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