Music Video Evaluation

Integral to the creation of our music video are the conventions commonly used in real media
products. Our production challenges these music video conventions by not following a narrative or
performance structure. Instead we chose to reflect the musical style of Radiohead with an
experimental/abstract video that considers the ideas within the song such as movement, the path
through life and being trapped by choices. Our ancillary tasks developed the conventions of a
Digipak and magazine advert by thinking about how the song’s meaning can be portrayed as images.
We chose to go with a cover of my group member Shaun being caught in motion with the title
inertia, meaning paralysis. This cover can be considered ironic as Shaun‘s face is a motion blur
although the fact that it has been frozen in place could be interpreted as Inertia as opposed to the
title being necessarily just a juxtaposition of the photo. The contrast present in our Digipak reflects
the song Pull/Pulk (Revolving Doors) as the lyrics do not just follow a single idea but suggest many
different ideas to show the complexity and consequences of choices we make through lyrics such as
“there are doors that open” these metaphorical doors which represent the path we choose to take
in life highlight the confusion as well as implying the choices we make as important yet irrelevant
because we ultimately die, this is shown in the final line of the song as “that we never come back
from”. Having this understanding of the music allowed us to properly recreate the meaning in our
video through the subject matter and implications of our clips. This is particularly true for our last
clip which ends with a zoom and fade to white of a dead end sign; representing the end of the song
as well as a metaphorical end to the road of life. Carol Vernallis wrote an article called ‘The Kindest
Cut’ where she talks about the differences in conventions between the editing of a film and that of a
music video. She discusses how “a Hollywood film exists to tell some sort of story...but the music
video exists to promote both the song it contains, but also the performer(s).” This highlights the
difference in approach required between film and music videos. She goes on to say that “Common
continuity edits in film seeks to preserve the flow of time and the coherence in spaces. Its ultimate
goal is to create a single, clear path through a film’s world. However, music videos often avoid
continuity editing because such techniques would give the visual track too strong an influence” which
was relevant to our project when it came to the editing process as we did not want our chosen clips
to overtake the importance of the music nor did we want to demean the music by distracting our
audience with too much going on in the video. So in this sense we have conformed to the
conventions of music video editing by trying to reflect the music with our visuals as a way of
promoting the song itself.

During the planning process for our music video I found it fundamental to include continuity
throughout not only the video itself but in relation to our ancillary tasks, this has been done through
similar shots and locations used for the creation of our Digipak, advert and video. For example all
three tasks include a recognisable angel tombstone which highlights the death that will take us all at
the end of our lives as well as being a religious beacon that guides many through their time on earth.
Another parallel between our music video and Digipak exists in the cover image which is a similar
shot to the head turning clips throughout our video. This shows continuity between the tasks as well
as uniformity which helps the audience connect the separate parts together allowing the music
video to promote the album and the advert by creating a link in the audience’s mind so that they
know exactly what they are looking for in the shop. We tried where possible to relate the tasks back
to our theme of motion and Inertia as well as making sure we used a consistent font for ancillary
tasks as well as positioning the text in the same way for both tasks in order for the audience to
better connect the two pieces together. We also chose to go with a forest backdrop for our advert
Music Video Evaluation

which is also present on the back panel of our Digipak as well as part of my photomontage on panels
two through to four. Not only that but hidden text is prevalent in both ancillary tasks as a way of
drawing attention to the piece and create some ambiguity which would intrigue our audience
making them seek answers and therefore further promote the album. When thinking about creating
this project we had to consider the real media institutions that would play a major role in the sale
and promotion of the album. Radiohead used to be part of Capital Records before their contract
expired and so during the creation of our advert and Digipak we felt it important to include the
Capital Records logo on the advert in order for our audience to identify with a known institution and
therefore be influenced to purchase the album.

In order to achieve a production that reflects our target audience we created a short
questionnaire and asked some of our peers of whom we knew liked Radiohead to look at our
ancillary tasks and video in order for them to give critical feedback on our work. Part of this
questionnaire asked our audience to evaluate what they thought the strengths and weaknesses
were of this project, the response we got was varied but recurring opinions came through such as
many commented on the “well thought out camerawork” which in their opinion “highlighted the
theme of Inertia” and created somewhat “abstract patterns blended with smooth transitions”. There
were also common opinions on the weaknesses of our production with some people stating that
“there were some irrelevant shots” which I think is true to some degree as we could have done more
to completely emphasise our theme throughout instead of placing clips in that did not necessarily
highlight the concept of motion to the extent that the audience expected. A few people also
commented on how the video “lost its pace at some points” which is referring to how the editing
was not in perfect tune with the song and so at some points in our video the pace of the music was
not reflected through our visuals. Another question we asked our audience was ‘looking at the
Digipak, promotional poster and music video, would you say that uniformity is present throughout’,
we asked this in order to see our audience’s reaction to the three pieces together and whether or
not they thought they worked in promoting the product. The responses we received were
interesting; a notable answer for this question was “Not throughout, but at many points. These
points were nice when they came, but were distributed between possibly not so focused points”.
What I have taken from this response is that our audience feels our Digipak, advert and video do
show obvious uniformity and continuity through similar shots, locations and mise-en-scene but does
not remain so throughout the production as; in their opinion; our video trails away from our theme
at points rather than remaining completely focused on that idea throughout. I would agree to some
extent with this comment as I feel we did move away from our theme at times; especially during the
filming and editing part of the project. Through these questions i have learned that our audience
does generally like the work we have produced but feel it could have been a lot better had we stuck
more closely to our theme and worked harder to keep the video and music in time with each other.
We didn’t receive much negative feedback to be honest which i think has quite a bit to do with the
fact that we were asking our peer group and they were trying their best to be kind with their
responses, because of this i cannot help but feel some of the responses we got were not we entirely
representational of our audience which has taught me to go out and finder a wider selection of
people for feedback and to appeal for their honesty in order to receive valid feedback. A fair chunk
of our positive feedback was directed at our ancillary pieces where the general consensus from our
audience can be summed up by quoting “the poster/Digipak looked very real – and this aided the
theme” which was written by one of the people we asked. I am glad that our audience think the
Music Video Evaluation

ancillary tasks look good and am especially pleased that they can identify the theme clearly with
them. Overall the feedback we received has confirmed to me some of the doubts I held about this
production and has helped me understand that when creating a media product it is very important
to ask for feedback in order to clarify what needs to be tweaked and perfected with the work as
opposed to just completing the work to my own standard.

Throughout this project I have used many new media technologies available to me in order
to target a modern audience and reflect the ‘electronic’ style of music. The planning stage of the
production was uploaded to a blog that both I and my group updated regularly throughout the
project, we chose to draw our storyboard on paper but ultimately decided to scan each page into a
computer and create a .pdf file that was then uploaded to www.scribd.com which is a document
hosting site that allowed us to embed scripting into our blog that means anyone who wants to view
our storyboard has a handy interface within our blog post that lets them view each page in their own
time without the need to refer them to another link or site. The filming of our music video and the
photography for our ancillary tasks were done entirely on a Canon EOS 500D digital SLR which is a
relatively new camera with a wide range of functions; including high definition filming not to
mention incredible photographic capabilities. The use of a digital camera also made it easy for us to
then take our footage and photographs onto a computer in order to edit them. The editing of our
ancillary photographs was done using Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 which is a vastly diverse piece of
editing software. I chose to use this program over others as I am more confident with using it. Due to
the range of editing techniques available to me and my knowledge of the software I was able to
create our Digipak and advert with great precision and I am very pleased with their outcome. As for
the editing of our music video I chose to use Adobe Premiere Pro which was a completely new
program to me. As a result I spent quite a while teaching myself how to use it and practicing various
techniques in order to get used to the layout and UI of the software. By the time I actually came to
edit our video I was able to do so with confidence and any queries about effects I had along the way
were sorted out through testing and experimenting with them on our work and deciding whether I
liked it or not. My opinion however does not necessarily reflect the views of our target audience so I
asked some people I know who are fans of Radiohead to give feedback on each effect that I used. As
a result I changed several effects from the original cut of Pull/Pulk (Revolving Doors) and provided a
revised cut based on the critical opinions of the people I questioned. Once I had finished editing the
video I wanted to export it and make the file viewable on all major media players such as Windows,
QuickTime, iTunes and YouTube. In order to export a project from Premiere Pro I had to move the
media into a separate program; Adobe Media Encoder which gave us a large amount of options that
would affect the overall quality and look of the video. As a result I was able to export the music
video to the highest standard available to me which is important due to the fact that a higher quality
of video and sound will better promote an album. Overall the media technologies we used
throughout our production were more than capable of the task and I feel we have worked hard to
create the best possible outcome; asking for feedback where appropriate and taking that into
account so that we give the audience what they want.