QUESTION 3 What have you learnt from your audience feedback? Many of the criticisms of my video were about people not understanding why I implemented certain methods of telling the story. For example, when I exported the video on the internet - I got this response on FaceBook:
Theo didn't enjoy the title slides saying 'PART ONE...' etc. He described them as looking 'cheap' compared to the rest of the video.
'Cheap' is an interesting word to use. It implies that the rest of the video does not look cheap at all. This means that the slides break the illusion that the entire video is a low-budget production. It is essential not to break that illusion, otherwise you lose an audience. I was attempting to implement a method used by Stanley Kubrick in his 1980 film The Shining, where slides are unconventionally used, almost arbitrarily so:
I think this adds a certain shock-value. These slides are never expected on a first-time watch, which makes them quite frightening. This is method is also used to reveal to the audience that a narrative is about to take place. This may seem somewhat patronising, but an actual narrative in music videos is quite uncommon. A music video watcher would be surprised at the fact that the music stops to delve deeper into the narrative. So, the slides are to prepare the consumer for what is about to follow.
Despite my excuses, I could have made more of an effort to make the slides look less cheap. I could have done what 30 Seconds To Mars does in their music video for Hurricane and place the different 'Part' texts onto a moving image.
The different coloured fonts also makes the text far more interesting. However, the black-and-white effect in my video was to contribute to the band's identity (Good vs Evil).
Another comment was made on the video's Vimeo page:
On the positives, Shaun described how the video captures the mood of the song. This is a reassuring comment because that is exactly what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to follow a convention dogmatised in Andrew Goodwin's Music Video Theory: there has to be a relationship between the music and the visuals.
Shaun only criticised the editing in the video. Like Theo, he described how the video ended quite abruptly. I thought that this style of suddenness flowed throughout the video - with the slides and the constant music change. This is to give an element of surprise and shock value. However, I could have extended the final clip more to build up the immediacy of the end. Or, if the abruptness was disapproved of all together, I would end the video on an extended fade out - so the viewer could feel a comfortable sense of the video ending.
Shaun also criticised a specific part of the video, where the music stops and the video continues the narrative. He described how I did not fade the track that was to follow. In the editing stage, this was the case until I accidentally deleted the music off the timeline in Final Cut Pro. I had to re-do the audio and I forgot to implement specific things.
In spite of certain negative criticisms, the general consensus is that people enjoyed it. I talked to a fellow classmate and she said she enjoyed the abrupt ending and surrealist imagery. She described how it contained a David Lynch-style, with clear allusions to other films like Donnie Darko. So, it is safe to say that though this music video may not appeal to everybody, it has a niche audience. This is what I really wanted to achieve in the first place. This was why there was a considerable number of intertextual references to films with cult status.
QUESTION 4 How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? PLANNING Using the digital software, specially made for Mac users, Movie Draft SE allowed me to plan and create everything I needed for my music video. It allowed me to create a professional-looking screenplay, so it could be read clearly and carefully by the actors.
It was made clearer when writing the script because each conventional element within it was colour-coordinated. This includes the character name, the dialogue, the actions, parenthesises, transitions, and scene headings. Each element could also be accessed very easily, so the process was much quicker than if I just used Microsoft Word. Another great feature of this software is the ability to make notes on particular scenes:
This allows me to plan - whilst I am writing - how I am going to film a particular sequence. The software then saves the note and positions it beside the scene heading, so I cannot possibly lose it.
This note can be selected and unselected to be in- and out-of-sight, so it is not disorganised. So, I am writing a screenplay whilst also creating a shot list for the video. This was an effective and successful way of doing it, as it allowed me to have a clear narrative structure for my video. It would not simply be a string of moving images arbitrarily threaded together. It also provided me with a clear idea of how and where to shoot during the production stages. RESEARCH In order to research what audiences want in terms of music products, I used SoGoSurvey - a website dedicated to online surveys.
I posted the survey onto my Facebook page and many people contributed, which lead me to decide on what I should do for my music products. This is a great example of what David Gauntlett would term Web 2.0 - a new interactivity in the internet. There was no real difficulty in producing this survey, except perhaps exporting it for the public domain. There are so many options to choose from on the website and my knowledge of online surveys is quite limited. Other than that, there was no real issue.
The main technology I used to research music videos, posters and digipaks was, of course, the internet. I was able to gain access to both professional and amateur texts that taught me how to produce my own. Using the website Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), I was able to understand what my song's genre was, its history, and what band s are associated with it. This lead me to the fascination with the music videos by the New-Prog-Rock band 30 Seconds To Mars. The most efficient way of researching music videos is taking advantage of what David Gauntlett would term Web 2.0. A key contributor of this is the video sharing website YouTube (www.youtube.com). For the majority - I researched the videos by 30 Seconds To Mars, who have a particular style in their music videos. They often stop the music in order to make way for a narrative. This makes their products more like short films than traditional music videos.
I took a lot of inspiration from this video in particular because of its unconventionally long duration and its dark and surreal content. Without YouTube, or any other video-sharing website, I doubt I could research and analyse these texts quite as quickly or as informatively. 30 Seconds To Mars also released a 'Making Of' featurette of this particular video, which provided useful insight into how music videos are made.
Youtube is the gift that keeps on giving! The great research tool for Digipaks is the Apple software iTunes. On the more popular albums, a deluxe digital edition - referred to as iTunes LP - is available. This was useful in analysing and learning about how to make Digipaks. I'll take Pink Floyd's album The Wall as an example:
As we can see, the digital edition has a selection of options to choose from. You can choose to play the entire album from the beginning, observe the song list, flip through the booklet - which includes lyric pages, abstract images, and pictures of the band - or go through the history of the band. I took many of these features and implemented them into my own Digipak. iTunes makes learning about the album a fairly easy and exciting task.
The search engine Google was useful in researching Posters advertising band albums. I used the Google Image option and searched for different posters that could inspire me - from any genre.
I could simply type in a band name and a variety of different posters of that band would appear. For example, if I type in '30 Seconds To Mars posters', this would happen:
As you can see, many images appear. Google was very useful at providing me with media texts to analyse and gain influence from.
CONSTRUCTION
To shoot the music video, I used a Canon 650D DSLR camera with an 18/55mm lens.
This was essential in the creating the look I wanted. It was a difficult transition to make from the basic JVC Everio HD camera because of all the Canon's advanced advantages. One of the most useful features is the manual focus, which was far more tangible and practical than the JVC Everio HD camcorder. It provided me with an interesting use of focus pulling in shots as well as focusing on particular subjects. Through the different settings on the camera, I was able to shoot in many different locations without the worry of white balance becoming an issue. The white balance automatically alters according to the conditions of the location.
With this camera, I had full control of depth of field. This was not be an option on the JVC Everio HD camcorder. I tended to use a deep focus on wider shots and a much shallow focus on close-ups. Close-ups are for when the protagonist feels secluded, whilst the wides make the dreamscape seem far more expansive. Every little detail counts.
Final Cut Pro 7 was the digital editing software I used for the project. I have been using FCP7 for a few years now, so I do have a considerable amount of experience in the software. FCP7 provides a large variety of options on how to string your music video together - much more than iMovie or Windows Movie Maker.
I used the 'Tint' option extensively to colour my images to make them appear more vibrant. I chose particular colours for particular locations:
The difficulty in doing this is that I had to make sure that the exactly the same colours were used for those particular locations. So, I had to maintain the same brightness, contrast, and amount of tint:
I could do this by dragging the 'Tint' tab onto another clip, so that the other clip would have exactly the same settings. This was difficult to understand at first, but once I did it many times it eventually became easier.
Lip-syncing was much easier than I had anticipated. This was mainly because of my previous experiences with iMovie, where the audio does not line up exactly where you want it to. With FCP7, it is far more fluid and you can do almost anything with the audio. This is part of the reason why I included many different songs from the same band.
With the audio, I simply had to line the music up with the actor's mouth action. This was easy from the beginning, without it becoming a hindrance.
Another aspect of FCP7, which I found quite difficult, was rapid editing in-sync with the tempo of the song. I had to cut and edit very closely in order to achieve this:
In this particular sequence, there is a rapid transition between the Bathroom scene and the Hallway scene. According to the beat of the drums in the song, I have included very brief clips of both scenes. This leads to a transformation, rather than a transition, from the Lunatic in the bathroom to the Lunatic in the Hallway. This was difficult simply because of the needed attention to detail. There had to be very precise editing to be involved and it took a long time to produce.
The hardest thing about FCP7 is compressing and exporting. It took me about a week to export the video in a good quality because I did not use the correct settings. It also took a large amount of time compressing the file, no matter what the settings were. This is because I have limited experience in Compression and I do not often look forward to the process. It was difficult to understand the Compressor 4 software program, so I just used the compressor options on FCP7. These are the settings I decided on:
It had to be in an H.264 video format because it allows HD quality video to be compressed to an adequate standard. It is also a good format to use when you export it for streaming online or to a DVD. The data rate had to be high to increase the quality of the compressed video. Any lower and the video would appear pixelated and any higher would make the video slow down. The image size had to be 1920x1080 HD because the video was filmed in HD and this format had to be widescreen. On this particular occasion, I had to optimise the video for streaming because I wanted to upload it onto video-sharing websites like Vimeo and YouTube.
The audio had to have a Data Rate of 320 kbps and an Output Sample Rate of 48 kHz because otherwise the file could not deal with the high levels of audio I have used in the video. Without these high settings, the audio would sound deep and echoey. I have given the audio the best encoding quality for optimum sound.
All of these required settings took a long time to establish. Many hours have gone into figuring this all out, which is a reflection of my basic I.T. skills. However, this experience has taught me more and has increased those skills.
Logoist was essential in creating both the Digipak and the Poster for that Digipak. This is a software created for both Macs and Windows computers and is a suitable alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop was far too expensive for me to purchase and possibly too advanced for my current I.T. skills. Logoist offered a far more basic program with the quality of a professional appearance.
I did not really have much difficulty in using this program. It was quite simple to use. I was able to import photos, which I took from stills from the music video, and manipulate the image to suit my needs. I could change its colour, overlay text upon the image, move the image, and resize the image. I could also do practically the same with the text on the image. These features were all essential in creating my ancillary products.
At first, Logoist was relatively difficult to work. I was not sure how I could alter the colours or how to do certain effects with it. However, to help this, the package comes with video tutorials on how to use the program. So, they were very useful when designing my ancillary products.
EVALUATION
The blogging website Blogger was particularly useful for the evaluation. Here I can write digitally, without printing many hard copies of it - which are more likely to be lost because of human error. When it is on Blogger, teachers as well as peers can read what I have evaluated and judge it accordingly. They can offer their own input, which would help improve my evaluation.
In posting the music video onto video-sharing websites like Vimeo and YouTube, I was able to gain constructive criticism in how my video could have been better. The only difficulty with these video-sharing websites, YouTube is particular, is getting around copyright issues. They often threaten to remove the video because popular music is being used. This is particularly the case with my video because Brain Damage is a well-known song from a classic album. I have made the case that since I am not making any money from the video, there is no reason to get so cautious about a song I use. I acknowledged that this is not my own song.
QUESTION 2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? In order to combine my music video with the Digipak and the Poster, I had to create a brand identity for my band. This is essential in marketing all the products. It establishes: the genre the band belongs to, what their style of music is and what target audience the products would appeal to.
MUSIC VIDEO I established the brand identity of the band during the pre-production stages of the music video. I had studied the style and genre of my chosen song (Brain Damage by Pink Floyd), which was part of the Progressive Rock era. My particular song was made in 1973, before music videos became popular - so I could not gain insight from another person's interpretation. I did find out, however, that there was a modern equivalent to Progressive Rock - New-Prog. 30 Seconds To Mars, Muse and Radiohead all belong to, or at least considered to belong to, the New-Prog genre.
I had gained most inspiration from the music videos by 30 Seconds to Mars. They had a very specific style to their music videos: they often made them as short films.
As we can see, the videos are created with a dark and abstract agenda in mind. This reflects the surrealism within their songs. In all their videos, the band members have black eyeliner around their eyes. I believe this appeals to the Emo youth sub-culture and so I tried to do the same technique.
I applied eye shadow instead of eyeliner because I thought this was more striking and interesting. It emphasises his eyes a lot more and creates a greater surreal effect. 30 Seconds To Mars also painted their fingernails black, which I also did with my band members. This adds to their dark nature. This is a part of this band member's identity. It demonstrates an inner conflict between light and dark, good and evil. This is part of the reason why I have named the band "GOOD VS EVIL". This overall look of the Lunatic is how the band member would dress at live events. The coat itself is quite large and youthful, which would perhaps appeal to teenagers belonging to a lower social class. Fans of "GOOD VS EVIL" would recognise this character being the 'Good' side. The 'Evil' side would be The Laughing Man:
Their band is formed out a continuous performance. The two members in the band are characters who are in conflict. The Laughing Man is dressed in a suit and a ventian mask. This could appeal to the stereotypical teenage attitude of despising authority. He is wearing a suit and has a tall height. He is "The Man" keeping you down. In 30 Seconds To Mars's videos, they contain surreal-looking villains who are antagonistic simply because they look terrifying. GOOD VS EVIL's act would be the continuous conflict between the Laughing Man and the Lunatic. To further continue this idea of conflict between Good and Evil, I took advantage of the text backdrops.
Because I wanted to create a dark, intense atmosphere I used a black backdrop with white text. This makes it look like the darkness is dominating compared to the white.
DIGIPAK I have continued this idea of conflict in my ancillary texts. In my Digipak, I used an entirely black-and-white colour scheme. This may seem somewhat dull but I thought it represents what the band are. It is black fighting with white, light versus dark, good versus evil. This is especially demonstrated through the lyric pages in the booklet:
This takes quite a ying/yang approach to good and evil, adding to the band's philosophical - or, more specifically, metaphysical - identity. I used stills from the music video within the booklet to connect the two platforms together.
To continue the regular colour scheme, I altered the colour of the pictures to black-and-white. Incidentally, the bottom still could not be shown in its entirety in the music video because of the application of a widescreen format. It was disheartening finding this out because it took so long to frame. I was delighted to find that I could include the whole shot in the booklet.
An addition to the Digipak, which I perhaps should have included in the music video, is the logographic style of the band's name GOOD VS EVIL:
Its somewhat archaic style represents the intelligence of the band as well as the history of Good and Evil. To have them appear well-educated and philosophical will appeal to a wider, more intellectual audience. It does not just have to be limited to the lesser educated youth.
POSTER
I carried the logographic text over to the Digipak poster as well as the colour-scheme. Initially, I used many different colours for the different pieces of text. After debating it in class, however, I decided to keep to the black-and-white style. Colour in that context does not fit the identity of the band. I wanted the poster to connect with how colour is used in the music video. The colour did not seem to fit well with the rest of the poster.
The image on the poster is a still from the music video. It was directly inspired by Alfred Kubin's painting Madness, which can be viewed in a previous blog entry. This was not only to place GOOD VS EVIL into an abstract identity but also to appeal to the more intellectual members of the audience, who recognise the reference to the painting. This poster separates audiences attracted to the'feel good' vibe of pop music from those attracted to the darker side. To continue the band's identity of being film fanatics, I customised the text below the image to appear like an old-fashioned horror film poster.
I maintained the black-and-white scheme in the image to demonstrate that idea of the ying/yang idea of good and evil. This preserves their philosophical as well as aesthetic edge. I chose to include websites, which can tell an individual more about the album and the band itself. This is a good marketing strategy because everybody has access to the internet, so they can look up the website provided if they are interested. These websites include popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, which many people are likely to have. Teenagers, who are a key demographic for the band, are almost certain to be a part of either of these two sites.
QUESTION 1 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? MUSIC VIDEO To gain an understanding of the basic
conventions used in music videos, I researched Andrew Goodwin’s Music Video
Theory. A prominent feature is the notion of looking or watching something. In
my music video, I have utilized this convention in two ways. The one used
commonly in music videos is toward the camera.
This adds a direct involvement from the character to the
band’s audience. They are actively involved.
The other method - more specific to my video - involves both the protagonist and antagonist gazing at each other.
I used the same technique as Sergio Leone in his film The Good, The Bad and the Ugly:
This creates a conflict in the narrative I have presented in the
music video, which is another common convention of music videos in general. Both
of these methods tend to follow Goodwin’s idea of close-ups within music videos
to better advertise the band. I attempted to do this whilst retaining the style
of the video. Since the music video is taken from a subjective point of view,
it made sense to have plenty of close-ups on the protagonist.
I wanted there to be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals in the video. However, I did not
want to be limited in making creative decisions for a video illustrating the
lyrics; neither did I want to contradict them either. It is common for music
videos, particularly those of the Prog-Rock genre, to amplify the lyrics. This
is what I have tried to do. I researched the sub-text of the song, which is
about a former band member experiencing schizophrenia. So, I decided to make my
video based on that knowledge. The lyrics themselves also dictate quite
explicit images: ‘The Lunatic is on the grass’,
‘The Lunatic is in the hall’,
and
‘You lock the door and throw away the key’.
One common convention I have challenged in my
own music video is the objectification of women. I only have brief shots of a
young woman, who tears apart the protagonist’s mindset. However, there is some
complicated stereotyping involved. Once the Lunatic enters the Kitchen, he sees
his enemy – The Laughing Man – washing up the dishes.
Through voice-over,
however, we know that it is really the Lunatic’s girlfriend – who he is
delusional enough to think she is the Laughing Man. So, in terms of the narrative,
it could be said that I have stereotyped women to give the audience quicker and
easier understanding as to what is happening. Since women are commonly
associated with washing up, I thought I would utilize this device. I also made her
have a stupid American accent to display a lack of intelligence. This is to
further display her innocence in the situation, which - in a peculiar way - fits with Laura Mulvey's theory of virgin/whore dichotomy.
The only objectification within the music
video, if any, would be of the man. He walks around in the main narrative
scenes topless – showing his muscular physique. This would appeal more to the
heterosexual female audience. This is going against Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze
theory that media texts are created from the heterosexual man’s point of view. It can even be considered as a 'Female Gaze'. Mulvey's theory is often proven correct in many music videos but I wanted to divert from
this convention to separate from the pack.
To make my music video, I had to have
knowledge of the conventions used in other videos of the same genre. I had
chosen the song ‘Brain Damage’ by Pink Floyd, who are a part of Progressive
Rock. Since Pink Floyd formed in the late 1960s, no professional music videos
of their songs were made. So, I had to look at modern equivalent – often
referred to as New-Prog, which includes bands like: 30 Seconds To Mars, Muse
and Radiohead. All of them contained
dark and surreal styles, which suits the style of the song. The videos often
washed the low-key lighting with colours, which are quite vibrant.
Since
Prog-Rock is a movement pursuing more artistic methods, these techniques are
most appropriate.
One unconventional method I used was making
the music video as a short film. This is what 30 Seconds To Mars does with most of their videos because of the
band leader’s, Jared Leto’s, popularity as a film actor. In their music video Hurricane, the video is split into
narrative stages (Part One, Part Two etc) and contains short
extracts from their other songs. The latter is used for when the main song is
not playing, and a scene from the short film is playing.
This is what I tried
to do with my music video. I split my video into three parts, excluding the
prologue, to make it seem more like a story than a advertisement for the
song/album.
I also used a widescreen format – 2.35:1, used quite effectively in the Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now. Music videos do not often use an aspect ratio this wide, which makes mine more memorable.
On three of the shots used in "BRAIN DAAMGE", I did not apply this widescreen format. These shots appear consecutively and all contain the Lunatic screaming. This is almost a glimpse into his real self or selves before he enters a psychological - almost hallucinogenic - journey. This is not conventional at all in music videos, nor in many movies. Though it is used in Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight' for majestic establishing shots.
DIGIPAK
I had researched tangible albums and their
contents as well as digital editions on iTunes (LP) to formulate ideas for my
Digipak. I mainly focused on albums by Pink Floyd, particularly The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon.
A common addition to these albums or
digipaks is a booklet. This contains information about the band members’
contributions, lyric pages, abstract images and pictures of the band. I have
included all of these conventional features but I did not want to do it in
exactly the same way. Pink Floyd placed pictures of the band during live shows
but I do not think this suits the band’s identity. I wanted them to completely
immersed in the narrative of their music. I was initially excited by the idea of not having any text on the front cover, like the cover for Dark Side of the Moon. However, this can be proved challenging because of the difficulty in marketing that product. It also does not fit in with the New-Prog style of album design, which always has text and logos present. I looked in particular at album designs by Muse:
To fit in with this convention, I too placed all the text in the top right-hand corner. The band name will be enlarged and treated more as a logo, and the album name will be positioned below it.
POSTER
With the Digipak poster, I took inspiration mainly from the advert for 30 Seconds To Mars's upcoming album, Love Lust Faith + Dreams:
In this poster, it seems that the image takes precedence. We can recognise the band just from their picture. I attempted to do this with my own poster:
Even though my image is more centred than the 30 Seconds To Mars one, it still dominates the poster. It is the first object the consumer sees. However, I have made darkened and almost impossible to see. This is why I thought that the band name required great visibility, unlike the poster for Love Lust Faith + Dreams. "GOOD VS EVIL" is easily the brightest text on the poster, which the consumer will see and understand. It is a convention to use the band name at the top of the poster, with uppercase lettering and large size, to increase visibility. I realised this from seeing other posters unrelated to this genre of music:
A noticeable difference between these somewhat conventional posters and my own is the differing fonts. Even the 30 Seconds TO Mars posters, despite varying between plain and bold, has essentially the same font. I wanted my poster to be multi-layered, as if each item of text has its own special significance. I have continued the same black-and-white colour scheme as in the Digipak. This is to preserve that idea of ying and yang. I had initially thought that the poster would look good with multiple colours but my teacher thought a varying colour scheme would be irrelevant. Like the Digipak's album cover, I have also stretched the image to preserve the band's surreal identity. I also made the release date larger and used numbers instead of letters. This links to their intellectual identity because of mathematical associations with philosophy.
I included the distributor's logo to advertise their company. This is done in the Kings of Leon poster above. I also placed links to both the company's and the band's websites. Previously, I had placed Facebook and Twitter links on the poster but this seemed to be taking up considerable space - so I removed them.
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