A2 MUSIC VIDEO EVALUATION

By Mark Amico

INTRODUCTION
The song we decided to do was Noah and the whale- blue skies. The reason we picked this song is because it is perfect for the indie genre. We also felt that it would be perfect to create a story around. This is because we could take it in so many different directions. But what we decided I think was the best idea possible for the story I think its perfect as we were able to show our skills as media students as it required lots of editing different technologies and it challenged us to find ways of fitting into conventions and try and make our music video look as professional as possible.

Q1:

DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Before me and my group started planning our music video we researched the conventions of the genre which was indie in our case. We looked at different videos and bands that were in the genre and how their videos challenged the conventions and how they fit in with other real media products in the chosen genre. We looked at many different videos and took out what we thought was the main conventions. This was shown in essays we all produced which talked about the conventions of indie. In this essay I found that the following conventions are:

IN

WHAT WAYS DOES YOU MEDIA PRODUCT USE,

Natural settings Natural lighting Bright colours used Close ups used very often Had lots of different special effects Narrative music videos

From finding this out we had a basis on which we could start thinking of our music video.

LINKS

BETWEEN THE LYRICS AND THE VISUALS

The music video we chose to do was Noah and the whale- blue skies. This is a very good song for creating the indie genre. The lyrics had to match the video otherwise at points it wouldnt make sense like when the singer says blue skies are calling we have a shot of a perfect blue sky to link the lyrics with the visual. Even at the very beginning they have a guitar solo which our actor also does this is another great link from the song and the visual. It also gives the audience the first glimpse that the actor is also the singer of the song. This also uses

LINKS

BETWEEN THE LYRICS AND THE VISUALS

when the lyrics say this is a song for anyone with a broken heart the actor kisses the phone which the audience must assume is the girl he loves. This is done to show how much he loves the girl and how much she means to him even if the feelings are not shown back. At this point his love is not obsessive but bordering on that. At the end of the song it goes into the solo music with no words but its almost the climax and it shows the main actor walking away from the dead girl this is to show the only way for him to get over her is for her not to be around but it also shows the regret that he has after killing her.

LINKS BETWEEN THE LYRICS AND THE

VISUALS
We had a scene where the screen turned white and almost showed a dream state. The reason we put this in where he is holding the hand of the girl is because its his imagination we did this to show the difference between his dreams and reality. The lightness shows that he believes it to be a perfect moment but then it changes back to normal colouring which shows him almost crashing back to reality. This will be in my view the start of the dangerous obsession.

LINKS BETWEEN THE LYRICS AND THE

VISUALS
We also had a scene where it truly shows him panicking and not knowing what to do. This is when he has the girl he loves tied to the tree. He for the first time starts to show regret maybe even shock at the fact he could do such a thing. I think its important to show him feeling this way because it makes him more human and not just this evil obsessed guy. We had to show that he regrets his actions and is feeling scared because he's nota criminal mastermind who doesnt have feelings but is a guy deeply in love but does crazy things because he doesnt get that love shown back to him.

CONVENTIONS
As I talked about before we did try and challenge the conventions of indie music this is because indie music is often always breaking its own conventions. An example of this is snow patrol- chasing cars. It doesnt use natural lighting throughout and not much natural surroundings. From this we knew that we could still be considered an indie music video but not have to follow the conventions to the letter which is why we decided on performance sections of the song and the lip syncing

COSTUMES
Even down to our costumes we tried to follow the conventions. With our actor we kind of broke this convention as we had him in a suit. We did this to represent the fact that hes still in 6th form as we thought it was important to make sure people knew he is young and doesnt know how to deal with love.

The girl actor and member of our group wore all the clothing that fits into the indie convention. Mostly quite light colours. We also decided that our actors should be at comfort and not strictly following the costumes conventions.

QUESTION 2: HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?

MY

THREE PRODUCTS

For our ancillary tasks me and my group produced two advertisements and a digipak.

We tried to follow all the normal conventions of the indie genre which I think we stuck to very well.
The conventions that we had to stick too was the same as the videos conventions. Here are the conventions for the ancillary products we have:

Natural settings in most cases

Abstract art
Bright colours The artists pictures A colour theme.

THE

FIRST ANCILLARY PRODUCT

The first magazine advert we made was this one (picture on the right) the reason we had decided on this was because we thought it fit in nicely with the album name unrest the reason it fits in so well is because the blurry colours and picture shows the unrest in the mind of the singer. It also links up well with the main product as our singer plays a obsessive boy who's madly in love with a girl who he ends up killing. I think this shows the messed up frame of mind that the boy is in as everything is distorted and weird.

THE

SECOND ANCILLARY PRODUCT

We had thought of a second advert design that links up perfectly with the main product. The reason we did this is because we wanted it to fit in with all the conventions. It has natural lighting and natural surroundings. It also incorporates our digipak. It links to the main product because even the clothes and surroundings are all the same as the video we have created. We thought it would be perfect and we made it look very professional with the HMV logo at the bottom as well as our riddle records logo this was to make this advert as authentic as we possibly could.

THE

THIRD ANCILLARY PRODUCT

We stuck to the theme of nature and bright colours. We decided on a very different colour scheme because it shows unrest on the digipack. We also followed the conventions of the indie genre by putting images of natural surroundings . We also decided to put a picture of our actor and singer as its another convention of the genre and it also creates the link to our main product as we made sure he had the same clothes as he does in the video.