JAT Group Evaluation

Music Videos
We have looked at a variety of videos from the rock genre, from Bastille to Green Day to the
Arctic Monkeys. All of these videos were made in the last five years and are therefore
contemporary and relevant to music videos in our genre today.

From Joes research, he looked at three music videos; 21 Guns by Green Day, If You Wanna
by The Vaccines and Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. These three are all different as the
weight of narrative differs from having no narrative to being mostly narrative. In those
videos with a narrative, there are frequent cutaways to the band playing (dubbed in a studio
and lip-synced). We have also seen this in Tanias research of Funs We are Young where the
video cuts away to a narrative from the band performing. This can be seen further in
Bastilles Pompeii where it cuts from the singer to him inside the narrative. In Amars
research, the lead singer of Maroon 5 is involved in the narrative similar to that of the lead
singer of Bastille, and in the song by the Arctic Monkeys, the band can be seen but arent
performing. This shows us that the majority of contemporary rock videos contain a narrative
which is the main bulk of the video with images of the band performing. Well use this and
apply to our own product by having cutaways of the band from the main narrative. However
in contrast to some of the videos we looked at the band will not be involved in the narrative.

Two of the three videos Joe looked at discussed relationships in their lyrics; 21 Guns using
the guns as a metaphor for letting your guard down in a relationship and If You Wanna
talking about wanting to return to a relationship. In the lyrics of the music videos Tania
studied, Bastilles song could be seen as discussing the relationship between the fallen
people of Pompeii and the city itself. In the song by Fun, the song is about a relationship that
has gone wrong and why. From Amars songs Why Do You Only Call Me When Youre High
and Payphone, the lyrics also discuss relationships, however the former also discusses drugs.
In our video, although our lyrics arent about a relationship we are portraying a relationship
that goes wrong in the prologue in order to explain why our protagonist turns to drugs.
Furthermore although the lyrics arent explicitly about drug use, there is no explanation in
the lyrics for him waking up in the middle of nowhere. We have interpreted this as a trip that
he cannot recall afterwards.

The camerawork in all of Joes videos contains similar shots; the use of establishing shots,
close-ups, midshots and medium-shots all frequently used. In Tanias videos, the common
shots were midshots, over-the-shoulder-shots, close-ups and establishing shots. From
Amars research the common shots were establishing shots, close-ups, long shots, midshots
and tracking shots. This clearly shows a similar range of shots are conventional for our genre
and we are going to use the majority of these shots frequently as well as some more
expansive shots such as a crane and arc shot in order to show our skill with the camera.

Mise-en-Scene in our textual analyses was varied. In 21 Guns, the narrative and
performance took place in a small apartment. In Radioactive, the video took place in a
forest, a small shed in that forest and a dungeon and in If You Wanna, the video took place
on a stage. In We Are Young, the narrative takes place in a bar and the performance on a
stage. In Bastille, the narrative and performance takes place in an abandoned city to
replicate the destruction of Pompeii. In Payphone, the narrative takes place in a bank and in
the song by the Arctic Monkeys, the narrative takes place in numerous locations in a city.

In our video, the narrative will be set in an apartment and will be isolated and abandoned
apart from our protagonist. This links to the location of 21 Guns, similarly set in an
apartment; Pompeii in which the lead singer is alone like our protagonist, and Radioactive,
where the fighting takes place in an isolated location.
The lighting in the majority of the videos we researched was dim as this is conventional of
the rock genre. The lighting were using will be a spotlight for the band which is similar to
that of Funs video and Bastilles. However the lighting will become bright for the narrative
of the video to contrast with the dim lighting on the band.
The majority of the costumes weve seen in the videos are dark or black clothing; however
theyre also reasonably fashionable with skinny jeans, leather jackets, turned up trousers
etc. The colour scheme of the clothing is conventional of the genre and the costume style we
will replicate with the protagonists and the band in our video.

Sound is often lip-synced in a music video and was in all that we looked at in addition to
dubbing instruments into the video. However, we want our band to play live to give an
authentic feel to the track and also feel that it would be easier to edit and have a better
sound quality. For our editing, we hope to use visual effects on programs such as After
Effects. Furthermore we are going to use jump cuts and temporal editing as well as the use
of transitions such as fades and cross-dissolves.

Digipacks
For our digipacks, Joe looked at 21
st
Century Breakdown, Sigh No More and Jake Bugg. Tania
looked at American Idiot and The Boy Who Knew Too Much and Amar looked at AM and
Overexposed. These are all vastly different and convey their genre in diverse ways.
The colour schemes of the digipacks are quite similar. For 21
st
Century Breakdown, American
Idiot, AM and Jake Bugg the main colour is black with a secondary colour of either red or
white. Jake Buggs digipack is black and white and this will be shown on our digipack as the
exterior panes will share the same colour scheme. For Mikas and Maroon 5s album theyre
both multi-coloured and this will also be shown on the interior panes of our digipack. Both
colour schemes represent a different part of our narrative and create a binary opposition.
There is no set conventional layout for a digipack and this can be seen in our research. We
have a running theme throughout all the digipacks where the band name is above the album
name (or is eponymous) and theyre both either in the centre, on the left, or one is on the
former and one the latter.