written evaluation draft

My music video follows the conventions of real music videos through various ways. There is a clear relationship between the lyrics, visuals and music. Additionally, a huge amount of close up shots of the artists are used, as usually demanded by the record company in reference to real published videos. In relation to intertexual references, our video consists of three; twilight, Dorian Gray, and Dracula. The video is both narrative and performance based, conveying the story of a modern day vampire’s transformation and the struggles faced with his love interest as a result of it. The song we chose was made by Imagine Dragons who belong to the indie rock genre. Our music video follows the conventions of the indie genre in that there is a lot of band performance to illustrate how this is a band and the sole focus should be the music made. Additionally, there is a dark narrative being told in the music video and in the lyrics, which is what you usually associate with indie or rock videos. This is understood through the concept of vampirism, pain, and struggles within a relationship being themes conveyed in our music video, and themes that aren’t of a pleasant nature. My ancillary texts follow appropriate layout conventions in respect to established albums and, more specifically, those belonging to the indie genre. The album advert consists of several quotations from critics, such as, the guardian; the release date of the album is also made clear and the biggest pieces of text are the names of the band and the album itself. As for the digipak, a clear house style is set, with the tone and colour scheme for each side being compatible with each other. Additionally, the pieces of font, such as the album title or name of the band will be in the same font in respect to each other to keep consistency.

The combination between my music video and ancillary texts is very effective in that it portrays a consistent representation of the band. The band has been made to be represented as having a hipster look/vibe and also as quite emotional and serious in both their music and the message they are trying to reveal. Through the mise en scene, this dark, indie feel is portrayed. The use of instruments is referenced heavily throughout the music video with performance scenes including a mic-stand, drum set, and bass guitar. As for clothing, the entire band is in an almost fully black or dark outfit in order to reinforce the rock side of the band. Some pieces of clothing involve checkered shirts, skinny jeans, and bracelets to support the hipster image of the band. The body language of the band is very serious with facial expressions throughout the music video clearly revealing powerful emotions and trying to establish a connection with the audience. As the pace of the music speeds up, more specifically during the adlib and towards the end of the video, the band starts to reveal the strength of their emotions as they get more into the music. Throughout the video, feelings of anger, sadness, and love are presented, displaying the amount of emotions. The images on the ancillary texts help to support this representation as the band members are made to look extremely serious. In addition, half of the lead singer’s face is in animal form to illustrate this idea of ambiguity and also subliminal meaning being applied to the digipak, which helps follow the conventions of the indie genre. The lighting for both the music video and ancillary texts are quite low key, setting of a dark, greyish feel. As for the camera shots, a lot of close up shots are taken to emphasise the emotions of the band members. High and low angle shots are used at certain points to illustrate how they can be powerful at certain moments, but also vulnerable at other times. These shots are used for both the ancillary texts and music video.

(I am still waiting for sufficient amounts of feedback in order to answer this question…… it will be ready soon… I plan on making a focus group for this)

A lot of media technologies helped me in the construction, research and planning sections of this project. For instance, blogger provided the means to record my daily work in an organised and clear manner. Additionally, I was able to create polls through survey monkey in reference to things such as which title block looked the best and through this gain some sort of feedback and input from the audience; this could be integrated into blogger, helping the overall presentation of my work. YouTube helped hugely with the research side of my project, allowing me to gain inspiration from other music videos for instance. There were also Photoshop tutorials on YouTube which aided me in editing some of my images. Additionally, we were able to post our videos on YouTube and then imbed them into blog posts. Photoshop was the most important piece of technology in reference to the construction of images. It was through Photoshop that we could successfully construct our version of the Dorian gray portrait, and also edit images for our album advert and digipak. Final cut pro was what we used in order to edit our music video. Through this, we could pick and choose scenes which we desired, cut out the unnecessary bits, and play it against our chosen song. All the filming was done with a HD camera, which was a huge positive as it meant the footage would be of good quality, meaning for more of an enjoyable viewing.