For my A2 media coursework product, we produced a music video rendition of 'Human' by The Killers. The video uses, but also challenges the conventions of real media products of the same genre; indie/alternative music video.
I, and the rest of the group, produced the storyboards with the knowledge of a convention of music videos; three separate narratives, which mainly consist of two different stories that eventually connect, and then another narrative with the artist or the band performing. I storyboarded three narratives that correspond with that certain ideology of conventional music videos, incorporating two separate stories, one involving a man, and one a woman, who are both presented as visibly depressed due to their average human qualities. The video proceeds with these characters eventually becoming more optimistic and spontaneous; becoming the dancer. I annotated the lyrics beforehand and noticed certain lyrics that influenced my interpretation of the song meaning, in particular the line 'are we human... or are we dancer?' And 'pay my respects to grace and virtue' also, because it questions how we take advantage of our individual qualities, then paying respect to them as we become less worrying and much more optimistic and spontaneous. The two characters I have used in these two narratives both represent two different unusual factors: The woman becoming less concerned about the average and disadvantageous features of being human, instead opening herself up to the world and doing whatever she pleases because it's her prerogative; and the man representing curiosity as he follows the music of the band (third narrative), not concerned with anything else, just following his curiosity, doing what he wants. This is what connects these two characters; they aren't conforming to the conventions of being human, which is my main intention from how I interpreted the lyrics. Finally, these two characters journey towards the source of the band performing, which is the third narrative, where everything and everyone in the video come together. From this certain convention, I've learned how to follow and apply the idea of multiple narratives, able to film these narratives separately and then piece them together via iMovie, constructing the music video out of a story driven by metaphors and some literal visualisations. The problems that I could improve on are the visual interpretations of the lyrics; making the connection between the two characters more clearer for the spectator, possibly filming a scene where they both perform the exact same action.
I followed Andrew Goodwin's theory on music video types: illustration, amplification and disjuncture. One or two of these categories are used in many conventional music videos, like The Asteroids Galaxy Tour's 'Heart Attack' (disjuncture) or Adele's 'Chasing Pavements' (illustration & amplification).If I could improve on the video in accordance to Goodwin's theory, I would focus on only one category instead of multiple ones, because I feel that doing this may have driven the video to be quite obscure in places.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Main Product- Music Video
Ancillary Text 1- Digipak
Ancillary Text 2- Magazine Advert
I feel that the combination of our main product and my 2 ancillary products are much more effective than the actual video, and also very effective as a whole. The metaphors, locations and the cast used in the video all connect to one or two of the ancillary products, such as the main feature involving the reoccurring tree background that the band perform around which is present on three separate images on the digipak artwork (ancillary text 1). The location of the band performing is also the same location in which I took the photo of Josh Hobson (one of the band mates), yet the positioning is to the far right of the tree from the video, and my intention between these three products, location-wise, was to follow certain criteria: shoot outside and have a wide open space for the background. This I believe is quite effective because of the indirect connection (regarding location) between the three products, and made further effective because not every image was planned, but improvised (see ancillary text 2). I also thought the spontaneity from the improvisation was effective because it paralleled the intended visualisation of the lyrics (being of average human qualities, and then transitioning into a more spontaneous character, like a dancer), which then influenced the shots of the instruments in the tree on the digipak artwork, as well as ancillary text 2's improvised flagging gesture as influenced by one of the band members walking up to the camera and forming a gesture reminiscent of the film Kes (which is what then influenced me to name one of the pseudo-songs in the digipak tracklist). Another connection between the video and any of the ancillary texts, besides location, are lyrics and metaphors. The lyrics 'pay my respects to grace and virtue' were included along with the image of a rusted footpath sign that metaphorically implies the line 'are we human, or are we dancer' (although not originally intended) because of the deeper implication that people are making their own path, as shown with the rust. I believe that the deeper meaning of that image also contributes to the overall effectiveness of the combination because of the chorus lyrics in the video and then one single image representing that narrative along with another line of lyrics.
Altogether, I believe the indie/alternative genre of the video fits perfectly well with the sepia tone of the ancillary texts, due to the fact that the colours are simple, as is the palette for the music video because it's the indie/alternative genre, where the features are much more 'structured' and not all over the place. The intended odd nature of the video, with the spontaneous actions of the characters to reinforce the difference between human qualities and that of a dancer's, combines very effectively with the images in the ancillary texts. I intended to wipe out the eyes of every person in each image because I wanted to present the superficial fact that music isn't media for the eyes, but for the ears.
The music video promotes the ancillary texts, and vice versa. Our music video promotes my album Days Out In Sepia by The Project (fictional cover band name), and then the magazine advertisement promotes the album and the video, with features I added that made the advert seem much more authentic, such as reviews from music magazines, social networking links, a website address dedicated to the album, a QR code and also a screenshot of the album with details on its release, as I knew that every music promotion details the release date. The inclusion of an actual QR code that links to the music video on my YouTube channel is a completely new and very useful feature I have used, making the ancillary text seem as close to genuine as possible, which I am very pleased with.
These three items combine very effectively through their contributions to one another, their connections in terms of what's in the video and what's on the ancillary texts, their simple yet attractive colour schemes, and the idea that they're ordered correctly in terms of the promotion; the video/single being released first as a taster, then the announcement of the album details, and then the further promotion of the album through a different media text. They all combine to create one big promotion of the same product, which is again very effective because it's multi-purposed. There aren't any improvements I would make to these ancillary products, because they correctly represent the factors discussed in the indie/alternative genre.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From the feedback I was given from various audiences, the overall 'score' of the music video was fairly average, the overall score for the album art was fairly positive, and the magazine advert was very positive.
For the music video, the most prominent and frequently discussed problem was the synchronization of the miming and the background music, 'especially at the end.'
This is the main problem regarding the video that I would consider for improvement, as well as learning from this particular feedback that synchronization is one of the largest factors of how smoothly and well-edited music videos have to be.
I have learnt from the 'does it match the intended genre' question that audience views are dynamic and their views on the indie genre differ.
Based on the above image, and because it's likely to be similar to other answers if more people were asked, I would improve on the representation of the symbolism, as I myself seemed to be confused on how I represented such allegory, like the transition between mood is only shown by the attitudes of the characters, yet the intention of the symbolism isn't reinforced by any literal representations, like I could've used sticky labels that the characters mysteriously have (I did shoot these scenes, but time was running short to edit them in), with the words 'human' and 'dancer' between two separate labels.
Finally, I have learnt from the improvements section of the questionnaire that audience's expectations differ as mentioned before, but these improvements are ones that could be applied quite easily.
For the ancillary texts, because they're both the same in tone, font and image-wise, I will be viewing the reviews for both products.
There has been a review regarding the presentation of the products, with the font and editing ("Better font and better editing needed") requested to be improved on, because the products, particularly the digipak album font, need to be clearer and more readable, which I understand fully because of the Braggadocio style font being block-styled letters may be unreadable to certain audiences. So to improve, I would change the font to another which has more spaced out letters and a different colour to make them prominent on the sepia backgrounds.
What I've learned from the audience feedback for the ancillary products is that they're more praised than the video, but it depends on who views them and how they review them. I've learnt that the ancillary products do adhere to the indie genre as well as the video.
4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In the construction/research stage of the production, I used media technologies, but only certain technology that was new to me. Because it's the research stage, I researched 5 music videos of the indie genre and analysed them, with the media technology used being YouTube to view the videos and the blog to analyse them. I printed out the lyrics to Human and annotated them to generate an interpretation on what the semantics of them are.
Slideshare was a new media platform that I used, researching Andrew Goodwin's theory on music video categorisation, to gain knowledge on spotting differences between other videos and also applying categories to our music video.
I also produced a music video presentation on Slideshare where I mentioned certain features of The Killers' music video, but upon viewing it the second time, I feel that the PowerPoint is much too short and not exactly interesting information-wise. If I could improve on it, I would follow the areas I mentioned that I said I would cover, therefore making the presentation longer and much more interesting.
Another new technology, or platform, I used was a collage generator called Photovisi, where I drew knowledge from various indie music videos and presented the typical features of them, with focus on location, costume, regionality, subliminal messages ans surreal imagery. However, because the presentation is more image-focused than information-focused, I only noted these typical features and presented them as captions to the photos, yet I know that what I was intending was still clear, and the only improvement I could've made was to add a little more information to provide as clarification of what my intention for the collage was, despite the title 'What are the typical features of an indie music video?'
For the planning stage, one of the new media technologies I were introduced to, for media studies in general, was YouTube, as we had not previously used the website before A2 to actually showcase our work, only linking our blogs with research information to YouTube and other sites. The main planning that was shared on my YouTube account was the storyboard drawing, which I presented and edited in accordance to the procession of lyrics, of which I used iMovie, an application used before for AS' 'Curiosity,' to create.
Another new media technology used was green screen, which we planned to apply for certain forest scenes, but the filming of forestry and the subsequent pasting of the image into the video proved useless due to the incorrect mix of colour. If I could improve on this, I would instead film a different background with better lighting so that there would be a lesser chance of a mistake.
I (and the rest of the group) was introduced, during planning and before filming, to HD Camcorders with SD Cards, replacing the DV tapes used in AS. I believe this new technology put us more to an advantage time-wise, but considering there were problems concerning the mix-up of memory cards and taking longer than anticipated to find them, a problem which I ended up solving by simply dotting our memory card with a marker. I was also introduced to a Gear-Pro camera which provided us with the liberty of incorporating sweeping and unbroken shots at whatever angles, with a particular example present in the finished video where the camera smoothly passes by the band. The introduction of new equipment called telescopes were the handles that attached to the Gear-Pros, helping us with whatever positioned we wanted the frame in.
For the evaluation stage, there wasn't any particular media technology that I hadn't used before for the evaluation. I evaluated the video through iMovie, using the sound waves to make sure it was synchronised; using YouTube to share the video for some possible audience feedback, and then using Blogger to analyse the video.
Ancillary Texts
For the construction and research of the digipak artwork, I searched images of genre-specific album art from different artists of the indie/alternative genre to give me ideas on recognising prominent and typical features of them, such as one specific tone of colour and a wide open background is what I noticed is applied to various album art. These helped in the sketches of my intended artwork, mostly sketching images that I had shot previously, using a DSLR camera for a range of them, which was a new media technology for me, as we hadn't used one in previous AS media studies.
The planning of the album art consisted vastly of sketching and taking photos with DSLR's, then analysing them on Blogger, giving reasons why I wanted to incorporate certain images into the artwork. iPhoto was a media technology new to me that was used for the planning stages, using it to edit the chosen images into the finished product evident in the screenshot of the six-sided digipak album art.
For the magazine advert, the same media platforms were used (Blogger, iPhoto, DSLR cameras) throughout the research, planning and evaluation stages. Here, the only improvement I would've done was to change the colour of the QR code to an orange tone, so that the magazine ad could be described by one simple tone, as many indie albums and promotions do.
What did I find wrong with the production (Music Video)?
There was a certain problem throughout the production that decreased the time we had and the motivation to improve on the music video; the departure of three cast members (two actors, and the band's lead singer), which warranted replacements for the actors, but the band member had already shot many scenes, so I decided to carry on filming without the lead singer, focusing on other band members instead for the rest of the video.
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