Music Video Evaluation

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

Our media product is a product that emphasizes and highlights conventions that have been
previously used throughout ‘Heavy Metal’
videos over the years. It is a dark, insane,
fast-paced clip which has a purpose of
elaborating and exposing the lyrics in a
different way to listening to the track on its
own. It is a music video performance-based
and narrative-based video mainly, but does
seem to have some concept within, which is
similar to a lot of other metal music videos
as we have researched. The narrative is very
clear in a sense of interpreting what is
happening but the morals and ‘rights and
wrongs’ of the events that take place are filmed in a way to leave the audience to decide. This is
also quite conventional within metal videos because the rebelliousness and attitude of this genre
itself is an arguable subject and hence so should
be the video. There are many different effects
used to generate the emphasis on the music and
what it stands for. For example, uses of effects
such as earthquake and echo can highlight the
importance of a lyrics ‘Nothing, will ever change’,
or the loudness and disobedience of the distorted
guitar and thumping double bass pedal. Also,
when the music calms down during the verses we
used slow paced editing to accompany the track
and as it changed the narrative and pace was
made sure to change with it. The use of various different shots and making sure they matched the
mood of the music and the lyrics was a very conventional technique which we stuck by because it
seemed the best way to portray this particular song. The reason for this is because like in most
music videos although the band and the actors seem completely separated, this concept becomes a
beautiful message once they begin to relate to each other because this relation then helps the
audience relate to both the band and the narrative and so they are focused on the video. It is used
in various different metal videos such as Bullet for My Valentines ‘Waking the Demon’ and Korn’s
‘Freak on a Leash’.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Our main product and ancillary texts are both very conventionally stylized and constructed
mediums as they both are full of connotations that associate with the typically ‘metal’ related
designs and effects. For example looking at the front cover (below), we can straight away spot these
conventions. The logo first and foremost
is full of red and black, two
colours which connotates
danger, darkness, evil etc.
They were edited together in
a way which makes the text
look rebellious and the black
acts as an oncoming shadow
slowly trying to take over the
red colour. The album
background is also the same,
full off custom brushes that
print ‘blood like’ images. The
crow once again, is a dark colour and
connotates singularity and isolation as it sits there alone. The
parental advisory label also shows that there are explicit
contents in the album which attracts the concept of defiance
amongst younger people. Another example of this kind of
stereotypical attitude is the poster we
included in the digi-pak. It is an image
of a baby that has supposedly inhabited
the ‘metal’ stereotypes and so sits there
defiantly staring at the audience. We
made this using Adobe Photoshop and
used the image of a baby and planted
different accessories on him i.e.
dreadlocks, a tattoo, a gothic necklace,
a lip piercing and red eyes. All these
factors helped promote the insanity and
lunacy of the music itself through a still
image. The white background seems to
be the only thing representing the
child’s innocence but it is at the end of the day just a background and the innonecence of the baby
is long gone.
This all relates to the way the video is put together as the narrative and different scenery play on
these conventions and come together to create what is a typical yet slightly diverse metal video.
What have you learnt from audience feedback?

The audience feedback was a huge success and very helpful towards our final product. Our main help
was the first cut of the video which we put on YouTube. Although it wasn’t specific constructive
feedback, the support we were given helped us carry on and spend approximately a week’s worth of
hours (maybe exaggerating a little) into editing this video the best we can. The questionnaires were
quite successful although some of the results were a little surprising; we had a good general idea of
what the audience wanted from the video. However it was a little too general and the interviews played
a great role when coming to specific ideas as the open questions let people explain what they think and
helped us understand what the audience wanted more. The fact that most of them came up with the
same responses gave us a good idea of what it was we needed to do. Also, there were many questions
were the results were very clear. For example nearly everybody enjoyed seeing a narrative in music
videos so we therefore included one. Most people thought that it is important for an artist to have a
logo and so we came up with one. All these factors played a great part towards our finished product and
we are thankful for that.

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

During the construction and research not a lot of technology was used. Later on using YouTube for a first
cut and getting feedback was very helpful but a pen and paper was the most we used at these stages.
We began by hiring a Canon XN2 camera with a Manfrotto Tripod and rented three lights, one big and
two small. We then went to the studio to begin our first set of performance shots. After setting up we
had to play around with the PA system provided at the studio in order to be able to play the song loud
enough for live instrument players (the drummer) could hear the music and play along. We also used a
fan to use as wind against the lead singer’s hair, and improvised with cigarettes by blowing smoke
through the fan… a budgeted smoke machine if you will!
Our second hurdle was the outside performance shots, which required wiring into our friend’s house
and making sure the wattage wasn’t too much and that the fuse didn’t blow. Using the same equipment
we recorded the track and instead used an amplifier to play the track. This was because it was outside
and speakers weren’t an option seeing as the neighbours wanted to go to sleep!
So we took the pedals off the drums and muted everything we could to make sure no noise was made.
Another new technology we used was the strobe light, and besides making us all feel sick it was a
powerful item to use and gave a great effect for the breakdown.
We then finally did the narrative shots, here we did not have any power supplies so we just used the
camera and the Tripod; and used each other’s phones to help bring the narrative to life.
Capturing was then the next step and we used a DV Player to capture all the footage and put it on a log
sheet. This was using Final Cut Pro on an Apple Mac Computer which was inevitably the sequencer we
used to edit the video. We came across many problems which we sometimes waited more than half an
hour to fix (such as rendering, finding and losing files, putting all the clips in sync), however we
overcame them and carried on. Using the mark button to mark every beat on the song, the uploaded
track worked perfectly with the 50+ synced channels of which we spent hours cutting and pasting, using
effects such as slow/fast motion, earthquakes, echo’s, image mask, overlaying, playing with the opacity,
positioning scales, key-framing and many more features. We also used Adobe After Effects to use a
video clip of glass smashing during the break down to give our video a better effect.
With regards to the ancillary texts we used two different programmes which were ‘Adobe Photoshop’
and ‘Adobe Illustrator’. Illustrator was used to create the logo, and we chose specific fonts and a specific
effect called the ‘arrow’ effect to create the messy scribbles behind the text. Then using Photoshop and
playing around with the contrast, saturation and layers we created the red and black shadow effect. The
background used in the front/back cover and magazine advert was using a custom brush and painting on
the bloody effects. Images such as the baby and the crow were ‘magic wand’ selected to remove as
much of what we didn’t need as we could and rubbing then took up the rest of our time.

Finally, the evaluation was rather simple, we used a small video camera with a USB to record use
explaining the video. We used my dad’s old 1980’s camera tripod (and also his digital camera to take
pictures of the ‘making’ of the video) and linked a laptop to the TV to be able to present our product.

By Emam Awad