Final Evaluations and Music VIdeo.

Here is my evaluation questions 1 - 4, they are all included in the link below. Underneath the link is my final music video.

Evaluation question 1 - 3 draft

Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Music Video;

The task of this project was to successfully create a music video. In order for me to create a music video and realise the common conventions associated to different genres, it was necessary for me to research into the topic. I did this by analysing several different music videos; Fatboy slim – weapon of choice, Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer, AC/DC – Let there be rock, Bon Jovi You give love a bad name and Sigur Ros – Viorar Vel Til Laftarsassa. By analysing these music videos I was able to pick out key conventions for to use for my own music video.

Yet as the band I had chosen for my music video had a relatively undiscovered sound and were relatively new to the music industry, only gaining recognition this year I had to research more into the group to understand their particular style.

Breezeblocks was directed by Ellis Bahl, a relatively unknown and yet-to-be discovered director. Apart from the Alt-J Breezeblocks music video is was hard to find any other work from her. Because of the relative unknownness of the director and also the bands uniqueness the video hasn't been awarded or particularly highlighted. This does not mean however that the video wasn't good, the video itself demonstrates the attention to detail needed when playing back a video, especially when it includes a complex story line. Throughout the music video we assume that the make character is attacking the woman, this is until the last minute of the video where we see what's really happening. The storyline takes a huge twist as we now see the woman has his wife hostage and is in fact attacking the man, he is just defending his way of life.

In my research to find out more about the director, Ellis Bahl, I came across the website www.ellisbahl.com/. The site has a number of work from various directors/artists, they all incorporate and embrace they indie warmth feel(?). The site has other work of Ellis, one is the example below called Ohio by Robin Bacior. The video is split into twelve, showing a dancer dancing in a empty room. The is effective as it keeps the attention of the audience.

Fitzpleasure is another music video from the band, this time it was for director Guillaume Cagniard to make his own, and he does just that. The video for ‘Fitzpleasure’ was shot in one day in a studio in Paris. The video includes living artwork performer Tim Steiner, tattooed by Wim Delvoye a Belgium artist who works with COSA. Tim turned his back into a piece of art and came especially from London to be part of the shoot.  Wim Delvoye was also asked to assist in the music video, we can see his input with the strong themes that run throughout the video. Delvoye takes inspiration from art history, Gothic cathedrals and sculptures of the 19th century, these themes can easily be recognised with in the video.

Cagniard has previously worked with French artist and photographer JR, creating music videos for his huge urban based artwork. Also Cagniard is not afraid to nudity in his videos. With it appearing moderately in 'Fitzpleasure' and also blurred in 'Ain't Got No' by Patrice. Below is the music video, it uses a stop- motion animation effect of the speaker artwork to make it look like the artwork face is singing (I'm not sure of the significance of the naked people with trolleys is though). The other video below is just one of the examples of the collaborations the director has with JR.

I feel by looking into other music videos of the band and also the directors, producers and artists they have worked with I am able to understand the bands specific characteristics and the criteria for making a music video for one of their songs. It’s clear that the group’s music attract a more artistic style music video, and is sometimes rather expressive, such as the Fitzpleasure music video. Yet Breezeblocks always incorporates a clever storyline shown in revers with a twist at the end. . It’s from this that I gained inspiration. I told a story in my music video of the couple breaking up, yet I felt I was expressive in the way the story was presented, creating a visual representation of the lyrics and this dark notion of drug assisted sleep because of the heart ache.

[Image to illistate point – drugs in characters hand or/and bottle]

I also used the theorist Andrew Goodwin, who came up with 7 key aspects of music videos;

·         Music videos demonstrate certain genre characteristics, for example; metal and rock music videos will have a live stage performance, boy/girl bands will have dance routines and (gangsta) rap videos will have scantily clad women, bling and money as key themes.

·         There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals, this is usually used to illustrate the lyrics but can be used to contradict them.

·         There is a relationship between music and visuals

·         The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist

·         The artist may develop motifs or iconography that recur across their work (a visual style)

·         There is frequent reference to the notion of ‘looking’ (screens within screens, filming, cameras) and particularly voyeuristic (pleasure through looking) treatment of the female body. This is more common in R&B, rap and Hip Hop.

·         There are often intertexual references – mostly to film, television and popular culture, to engaging with the audience more.

After researching into the groups music more I had discovered that the group are almost creating new genre for themselves known as Folk Step, yet also fit into the alternative music genre. The general characteristics of this genre’s music video are to be expressive either through a raw artistic style or via a complex narrative. My own music video fits more of the complex narrative as it is a narrative of the couple broken relationship. It focuses on a male character and we see him unable to cope with the separation, and therefore dream about the day they separated. This fits in well with notion of the song, like a wave will continue to wash up onto the beach, his mind will continually go over the relationship and the break up, torturing himself, analysing where he went wrong.

There is not set location for this particular music genre as their aim is to be different with their style and representation, this allowed some freedom when planning where to film. I chose the location of the beach as this fitted the song lyrics perfectly and allowed me to illustrate a visual representation of the lyrics. Yet I thought I would contrast this natural beautiful public location with the dull private bedroom. Contrasting these locations is a convention some music videos in this genre do, like in Fitspleasure it has made the church into a dark, gothic location.

From this narrative style of telling the couple’s story, enabled me to give a visual representation of the lyrics. Some were actually quite literal such as ‘two tabs on your tongue’, here we actually see the man taking to tablets. Other example include the line ‘A herd of shepherds to herd the sheep, sleep now my only one, which I took to mean the man counting sheep to help him fall asleep. So for this I used stop motion animation to have him sitting in bed as he counted sheep jumping over his head.

Yet because of the artist style aspect that is common to this genre I was able to play with the narrative, I decided on not keeping it linear. Instead I would have flash backs and memories of the couple. The first one is shown when the man looks at the picture frame, from the image he is reminded of the couple having fun cooking and the audience is able to see this too. The next is one he falls asleep, here we go to a memory which he is dreaming about. The memory is of the couples break up at the beach and relates to the song’s lyrics of the noise the sea makes. Finally I overlapped images of the couple having fun over the top of the break-up to show the male characters confusion as he will be wonder what went wrong because to him everything was going ok. Having the narrative mixed up like this helps tell the story, and I feel that it emphases the guys confusion and also allows the audience to understand the confusion too.

There is a slight relationship between the music an visual as, the tune of the song is actually quite up beat in parts of the song, and so the narrative is too. For example we see the couple having fun cooking and messing about at the beach.

And when the song changes two thirds of the way in, lowering the tone of the sing the visual reciprocate this as we see the tint over the couple changes to a more mournful blue and we she their break up.

Due to the nature of the group and the genre they fit into, it is not common or necessary for there to be any performance shots of them preforming. Instead it is more about the message of the song being shown. I followed this convention by not having any performing shots throughout any of my music video. I souly focused on the message from the narrative. Although it would have been possible to have some performing shots the fact they weren’t necessary was nice as I feel including those shots would not have worked with my music video.

There is not notion of looking or voyeurism with in my music video, that’s not saying the genre doesn’t include it. Although it is more common with rap and R&B the music video does contain two women that are in revealing costume. However I did not think this was appropriate for my music video.

Ancillary Tasks;

Designing my ancillary tasks meant further research into the style of the genre and how they present themselves to the general public, this type of genre tends to have a relative nitch market. However have recently become more popular, appearing in the charts more and also in music stores.

I started off by looking at CD designs for inspiration to design my own digi-pack. I looked at; Sigur Ros, M83, Bastille, Everything Everything, Ben Howard, Of Monsters And Men and Alt-j’s actual CD cover.

[images of cd covers]

All of these CD’s have gone for a minimalist style with their CD covers.



Question 2
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?  

I presented this question as a prezi




Question 3 
What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Question 4
Technologies used

New Wix and Digipak

After struggle to get the right look with my wix band website I decided to start again from scratch, by doing this I was able to add features to pages that would of been to complicated to adjust with the old page.
Todays was spent making the new page, although i still need to and the bands information a lot of the website is finished and looking better then the old website, in my own opinion

Here is my new web page link
http://christopherpanayi1.wix.com/alt-j

And heres my final digipak design 

Organising Filming

So for the last bit of filming I needed to get my two actors back,  the quickest and easiest way to tell them about my filming plans was through chat on Facebook.

Here is a screen grab of my latest post to them about filming tomorrow.

Planning the Last bit of Filming

Over the weekend I have been planning what to do for the last bit of my music video filming as the footage I initially wanted to use for the green screen section doesn't work. Therefore I still need to do filming for the green screen and for some layering near the end of the music video, which will be cut to the beat of the music. Here I will have the couple at home now, cooking and hanging out like a normal couple to show him reflecting on the 'good times'.

CD Cover Research

To help give me inspiration for my own cd cover I decided to look at professional artists cd covers that were within a similar music genre to my group. A lot of them have a water or ocean theme to the imagery, this coincidentally fits in perfectly with my music video and the theme I was going to continue into the cd cover and website anyway. 

Although the majority of the covers include people on the front they do not make that persons identity really know as they are either blurred, facing the other way or underwater. The Everything Everything cd cover appears to be copying the previous Blur cd cover. 

At the bottom is the actually Alt-J cd case, this differs from the others in design and style. The case itself is different as is the fact the case does not have the band name or album name on it.  

From this I was able to apply some of these features to my own cd cover design. I kept the colour of the digi pack blue, in particular dull grainy blues as these represented the theme of the song, oceans, and also reflects the emotions in the music video. This created synergy with my music video and media product. I also kept the identity of the couple unknown on the front cover as I found in my research that the people on the front cover were often hidden in some way. I did use a image on the inside cover that shows the guys face as the scene it is taken from ties in with the drugs that appear next to it. 

(The bottom to images are the front cover and back cover, with the top images folding down to be on the inside)

Evaluation Analysis 1

Good Points 

• In question one the group realises key convention that are relevant to their music video and genre, and the audiences response to these conventions. What is good is the group think about what they have done that challenges these conventions too. 
• In question two the group talk a lot about the audience response to music genres an how the ancillary task links to the video. They also talk about how the ancillary task come from researching similar music group designs. 
• In question three, they talk about their use of social media site Facebook, an important feature that allows a wide scope of responses. 
• In question four they continue to mention the forms of technology used mention new forms that I haven't already thought of such as a site were you can upload audio. 

Bad Points

• They could go into more detail when answering the question as some points lack context and seem to brief. 
• When they are talking its not always clear what they are saying this is either because of the music playing in the back ground, their pronunciation or them rushing what they are saying. 
• Some of the time it seems that they don't quite know themselves what they are talking about and they often struggle to get their words out. 
• The whole evaluation is done by pod-cast and get fairly boring. 

Wix Editing

Today in class I redesigned features of my website to go for a more minimalist style.

PRINT SCREENS AND LINK TO BE ADDED!

Wix Going Live

My band website it now live and available for the public to view, although the sit is not completely finished and still has features that need to be changed it is necessary for my progress to be analysed.
So here it is,

http://christopherpanayi1.wix.com/mediastudiesaltjsite

Music Video So Far

Still have editing and the green screen to complete.

Logo

I have been struggling to find a logo that I'm happy with representing the song and band after initially wanting to use the Greek delta symbol (uppercase), as the group name, Alt-J, when used on a mac creates the delta symbol. However the actual band use this symbol as their logo. After trying different logos and even trying the lowercase delta symbol.
However after talking things through with my teacher it turns our that I an in fact use the same logo as the official group. Yay.

wave sound.

I have found and downloaded an ocean wave sound for the end of my music video which ties the video up nicely and also links well with the theme of the song.

(link)

Using Chroma Key

To insert the images and footage into the photo frame I had to use chroma key on final cut express. this was a simple process where I just adjusted the colour control, saturation and luma strip. Each image had to be adjusted individually, as they had a slightly different colour balance. The process did take a while but it was easy to apply and looks really good. 

I also had to play around with the opacity feature to bring in and out clips of the couple. 

Editing My Website

So far with my website I have put in a background that appears on all the pages, I have made the pages that I would like to include; home, news, band bio, music video, lyrics store, gallery, contact, soundcloud and social network links. I have not edited all of these pages yet, though most have been changed in some way.

I am currently unable to link the website as I have not published it making it live, the main reason for this is because it is unfinished. instead here are some screen shots of the site.