Media Studies Coursework Evaluation
My A2 Advanced Portfolio in Media Studies consisted of producing a music video, 6 part digipak and digipak magazine advertisement. I used the song ‘Nothing’ by The Script which is a popular alternative rock song, released in late 2010. Before beginning production of these 3, research and planning took place in order to become familiar with the typical codes and conventions used in alternative rock.
The music video was not released for this song at the time of brainstorming ideas which allowed me to read the lyrics and produce my video purely from how I interpreted each line of the song, with little influencing my ideas and decisions. Additionally, I used the research and planning stage to take advantage of The Scripts other music videos on YouTube. Looking closely and analysing parts of their past videos such as ‘The Man Who Can’t be Moved’. During this, I particularly looked at camera shots and movement as well as how The Script use and develop conventions of Alternative Rock/Pop genre videos. From conducting research on other music videos and genres, it allowed me to recognise the conventions used in other videos, advertisements and album designs and which in turn influenced my own ideas.
When it came to writing up my shooting script, I used one of the genre’s main conventions – incorporating both performance and narrative into the video. Something which The Script often do in their videos. This type of video consists of seeing my artist/actor perform the song throughout most of the music video. This is positive as the audience constantly get to view the artist, a feature which links back to the history of music videos and the reason of music videos being introduced – the audience use music videos and the media to gratify a need to see the artist perform. In addition to the performance aspect of the video, the narrative includes a performance of the story which is often included in the lyrics. This can be seen as a popular convention of the alternative rock/pop genre as the lyrics frequently tell a tale, often about love in one way or another. I chose to use the narrative/performance convention because I feel the target audience would easily be able to associate it with that type of music. This particularly came from a pre-production questionnaire which allowed me to see what the audience want or expect in an alternative rock/pop music video. From conducting this, I found that:
- Many enjoy watching music videos which include a mixture of both performance and narrative.
- In relation to the alternative pop/rock genre, a dance routine would be a bad idea.
- That special effects should be kept to a minimum and if used should suit the genre, pace and style of music.
The narrative only really gets underway after the second chorus and I feel like this can be seen as both positive and negative. For example, the first two verses intentionally lead up to the climax (suicide) but on the other hand, the convention of capturing the audience from the beginning of the video was not paid as much attention to. I realised this in the post-production audience feedback.
As one of my main roles in the group was to be the camera operator, I paid particular attention in research and planning to camera shots and movement in The Scripts other music videos. For example, in ‘The Man Who Can’t be Moved’ a 360 degree handheld tracking shot of the artist in the street is used. I used this shot and placed it in the beginning 10 seconds of my video. Through this I am using the music video convention of the audience being able to see a full close up view around the artist receiving pleasure from doing so. Furthermore, a range and variety of shots are always used in music videos of any genre. I made sure that I used the same convention and planned my shooting script in order to include a variety of shots. This in turn decreases the risk of the cinematography becoming boring and dull. In terms of camera movement, a lot of alternative rock/pop genre music videos – such as; ‘The Scientist by Coldplay and I have also noticed this in the actual video ‘Nothing by The Script.’ include the artist walking towards the camera and the camera backtracking. This enables the artist to move from one location to another whilst progression of the narrative occurs, especially in my music video.
Another convention of most music videos – all genres - is the edit to the beat. All the music videos I looked at, cut from one shot to another at a beat. We filmed and edited our music video footage before Christmas 2010. However, after looking at the video as a whole, I noticed that nearly every shot in the video was too long and there was only cuts from the verses to the chorus’. This was a big problem as we could therefore not edit to the beat because we didn’t have enough shots. This forced us to make the decision to re-film the whole video. During re-filming, I included many more camera shots and movement. Whilst editing on Corel Video Studio Pro, I could cut my shots to the strong beats included in the song ‘Nothing’. This meant that I used the conventions of music videos but also improved the look of my music video massively. For example, in the fourth verse, I cut different shots to three strong beats and repeated this another two times. In turn, increasing the pace of the editing to run with the increase in pace of the lyrics and beats.
I believe location was an important aspect to my music video as it had to be suitable to add to the effect of the emotional lyrics and narrative. Through brainstorming, I thought that location had to be fairly dull and a quiet run down urban area. Additionally, the area had to be easily accessible for the group throughout production. From looking at other music videos of the same genre, the location appears to suit the emotional state of the lyrics. For example, The Scientist by Coldplay is filmed in an urban area developing to a forest type setting. The dull background colours (brown, grey, blue, dark green) added to the sad and moving lyrics. Whilst on the other hand, a video of a genre such as R’n’B or pop, have videos which show bright, stimulating colours to represent their upbeat songs and lifestyle. Therefore, I opted to use the conventions of alternative rock/pop genre rather than challenge them as I thought it wouldn’t work at all and would make it harder for the audience to connect with the lyrics of the song.
One of our members of the group was responsible for costume design. In the verses, we wanted the artist to look casual – he’d had woken up after a rough night at the pub with his mates. Also, supporting the idea of it being a rough time in his life because of what his broken heart has brought him. This look continued through every verse in the video. Throughout the chorus’, we wanted the artist to look smarter as the chorus’ did not run with the narrative in any way. The smarter look represented his real life style more than the character he had become in the verses.
In terms of challenging conventions, I think a huge one was the idea of the artist committing suicide in the video. The idea of a popular artist, who has many fans hurting themselves or being hurt, is not one that I have seen often before in music videos. Usually, the music video includes other unknown actors who star in the video who act out the narrative of the lyrics. The audience only see the actor jump out of the frame from a height and then laid on the floor in a close up of his face – leaving the video on a cliff-hanger. The video is therefore all fictional. This could in turn, possibly cause issues with broadcasting when relating it to regulations by Ofcom as it could cause emotional distress to the audiences.
I think that both my music video and ancillary texts work well together. The Scripts album which includes the song ‘Nothing’ follows a theme of faith, hope, love and deep emotions. I think that we continued to use this theme when creating our ancillary texts but also changed it to suit our own style. For example, for our digipak and magazine advertisement, we brought our own idea of life been a route of love into play and used this theme for our; image, font and album name. Both ancillary texts link well together as they both hold similar; editing styles, colours, images and font. This is useful and beneficial to our target audience as they can link seeing the advertisement to looking for the album in a shop like HMV for example. In addition, I believe that our music video also links well to the ancillary texts. The idea of ‘Love’s Route’ came from the narrative of what that appears to be the artist walking someplace but is actually the artist walking in ‘loves route’ and eventually committing suicide as a result of what ‘loves route’ brings him. The lyrics depict what often goes on after a bad break-up; such as the drunken nights with friends to cheer you up, the feelings of regret and despair. Everyone experiences love in their life which is often a long-lived, emotional path. We tried to incorporate this into our narrative, leading to more serious consequences.
My target audience for my music video and ancillary texts range from ages 16-mid 20’s as these ages can probably use their own experiences of love and relate to the video. In addition, the actor/artist is of a similar age at 18. However, the audience for the actual song is a very wide range of ages from teenagers to adults in their 40’s. I collected various forms of audience feedback from both students and teachers and also family as well. This gave me a variation of feedback from different age ranges. I completed first drafts of my music video and ancillary texts. However, after receiving audience feedback, it was proved that these did not link together very well in terms of colours and editing styles. In addition, certain audiences found the chorus narrative hard to understand without this been explained after watching the video as said by Louis aged 17. This is obviously not practical and does not follow conventions of what a music video typically does. I believed that to understand the narrative of my video, the audience had to pay attention to the lyrics. Again, this was not the idea of a music video and I didn’t want my video to be hard to understand. From personal experience of watching music videos – I and probably many others experience pleasure from the moving image and the song itself not the lyrics and what the lyrics mean. A perfect example of this in my video is included in the chorus. The lyrics say, ‘And I know that I’m drunk’ whilst the video cuts to the night before and it is edited in a blurry, appearing drunk style. However, many of the audience who watched the video did not understand what this was and did not appear significant to the rest of the video. In addition, Katie aged 16, said that she thought a girl should be included in the video to run along with the narrative being about love. From more of a positive view from audience feedback, the final half of the video seemed to grip and capture the audiences attention a lot more that the first half. I received more compliments upon what actually happens in the video and the style of editing. For example, Lucy aged 17, enjoyed the quick cuts to the beat in the 3rd verse. I believe this is partly due to the increase in opportunities with editing as the pace of the song increases. However, it made me pay more attention to the first half of the song and what could possibly be done to match the feedback that was received about the final half. In-corporating a narrative that didn’t just use the artist/performer was one of the ideas that would be beneficial to our video. Furthermore, the narrative could be placed in black and white, in turn; breaking conventions, creating a divide between narrative and performance and most importantly, creating a stronger link between the music video and ancillary texts.
Creating my A2 media studies portfolio has provided me with vast amounts of experience that can be used when creating other media forms. The experience I have gained is mostly within the use of new media technologies. Whilst working as a team to create my coursework, a lot of production work was created individually by myself with creative inputs from other members of the group. I used both my own camera and editing program in production of my music video. This added extra responsibility and also forced me to deal with technical problems on my own. However, it provided me with effectively more time to focus on production in my own time. I used a Sony HD camera for filming and Corel Video Studio X3 for non linear digital editing. Both of these technologies I had not used and had no experience using before. As a result of my coursework, I now have the ability to use both comfortably. Corel Video Studio Pro X3 is a video edit program which was simple and easy to use. I chose to use my own software to edit as it was more practical and allowed me more time to get to know the software I was using and play around with the video. Whilst filming, I used an IPod Touch to play the song whilst Daniel Fields sung to the lyrics. This allowed me to get an exact synchronization when putting the song together with the filmed video. When editing, I added markers at the beats of the song allowing me to cut to the beat. I also added simple special effects throughout the video such as; de-saturating clips (to separate performance from narrative), slow motion, reverse video and some lighting and blur effects which suited the effect I wanted to achieve. For example, at the beginning of the video, the actor had just woken after a rough night. Therefore I added an effect to a point of view shot where it would look as if the actor had been ‘dazzled by the light’.
Within research and planning, I used websites such as Google, YouTube and Blogger in researching other music forms and genres and Vimeo to upload my video. I used Vimeo as a website to upload my music video and embed this to my blog. This was my first time using it but it appealed to me as it allowed HD uploads for free and also functioned easily. I had to make the decision to use a different upload site as YouTube instantly deleted my video and song within 24 hours of upload due to copyright reasons and therefore was not practical in terms of watching my video. Primarily, we used Adobe Premiere Pro as the program to edit our music video. None of the members of our group had used this before but the program was easy to understand and included endless functions to edit our video to how we wanted it, such as the precise cutting tool. However, we had limited time available on the edit suite and limited time using college facilities. It however provided me with more valuable editing experience on a popular edit program that can be used once I have left college.
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