Before shooting our music video, we did a lot of research into real music videos so that we could identify forms and conventions that we could either challenge or use in our own video. Some of the music videos we looked at included Taylor Swift's video for 'Mine' and Paloma Faith's video for 'Upside Down'. We found that there were conventions that were unique to the indie genre and tried to use some of them in our own music video. Some of the conventions of the indie genre include:
• Aspects of ambiguity or abstractness – I feel that we conformed to this convention throughout all of our music video. The artist remains having a sense of mystery around her due to the abstract location of the graveyard and the quirkiness of the props, costume and make up creates the feeling that the artist is different from everyone else. By using this convention the video has a sense of mystery surrounding it which makes the audience want to watch more, hoping they will be able to unravel the mystery.
• Close ups of the artist and shots of the instruments – As Florence does not usually play any instruments in her music video, we thought that it would be a bit odd to have shots of instruments as they would not fit in with the track. The use of close ups (also known as ‘meat shots’) is a convention used in most music videos, not only ones from the indie genre. ‘Meat shots’ of the artist makes the audience feel that they are being personally sung to and keeps them engaged with the video. We thought that it was important that we used this convention as we want our audience to watch the whole music video and not to get bored.
• Performance shots and narrative shots are in different locations – Although we didn’t have narrative to our music video, we used many different locations. The main performance shots in our music video are the ones shot in the drama studio (see photo below) and all other shots are filmed in other locations. I feel that the outside locations add to the organic feel that is often linked to Florence and the studio locations make Florence seem extraordinary as the lighting and make up make her seem magical. 
• A fast cutting rate – A lot of our music video has a fast cutting rate (see 1st video below), however in parts of our track, it has some dreamy parts that we felt a fast cutting rate would not work well with. It is believed that a fast cutting rate keeps the audience engaged and by using a slow cutting rate, the audience loses interest. We believe that a slow cutting rate (see 2nd video below), in the right parts of the song, reflects the tempo of the music and creates the dreamy atmosphere that the song is trying to achieve.
Fast Cutting rate:
Sow cutting rate:
Using Goodwin's theory, we have used the convention of the 'notion of looking'. We have used this convention, in the same way as Taylor Swift, by using photographs of the artist in the background of our shots in the drama studio. The photographs connote that the artist is of significant importance as they are not only featured once but many times. This is also connotes that the artist wants to be seen as if she is everywhere in her music as if the audience misses her in one part of the shot, she still features in many other parts of it in the photographs.
Goodwin says that there is a relationship between visuals and the lyrics which contradict, illustrate or amplify them. In our music video, our visuals illustrate only some of the lyrics by using the visual link between ‘the boy building coffins’ and the use of the graveyard as a location. He also says that there is a relationship between visuals and the track. The relationship between our track and the visuals is the use of cutting rate. As the track gets faster so does the cutting rate and when it slows down the cutting rate does the same.He also says that there are intertextual references with other pieces of media. I feel that our video has intertextual references with other Florence videos for example the use of red eye make up in her new video for ‘dog days’ and the use of quirky mise-en-scene like in the first video for ‘dog days’.
SemioticsA signifier that is prominent in the video is Florence’s red hair and the connotations of this helped us to represent Florence as an independent, powerful woman. The red hair connotes that of Boadicea’s, who was famous for being a powerful, independent woman. The red hair also connotes fire which can also be thought of as powerful.
The red band across her face connotes a superhero as it is similar to the type of make up seen by superheroes. This makes Florence, once again seem powerful and also mystical as superheroes are thought to have superpowers. Using Dyer's key paradox, this is evidence of how we have represented the artist as extraordinary.
The costume that we used in the graveyard (see photo below) is reminiscent of a circus tent and thus connotes the circus. This adds to the feeling of the artist being quirky and ‘different’ from everyday life. This is something that Dyer argues is a key paradox of music videos: the artist should be seen as ordinary and extraordinary. The quirkiness of the artist makes her seem extraordinary from her audience, whereas the outside locations of the fields make the artist seem quite ordinary.
RepresentationWe have tried to represent Florence as an independent, powerful woman and as a result have challenged the stereotype that women are the weaker gender. The connotations of her make up and hair (see section above) adds to this as well as some of the camera techniques that we have used. In the performance shots in the drama studio we have used low angle shots (see video below) which make Florence seem much bigger than she actually is. This makes her seem powerful and has a sense of authority as she appears as if she is looking down at everyone else. We have also not used any male characters in our music video and therefore do not support the view of the feminists that women are pictured as the supportive or decorative role.
Postmodernism
'Postmodernism is often associated with a revolt against authority and signification and a tendency towards pastiche, parody, quotation, self-referentiality and eclecticism.’ (Steve Connolly). I feel that our music video is postmodern in the way that it revolts against authority and signification, revolting against authority and signification’ means that the artist rebels against mainstream ideas about what is appropriate and fashionable. Florence’s costumes (see photo below) are not ones you would expect to see on female artists in the music industry. Many female artists wear costumes that show as much flesh as possible, whereas Florence’s costumes are ones that reflect the quirky sound of her music. it also means that they tend not to express any specific meaning or intention, such as a social or political agenda and I feel that in Florence’s video we have not expressed any specific meaning or intention, rather we just wanted to show Florence doing what she does best: performing.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I feel that we have used and challenged conventions in a successful way that makes our music video feel like it is a professional one. I think that we have successfully represented Florence in the same way as she is represented in her previous videos, as powerful and independent and through using the conventions of the indie genre, we have given the video the same ‘look’ as other videos in it’s genre, but with a quirky twist.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
The Brief
The brief that we were given was to construct ' a promotional package for the release of an album to include a music promo video, a cover for its release as part of a digipak and a magazine advertisement for the digipak’. We created a music video as a group for Florence + the machine and then all created ancillary texts separately. The advertisements were both designed to run in NME, one as a ½ page (2nd photo below) and the other as a ¼ page (1st photo below).
Band Image
Using the brief, we set out to create a cohesive band image to promote the album through visual links between our two advertisements, the digipak and music video. An important visual link between our main product and ancillary texts is the red band across Florence’s face (see example in photos above). The front cover of the digipak features the artist lying on the grass with the red band going across her eyes. This then carries on across the back page and into the digipak. Both adverts feature a photograph of the artist with the same make up and as these photographs were taken from the shoots, the red make up is also used in the music video. This visual link enables the audience to see the red band and recognise that the product is Florence’s. Another visual link that creates a cohesive band image is the composition. The composition of the bird cage and umbrella features in the music video, digipak and advertisement. As the composition does not feature on all of the ancillary texts, its visual link is not as strong as the visual link of the red band but as the composition also features alongside the red band, the audience also recognise the composition featured on our advertisement and digpak as being a product of Florence’s.
On the digipak, the audience’s eye is first drawn to the vibrant red band which runs along the centre of the page as this is the brightest thing on the front cover. From here, the audience follows Florence’s eyes to Florence’s name so if they did not know who the artist was by looking at the photo; they now know who it is.
On the ¼ page advert, the audience’s eye is first drawn to the photo of Florence in the circle. From there, their eye follows upwards to Florence’s name and then back down again to the name of the song. On the ½ page advert, the audience’s eye is first drawn to the name of the artist as this is the biggest thing on the page. From there, their eyes follow downwards to the name of the song tot he photo of Florence and then to 'Out now' and the website. 
In our main product and ancillary texts, we have tried to convey Florence as being a powerful female figure. We have done this by not using any other characters in our music video and therefore does not support the view of the feminists that women, in music videos, are represented as the supportive or decorative role., The digipak and one of the adverts has Florence taking up most of the space and this also challenges the stereotype that women are the inferior gender. This technique challenges the stereotype by making Florence appear bigger than she actually is and therefore makes her seem more powerful.
Dyer’s theory
When analysing our music video, I have considered Dyer’s key paradoxes. Dyer’s first paradox is that the artist must be shown as ordinary and extraordinary; however, this paradox is only present in our music video. Florence is shown as extraordinary when she is performing in the drama studio. This is because her make up and the use of lighting creates the feeling that she is different from her audience as the audience would not normally perform on stage or wear that type of make up. Florence is shown as ordinary with her dancing and casual attitude as this is something her audience may also do. 
In regards to Dyer’s second theory, we have only used it on the digipak. Dyer’s second theory is that the star should be both present and absent.
Florence’s photograph is featured on the front cover of the digipak and two inside sleeves which shows that the artist is present. In contrast, the artist is absent on the back cover and two of the inside sleeves. This creates enigma as the audience want to buy more products of Florence’s so that they can try to work out the mystery of where she has gone.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the main product and ancillary texts are very effective in creating a band image for Florence. The use of visual links between all of the products means the audience can recognise that any of the 4 products are one of Florence’s. We have also tried to represent Florence as powerful as we feel that it was important to represent her in the same way as she has been in her previous products.
Before beginning to shoot our music video, we did some audience research to see what our audience thought of our initial ideas. We wrote a survey on surveymonkey and distributed it round facebook as we felt that our friends on facebook were the target audience for our music video. We used the findings from our audience research to support our initial ideas when presenting our pitch. There were 10 people in our sample audience, who were all female. A problem with our audience all being female is that we did not get any suggestions from males which may differ from those of the females.
Costume
The first question we asked was what costume the audience believed Florence should be wearing. Our ideas were to put her in a floaty dress as this is what she has worn in previous videos. This idea was supported by our audience with some of the feedback saying ‘something floaty’ and ‘a short flowing dress’. We used this in our music video as it is something the audience wanted to see and therefore may increase the chancer of them enjoying the video more.
Other CharactersWe were unsure whether to use other characters in our video so decided to ask our audience what they felt. The responses came back with 60% saying yes and 40% saying no. Although the majority said yes, we wanted to be able to represent Florence as an independent woman and felt that another character might affect this representation. In addition, we felt that with other characters it may cause a problem getting so many diaries to coincide. The following question asked our audience who they thought should be included in the video and some of the feedback was ‘death’ and ‘mourners’, however we did not use any of these ideas for the reasons previously mentioned.
Storyline
We wanted to know if the audience felt that it was important that there was a storyline in our music video and 80% said that it was not particularly important. This supported our initial ideas of not having a narrative music video. People’s reasons behind not having a storyline included ‘Florence’s videos are quite ambiguous’ and ‘as long as it is enjoyable’.
Graveyard
We asked the audience whether they thought the location of a graveyard was appropriate as we did not know whether our audience thought it would be too obvious to use a graveyard. Only 10% thought that the graveyard would not be an appropriate location and therefore we went ahead and storyboarded it into our music video.
Other Locations
When we first coming up with initial ideas we were unsure what other locations we could use so turned to our audience to see if they had any ideas. Some of the ideas that came back included a field, a workshop or a forest. We liked the idea of the field as this had been previously used in Florence’s videos, however we felt that the other locations that were suggested would not fit in with the ‘look’ we were going for.
Black and White
Katie had the idea of using a black and white theme in the music video but as we could not decide on a group whether we thought this would work, we turned to our audience to ask them. 80% agreed with Katie, believing that a black and white theme would be suitable for the song. We did not create this theme throughout all of our music video; however we did use black and white balloons in the graveyard.
Other themes
We gave the audience a chance to tell us what other themes they thought would be suitable for the song. Some ideas included ‘bright colours’ and ‘wild colours’. The use of bright colours is used throughout our music video in Florence’s costume, make-up, hair colour and mise-en-scene.
Gender We wanted to see what gender the people who were answering our questions were as we felt this could impact the answers they gave. All of our respondents were female, which is the target audience of our music video and therefore their ideas they may have felt they could relate to.
Conclusion
In conclusion, our audience research was very important for securing our initial ideas. Hopefully by including some of the ideas from our target audience, we have created a video that they will want to watch repeatedly and feel they can relate to.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used media technologies in every stage in order to gain full marks for ‘excellent use of ICT’. We used www.blogger.com as a collaborative e-portfolio (see example below) in our group throughout the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages of our coursework. This enabled us to inform other group members about our ideas for the music video and allowed us to comment on each other’s ideas. Blogger.com played a significant part in our planning stage of our coursework. By using it collaboratively, we were able to propose dates for filming which the other members of the group could comment on whether they could do or not. After we had shot at each location, we posted our evaluation of the shoot onto blogger.com so that we could comment on how we could improve for the next shoot. A definition of web 2.0 is ‘the second generation of the World Wide Web, especially the movement away from static web pages to dynamic and shareable content and social networking’. Blogger.com is examples of web 2.0 as it enabled us to interact with one another through comments and also allowed us to share with other people our views and findings from other videos.
www.youtube.com
Another example of web 2.0 that we used is youtube.com, which we also used in all 4 stages of our coursework. In the research stage of our coursework, we used youtube.com to watch music videos in order to find conventions that we could use in our own coursework and to see how our artist is represented in her own videos. Youtube.com was used in our planning stage to upload videos from our reccies so that we could embed them into our blog. This allowed us to see how the locations and lighting looked on a bigger screen and whether it had the ‘look’ we were going for. In the construction stage we used youtube.com to post rough cuts. We then embedded them into our blog and asked our audience to tell us what they thought of the video. We also uploaded our final edit onto youtube.com (see image below) so that we could distribute it more easily.
To carry out audience research we used Survey Monkey (See examples of our findings in question 3). This is a website that allows the user to create their own survey and then to distribute it to their audience. In the research stage of our coursework we used survey monkey to ask our audience about our initial ideas for the music video. This enabled us to see whether the audience thought that our ideas were right for the track and whether they would attract the audience to watch it. In the evaluation stage we used survey monkey to ask our audience whether they thought the video worked well with the track and whether they thought anything could be changed. The use of survey monkey was very effective as it allowed us to adapt our video to suit the audience as that is who would be watching it. To distribute our survey we used facebook.com (see photo below) and this worked very well as it enabled us to interact with Florence’s audience as many of our facebook friends are the same age. We also used facebook.com to distribute rough cuts so that we could ask the audience whether they thought the video was working well or whether some of it should be changed as it didn’t fit with the track. Through doing this we found that on one part of our music video, the sound wasn’t working and some of it wasn’t lip synced.
DV camera/ adobe premiere elements
In the planning and construction stage, we used DV cameras to shoot our reccies and footage for our music video. As these cameras were HD, the footage was a lot clearer than our previous coursework and this made it have a more professional look. A problem we encountered with the cameras was that a lot of our shots were too stationary. This was because we put it on a tripod and pressed record and failed to move the camera to make our shots more visually interesting. To overcome this, we used adobe premiere elements to add movement to our shots using keyframes.
Before Movement has been added: After Movement has been added:
Another problem we encountered was protecting the camera against rain, which was one type of weather we ended up filming in. To protect the camera we used an umbrella but due to the umbrella moving we ended up with the umbrella in shots. To overcome the problem, we once again used adobe premiere elements to edit some of our footage so that was jump cut and this meant the footage with the umbrella in was cut out. We also used keyframes to zoom in so that the umbrella could no longer be seen.
Example of jump cut:
Digital Stills camera
We used a digital stills camera to take photos of our reccies (see photo below) and of the artist when she was in her costume so that could use the images for our print media. The photos from our reccies allowed us to plan how we wanted to use mise-en-scene in our video and also to plan our print media. We used adobe Photoshop to edit the still images of the artist so that we could achieve the right look for our adverts and digipak.
One way we manipulated the image to achieve this was to use the burn image on the red band across her face so that it appeared brighter and more prominent on the page. I also brightened the image so that it stood out more on the black background of the ¼ page of the advert and used layers so that I could manipulate only one layer instead of all layers having to be manipulated to be the same.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I feel that the use of technology in all four stages of our coursework enabled us to be able to work collaboratively as a group to make our video seem as if it was an actual video of Florence’s. I also think that with the use of web 2.0, we were able to make our video suitable for the audience that we were aiming it towards.
No comments:
Post a Comment