect with the main chase scene in our video. There is also a prolonged note right at the end of the song which fits perfect with the pool scene at the end.
I think that our video would appeal to mainly to teenagers as all of the characters in our video are teenagers, although because our video is quite funny and entertaining i feel it could be watched by a wide range of audiences. The song would appeal to people from about 15 onwards as it is much like material from bands such as Arctic Monkeys or vampire weekend who appeal to a wide range of age groups.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We Showed our final video and digi pack to a number of students and teachers mainly around the age of our target audience, overall we got very positive feedback which pleased us as a group, we then created a questionnaire for people who had viewed the video so that they could answer questions about our video, they agreed to answer truthfully and this helped us understand points where we may have gone wrong.They all agreed that our band gave of strong connotations of being indie, which made us very pleased, as we wanted the look of the video to resemble our music’s genre.
There were parts of the video where the audience were slightly confused as to what was actually going on, many people did not actually know why all the characters were running and they also found it hard to understand the narrative.In a way this wasn’t such a bad thing, as we wanted to create an enigma so people had to work out what was actually going on. Although I think it was a slight flaw in our video as we could have shown the bag in the pool a few times in the video as some people did not even notice it in the final scene.
After we had finished asking the audience questions we then explained what was actually happening in the video to those who were still confused and couldn’t make any sense of it, we then let them watch it again and they seemed to appreciate it a lot more than the first time viewing, we took this as very positive feedback as we wanted or video to be repeatable, this made it seem more professional.
We then asked the audience some more questions such as whether they would want to watch the video again and learn more about the band, we were very pleased with the response as they said that they would definitely want to watch the video a second time to so that they could understand it more clearly.
Once we had finished showing our audience the video we asked them what they thought of our digipack, they were very positive about our digipack too, they were very impressed by the way we had made the front cover of the CD look professional and not tacky and cheesy. They like the way we had just kept the digipack quite simple and original the whole way through and not trying to make it look over the top, they agreed that the filter added a nice touch to it and made it look more like a real product.
One thing that audience picked up on that we were very pleased about was the comedic factor our video, they thought we had done this in a very good way by not necessarily trying to be funny but just adding certain points in the video that were random and bizarre that would make the audience laugh, such as when Charlie and goughy run out of the barn with a television and a table, and when tom gets in the go-cart. They said that making the video funny as well as gripping made it very appealing andthoroughly enjoying.
Overall I think the audience viewing went extremely well and I am very pleased with the feedback that we got.
How did you use Media Technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
One of the first things we decided as a group was that it we definitely wanted to film the video using a HD camera, we felt this was essential as we were going to have mainly chase scenes and action shots so we wanted it to be as clear as possible for the audience. We had some difficulty finding the best settings to export our video to, but in the end it turned out fine and we were happy with the quality.
Once we had filmed our whole video we then moved onto the editing side of the project, for the editing we used a program on the Mac’s called final cut express. This was the same program we used to edit our films last year so we were all comfortable with editing the video ourselves, One of the main things we were trying to achieve in our video was very good editing that went in time with the music, in the clip below you can see that we achieved this.
Once the video was more or less finished, we created the CD cover using a program called Adobe Photoshop. We spent quite a lot of time deciding on what colours and fonts etc to use, as there was a very thin line between it looking tacky and professional. We took the pictures for our CD cover in one of our favourite locations in our video, we used a camera that would take high quality pictures and we didn’t leave the location until we were happy with the shots. We also made the poster look quite similar by adding a filter to it and making it seem quite cool and well made. The way in which we made the whole digi pack really pleased me as we didn’t try to make it overtop at all which I think can only be done if you have a big budget and huge experience in editing software. We stuck with plain ideas that were quite simple yet effective and I think this turned out very well, we got inspiration from big bands such as Coldplay as they had a very simple album cover yet it was very effective.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Our music video had many different purposes, promote the song, to show off the personalities of the different characters in the video. We also aimed to show our audience that our band matched the typical stereotypes of ‘indie’ and each member of the band had a different personality and style. Overall though, I believe that our main purpose was to entertain.
I believe that we achieved all of these purposes very well, through our audience feedback we learned that all of our characters gave off different feelings and styles and this made us very pleased. One point in our video when the lead singer is singing into the mirror while cleaning his teeth conforms to Steve Archer’s theory as he is performing while in the narrative of the video.
We took our song from an indie/rock band, I don’t think that this had a huge effect on our video as we had decided we wanted to do a chase video before we had even chosen our song. Although I felt that the way our characters were dressed in the video conformed to the typical indie look.
To accompany the video we also made a digipack, this included a CD cover, inlay booklet and a poster. When it came to our digipack, we wanted to prove to the audience that we are an artistically literate band with substantial intellect. We did this by making our digipack simple and cool without trying to make it to over the top.
The target audience for our video would be anyone who enjoys listening to indie music or just anyone who likes to be entertained, i think the scene below seemed to make people laugh and i felt that it helped build the tension for the final scene.
I decided to show our video to a range of different age groups with different views on music. I got positive feedback from everyone who watched the video, some said they didn’t like the song that much although they thought the video was very well made. I feel that we would be the sort of band that became famous through posters and appearing in magazines etc.
The narrative of both the product and our ancillary texts is to show of the different personalities within the band, we carried this on through our CD cover and poster, which show off our simple yet entertaining ideas which we wanted put across to the audience. I feel that our product does connect to the purpose as we are trying to get an up and coming band out there and showing the different personalities within the band. I feel this is a good way to get your band noticed as it shows you want them to know what kind of people you are as well as the music you play. I would like to see our music video on a well respected channel such as MTV2 or kerrang I feel once a band has a chance to have their song played on one of these channels it is vital that the video is well made and shows what the band are about as the video is often how people remember songs.
No comments:
Post a Comment