3.7 - Evaluation

What the piece is.

My piece of work is a music video designed for the song Maps by The Living Daylights. The Living Daylights are a punk rock abdn fro Lincoln, and the song is approximately 2 and a half minutes in length.

Roles and Reasonings.

Throughout the whole process, research and planning and construction, I mainly took on the role of researching and producing the planning to stand the video on steady feet. As I had already planned and organised, aided with some help of my group member, Kyle as he knows the band, it was originally arranged to be filmed as a purely performance based video to showcase the band's talent.
As I have explained in Research and Planning 2.2 on my blog, the band had discovered some issues between the memebers and eventually eded in the video having to be completely changed as we could no longer feature the band. When this major setback occurred, initially we were stuck on how to resolve the situation.
To start, I replanned another video and re-made the call sheet and treatment etc.
During the editing process I put forward many ideas and also contributed toward the editing by assissting Kyle in creating our final video.
Although when I first laid down all of my ideas, many were not pheasable as we didn't have the software available and the extensive knowledge and experience needed to allow ambitious thoughts to be followed through.
For example, when we see the initial close up shot of the main guy in the video lighting a cigarette at the start, I came up with the idea of having only the flame in colour, this would therefore have grabbed the target audience's attention aesthetically. By having a bright flame shining out of the screen at you, many more people would have found it more interesting to look at as it is a known fact that people feel security and reassurance from a flames glow. Also this would have contrasted the de-saturated background and made the whole shot feel much warmer and inviting.
Another example when I would have liked to have let the colour dominate the shot was when, both character's arms are bleeding on the stairs. I wanted yo highlight the blood to show the pain of leaving scars in you, much like 'cutting maps into the ground'.

During the editing if I was to do this music video again, I would most definately include a lot more closeup, intimate shots of the lead girl, to allow the audience to gain mopre knowledge and empathy for her.
I generated this information from a collective audience's feedback from within our media class and from people picked at random.

As we added the black and white effect we wnated to create a blank canvas, in which the music was dominant. Also, as the song seems 'colourful' (as described by a member of an audience that saw our video), the black and white video has a beautiful contrast, allowing a more powerful yet subtle meaning to be portrayed.

Influences.

When trying to find influence for the original performance based video I looked on youtube for music videos by bands of a similar genre, like:
'Kiss and Tell' - Youmeatsix - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHA7vBJUE4
'Weightless' - All Time Low - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpG3BxRctQ4
'Pray for Plagues' - Bring Me The Horizon - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWggPLXeOkU
'Warm Me Up' - The Audition - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbdSI-Fz2oA
I took influence from these videos by watching closely at each individual shot and angle that caught my eye, and thinking why i was so immediately attratced to them. I then pieced these together to get a good variety of aesthetically pleasing images.
Although plans for the original video changed, I still took my research and the typical conventions of a music video and applied them to the narrative video.
For eample when there is a staedicam shot circling the lead girl, I was inspired by a similar shot in the Pray for Plagues video, which also helped aid the disjointed scratching into the floor shots.

Also for this we aimed to create a natural lighting that made the outer world brighter, than the inner to show that there is more to the world than following a crowd and stereotyping.
For this I was influenced by the music video for Weightless as the video is about people stereotypes and them being broken, that things aren't jsut waht you see on the outside. This is also shown by the lead girl wearing a prom dress which is seen as being pure and more upperclass being contrasted with her slitting her wrists. Then when we see both of the character's arms together on the stairs we see that stereotyping is irrelevant as not only people who are seen as 'emo' for example, self harm, it then shows us a convergence of human characteristics.

Forms and Conventions.

To follow the forms and conventions of the punk rock genre of music, we included shots of a guitar being played, this is to show that the band aren’t just wannabe’s and that they are actual talented musicians, as guitars and the band’s instruments are the main part of their music we felt that by including these shots the audience could relate to the band more not only if they play instruments but by seeing that they are actually human/real people an audience can feel much more respect for them. To fit the forms and conventions of music videos we did include a lead male to help to aid the attraction of a male view – Laura Mulvey’s Gaze Theory.

But we also tried to break the conventions of a typical music video by having a more deep meaningful narrative than one that was simple to see at first glance. This then makes the audience want to study the video more to find then deeper meanings behind the shots. By doing this we went against the Music Video Analysis of Andrew Goodwin who believes there should be a clear relationship between lyrics and visuals and music and visuals. However although we go against some of the points Goodwin raised in his writing in ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’, we also conform to others like the need for close-ups of the artist to develop motifs and also frequent reference to the notion of looking.

Effectiveness and Reviews.

I feel that when the video is put with the designed digi-pac and poster they from together to make a well rounded and joined overall media package. I decided to have the black and white colour scheme continue through all 3 aspects so that they all fitted together as one collection. This was another reason that I intended to use the small coloured parts in the video to match with that of the highlight colours of red and yellow on the poster and digi-pac.
By using these colours I wanted to denote the feelings of power, courage and strength to show the pride that the band have in their music and every other aspect of their career – hence the link between all 3.
On all three pieces the lack of colour on the background makes the images more of an extra put onto the song, band and music rather than the main focus being the editing and technicality of everything. When I showed these three pieces as a whole to an audience I got reviews of; ‘The constant use of road maps and the theme of cars in the CD and poster together link cleverly into the video by the scratching of the word maps into the floor ’.

From gaining feedback from many audiences I feel that I have learned a lot more about what an audience look for in a familiar genre of music and also in those that are more unfamiliar. I have learnt that you do not need an image of the band on advertising to gain a fully responsive audience, and that they much prefer them to have an enigmatic feel about them, leaving them with a sense of suprise. From one particular piece of feedback, I found that an audience will look back over a video, if at first they cannot see the less obvious narratives they will endeavour to stick at it to find out the true narrative as ‘kind of a personal challenge’.

Media Technologies.

Throughout the process of the construction, research, planning and the evaluation stages of this course I have used software and new media technologies of the likes of Photoshop to help gain the full potential of my advertising and promotional design work. Also by using final cut pro on the mac computers, it greatly benefitted our final video by allowing us to have more options for bigger ideas being created. I also found using the internet for documenting the whole process very helpful as not only am i constantly editing my knowledge of new technologies, I am constantly showing my progress in a new media way.

From doing the course last year as well as this year, I have gained an extensive knowledge in using programs such as photoshop. I applied my knowledge of this to my digi-pacs and adverts for my artist. An example of this was how to have a black and white background but to restore the colour to certain defined objects, this then enhances the effect of my pieces by making them more aesthetically pleasing.
Also last year as we used web plus 10 to make our websites, even though I did not create a website for one of my final pieces this year, I was able to apply the typical conventions desired by an audience to make my final products the most appealing for them.
We also posted our work on the blog last year and, as a result, this has helped me create a more organised blog this year and enhanced my organisation skills as a whole in all my work.

Conclusion.

Overall, I feel that my advertising Cd poster and Digi-pac fulfilled there purposes as seen in post 3.6 and when joined with our final video shown with these I think that the audience have gained all I wanted them to get out of it. I aimed to create a slight enigma about the band and feel that I have successfully done that and managed to reach all of the target audiences while still fitting with many forms and conventions even though some were broken. I also think these pieces fit with the institutions desires.