Evaluation

The task we were issued for our A2 coursework this year, was to "produce a music video". With this task there were ancillary text along with it, these taks were creating a DVD cover and a magazine article.

With the amount of work the music video required, that was immediately at the forefront of our minds when beginning the task, so after being grouped, me, Lewis Holifield and Tom Willoughby began researching to find a song to use. The catch however, was that the artist had to be unsigned, to avoid copyright infringement.

I spent a fair amount of time searching and evaluating musians/bands/rappers/ over MySpace, analysing what genre would give us more options with our creativity. Eventually we unanimously agreed that using Agnositc Clown, a young musician with emotional songs and lyrics would be a fantastic choice.

In the early stages of our production, we coined ideas we thought were realistic, but in retrospect were impossible due to time constraints and the idea to film on the seaside didn't make sense financially. We looked at videos by a variation of artists, whether it be a video that was dominated on the artist and just followed/ watched them like "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt. We also looked at videos that follow a set narrative such as "Dust Devil" by Madness which follows round a young girl on a night out.

In the aforementioned Madness video, the stereotype of youths is presented to us as out of control "binge drinkers" who only seek drugs, sex, violence. Shows like Skins seem to conform witht these stereotypes aswell. As our group would be seen as youths we dressed our main protagonist in a "hoody". A hoody is often seen to be synonymous with youth and gang culture, so we did this to oppose this stereotype and created a mellow character who just waits on someone to meet him.

The premise of our video is a young man (Tom) arriving at a bus stop to wait for a girl to come and meet him. The song is called "Standing in the rain", and after contacting Agnostic Clown, he told us he wrote the song for a girl, so we followed through with that idea.

With the content of the video and the representation of youth culture the two main concerns of the video we embedded things/objects you would say are prominent in youth culture. We used contemporary gadgets like I-Pods and Mobile Phones and have our protagonist watching a scene from "Gavin and Stacey". We used a clip from this show as it is a very popular watch with youths and for all ages, with viewing figures in the millions for it. We assumed that this specific show shows the video has a romantic element to it, it also again shows the tie-ins to youth culture.

After the filming of our video, we began on the second aspect; editing. With programmes such as movie maker and Premier Pro available to us, we decided to "play around" with the features and see just hoe much creativity these programmes would give to us. Whether it be how one shot leads into the next or how we quieten volume that we didn't want/need.

The music video however wasn't the only task we had been issued with. We also had 2 ancillary texts to complete. These were, creating a DVD cover, and then creating a magazine advert. With these tasks, we looked to produce a couple of detailed texts. Whether it be the colour, images or writing on the texts, we wanted them to both look authentic and realistic.

The first one we embarked on was the DVD cover. At first we were a bit baffled as to why a DVD cover rather than a CD cover, with DVD's not being as common in the music industry. The cover itself was given a grey background, as it is a colour that connotes mundane and repetetive, which is what the tone of the song is like. It also matches the themes of the video, such as the lighting.

The spine of the cover has smudged/blurry writing, we done this so it looks like there has been a rainfall on it, we felt this was a powerful thing to, as rain is such a focal point in our project, especially the video, for example the close-up of our protagonist walking through a puddle when leaving the bus top. We thought the blurry writing was another way of linking the cover to the themes of the video.

Our 2nd ancillary text was a magazine article that would be targeted for a young, but perhaps still sophisticated audience. I think our whole project would be targeted at the student audiecne, so with that in mind we created an advert that would be seen in magazines like "Q" or "NME". With that in mind we provided short, snappy reviews often seen on adverts/poster in a bid to show the audience the album/single has been well recieved by critics.

We used a brick wall as a metaphor for the music industry, citing that it's hard to break through. It also showed how close to the wall our artist is.

I think this coursework has enlightened me on the importance of organising your work, and creating schedules to abide by so you aren't left with masses of work in a short space of time. As a group we missed/forgot some scheduled days for filming/editing. I also learnt how vital it is to research similar works.texts as it gives you a much cleare, precise idea of what kind of text to create. I've also realised that audience evaluation/feedback is crucial, and sitting getting peers to tell you what there likes/dislikes was good for us, especially as they would be the around the age of our target audience.

Advertisement

This is our other ancillary text. This is an advert that would be found in various music related magazines.

The advert itself has quotes from magazines that we envision our artist would most likely appear in, and used short snappy reviews often seen in these magazines.

The image in the middle is the front of the DVD cover used for our other ancillary text, the fact it's being used to promote the album shows it's being used as a CD cover also.

The bricks in the background are there to connotate the struggle of making it into the music industry and is a a metaphor for the cliche of "running through a brick wall". We felt this would then make the advert more realistic as it's a debut album, and it shows how close to the aforementioned wall our artist would be.

Final Video

This is our first ancillary text. The task set for us was to create a DVD cover.

We decided instantly that the colour to be used for the background would be grey. We instantly realised that it would link to the themes of the video. Whether it be the use of lighting we had or the tone of the song.

We also adressed the content of the song, "rain" is a prominent feature in the song and in the album title, so we created the illusion that the spine of the cover had been smudged by the rain. Therefore again linking with the song's theme.

Comparative videos

Before shooting our video, as a group we pondered what videos we could look at as inspiration before creating our own.: These were a couple of ideas we thought of.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz9xrYaPi1w

- i would like to have embedded the video into the blog, but however due to request from the band, the embed code isn't allowed to be distributed on YouTube. So therefore i woill just have to make do with a hyperlink.

"The View - Face for the radio"

When looking at this video, one thing that struck us instantly, was the use of lighting. Through the videos entirety, it's a black/white background. As a group, we liked this idea for our own video as we thought that it would connotate the depressive nature of our video.

Another aspect of this particular video we admired, was the switch between a narrative and seeing the band perform, which is something we tried to incorporate in our video. The band throughout shows there from what would be described as "youth culture", we see cigarettes, lots of alchohol (which looks like it would be left from a party or some sort) and the use of them wearing hoodies. All these abide by the stereotype of the "youth". We attempted to do this but by showing objects such as mobile phones, i-pods, which are references to "pop culture", in a bid to bid to show that are video is targeted for a younger generation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxR4AweLeXE

This video Is Ghetto Gospel by Tupac and Elton John. The reasoning we picked this song is because it presented the disastrous results of gang culture and hate. Although our video din't incorporate anything violent, it did present youth in a totally different way. Our main protagonist was a youth who was mild-mannered and more interested in waiting for someone than being violent.

We also looked at the use of timings, as it gave the videos narrative more flow, we decided to use it also adding an "earlier that day" when we first meet our main protagonist.