For our media product we chose to make a music video. The purpose of a music video is to promote the artist and boost record sales. Music videos are played on music specific channels and therefore acts as a kind of advertisement for that artist. Therefore the video needs to catch people’s attention and be memorable. Firstly we researched into the conventions of this media form to ensure that the features included replicated that of the actual media product. The main forms that we discovered were dependant upon the separate genres. Music Videos use a wide range of film making techniques that can be portrayed through various different styles:
Narrative
Abstract
Animation
Live Action
Documentary
You can also have a mixture of a few of these key styles, through this music videos are able to explore lots of different stylistic features. Also dependant upon the genre of music the styles may vary. For example live action from concert gigs may be used more by acoustic artists and more narrative story lines for r 'n' b and rap videos.
We researched into popular artists from different genres of music and viewed videos from each:
Rock – Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA
Hip Hop – Vanilla Ice – Ice Ice Baby
R 'n' B – Rhianna – Take a Bow
Blues – Eric Clapton – Tears in Heaven
Country – Johnny Cash – I got stripes
Acoustic – Jack Johnson – Breakdown
Metal – Iron Maiden – Holy Smoke
Indie – Jack Penate – Second, Minute or Hour
Easy Listening – Jason Mraz – Im Yours
The most common features that were used in videos from different genres were:
Slow Motion
Mixture of performance and narrative
Black and White
Performance - guitar shots
Close Up, Panning, Tracking, Establishing
These are therefore things that we shall endeavour to include in our media product.
When looking for a song we chose one within a genre that we knew we could easily replicate. We choose from the genre of easy listening acoustic as we felt this was the genre we all knew the best and had a clearer idea about. Also the target audience of this music is for our age group upwards (16 - 24) mainly students still in education. We feel that the main bulk of the audience would be female because of the appeal of the artist, however and so we are able to retrieve feedback and know ourselves what needs to be included in the video.
We found that the most common conventions of the easy listening genre were the presentation of the artist. In each video from the genre that we watched the artist was where the main attention was held with no real narrative being portrayed. Also the choice of location in most of the videos was suburban and low-key, for example in a backstreet or park. This again matches the ‘independent’ style of the music and doesn’t take attention away from the performance, which we have discovered is the main aspect.
We felt that for the song we had lyrics that did not suggest a clear narrative: as there is only one verse that repeats, instead we decided to develop the feature of a narrative and instead create a thematic collection of images to relect the idea of the song (The City). This way the video still holds a sense of direction but isn't actually retelling a story. The conventional genre features we chose to replicate were:
Man & Guitar – this appeared in most of the videos we researched – e.g. Jack Johnson, James Blunt, Jason Mraz - we decided to cast Josh Embury, the singer/songwriter as our performer. This was not only because he knew the song but also as his style matched exactly the image we were looking for, laid back casual.
Editing Techniques – change of colour in a shot or perhaps speed
Locations – usually set in quite a isolated place
We used these conventions within our video to help replicate the genre and match the style of music. Editing techniques of ghost trails, time reverse and slow motion, were used within our shots of the traffic to create a busier scene. We combined the features of a man & guitar with the location as we set our performer in a quiet place with no one else around. By sticking to these conventions that we found helped us ensure that the video kept within the chosen genre which help us to relate both the song and video together.
We created our own identity for this media product by deciding to reflect the lyrics less literally than in some music videos by using a selection of symbols (-> + <3 = ?) this showing the confusion of choosing between love and heading somewhere new. This is a strong continuing motif that we use throughout the video and is clearly recognisable feature that could be related to our song.
I believe our product has achieved a professional standard as throughout the editing stage we have been very precise with how we cut and put our footage together. Also when adding the music we ensured that everything was exactly in time to avoid lip-syncing problems. Therefore when watching the audience aren't constantly frustrated at the song not being in time with the footage and can just view the video as if they are just watching a performance. Overall our music video generally followed the conventions set but we did develop and challenge a few of the features, for example the use of symbols to reflect the lyrics instead of a clear narrative.
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