Evaluation - Question 3

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.