Our music video was of the acoustic genre. Artists such as the Plain White T’s and Newton Faulkner and James Morrison are acoustic artists. We used some of the conventions from their videos, challenged others and developed a lot of them too. We did this through the filming, the post production and the finishing touches to the music video, and in the designing, construction and finishing touches to the digipak.
Chris Cohen is a very simplistic artist. His songs are very monotonic and he only seems to sing about relationships. This is one strong convention of the acoustic genre, that all of the artists sing about a relationship being maintained, or a broken down one. This connotes a sense of pride or sadness, happiness or upset within the artist’s life and therefore makes the song and video more meaningful as a whole. I felt I should use this and reflect the same connotations into the music video for ‘If You Only Knew’. The lyrics for the song were very typical, and therefore we wanted to play on them. We took the opportunity to cut between the male and the female characters during the video, and to tell both sides of the story. This was a challenged convention, as normally, in most of the videos by acoustic artists such as the ones mentioned above, the story seems to be circulated around the male artist.
Telling the story was based on the photograph that was ripped at the beginning by the female in anger, and brought together at the end by both characters. Newton Faulkner’s video Dream Catch Me uses the photo as a basis for the storyline, and almost tells both sides of the story. We used the close ups of the female and male characters such as Faulkner does and developed them into the lip syncs from both characters. The video also uses close ups of the instruments and the photos. The photo is a big symbolic image in the video and without it the video probably wouldn’t make much sense.
Having the video in black and white was a choice we made as a group. The argument is in colour because it shows the couple together whereas the black and white layout for the rest of the video reflects the sadness that the couple are not together. I think the video also possesses a little bit of the male gaze. It is the female who comes back to the male, not the other way around. This could show that the female is weak and can’t survive without the male. The representation of the two characters is therefore biased, but I think it is naturally biased because of the nature of the genre.
Different to other acoustic videos, our narrative isn’t a linear narrative. We have a circular and convergent narrative. We start at the beginning but we keep coming back to the scene of the argument or flashbacks throughout the video. It is a convergent narrative because the two different stories of the male and female come together in the end. Typically, the videos that I have watched by the artists that are on Chris Cohen’s inspirations list are of a basic linear narrative from beginning to end. One video that is pretty much the same as our video has to be Plain White T’s – Hey There Delilah. It uses the close ups of the instruments and characters and also the typical break up story.
The continuity between the video, the digipak and the magazine advert I think is crucial. We are creating the promotional Chris Cohen package. For example, I own many James Morrison albums. All of them use the same font and the same style and the same idea. I used this convention and used the same font for all my lyrics, titles and comments in both my digipak and advert. I felt that using the stills from the music video in both too would link them together quite nicely. The black and white and the similarity between all 3 of the products emphasises the simplicity of the genre as well. Wacky colours would not suit the acoustic genre as it is just too simple. Some people associate colours with days, in the same way I associated the acoustic genre with black and white simple photography.
The conventions that I have used, challenged and developed have given me a greater understanding of genre and subgenre. Cohen’s music is very basic and similar. To create a promo package that has multiple platforms is difficult for such an artist, but I used the conventional ways that other artists have successfully used and put them towards my work. I feel that this has categorised my work and secured it within the genre it is intended.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages of my final products, I used many technologies to achieve the overall finish. Firstly, our production group used the internet to find an unsigned artist, and to use their song. The internet proved very useful and was fast at giving us results in what we needed and listed in categories to make our search less stressful. We used the website Unsigned Band Web and this was very helpful also. I agree that we used this site as a last minute option, but the option was the only one available to us. The internet as a new media technology certainly proved itself useful at this point, and at a few other points during the stages. When Chris Cohen realised we had a music video on YouTube using his song, he used the internet and social networking site MySpace to spread the video link.
To film our music video, we used digital video cameras and a tripod. The cameras were very useful in that we could choose the settings for the shots; the contrast, the colour, the distance and the framework. I enjoyed working with the cameras because they were so easy to use, and quite self-explanatory. The post production was probably the most fascinating part. During the editing process we used Premiere Elements and this was incredible. You can use so many tools to improve a certain shot rather than having to re-film it, you can also change the speed of the shot; for example our argument scene at the beginning of our video was slowed right down to create a slow motion memory feeling.
With our digipaks and magazine adverts, we all used Photoshop. This proved entirely useful as well. I took photographs using digital stills cameras and my mobile phone and changed the colour to black and white. I also took stills from our music video on YouTube and put them in my CD cover. When in Photoshop, I could move the images about, change their contrast, add text to them, airbrush them and make them look more professional, and even control how much of an image I wanted, and crop the rest of it. I enjoyed using Photoshop as it really made a difficult job into a very simple design working time. In the beginning I was unsure about the whole idea of it, but I soon became accustomed.
Our whole work is put onto a blog to be assessed. We use the website Blogspot or Blogger. It is again so simple to use, and it’s easy to upload slideshows and PowerPoint’s too. A lot of my work is based around Blogger and its advantages are that it is easily accessible. I don’t need to give my teacher a hard copy of an essay or an evaluation; I can just simply send him a link to my blog. This way, I know that he has got it, rather than losing a paper copy. The disadvantages include the fact that a piece of work can’t be marked in much detail if it is on a blog. A teacher can’t pinpoint a sentence or paragraph or phrase in a blog post, they can only mark the text as a whole without detailed responses.
Media students are now becoming involved in the debate about Web 2.0 and ‘amateur producers’. Because we are producing work that is of a ‘professional’ standard (i.e. we have the technologies available to produce work of a high standard for our educational position), people in the media world with qualified media jobs are hitting out at us. Cheap distribution through sites like YouTube and Blogger is reducing the ‘street cred’ (if you like) of the media world. There are not very many jobs available in the media, and people feel that young and ‘amateur’ producers are exploiting this. In my personal opinion, we are not making films and videos to intentionally get a job within the media, we are doing it either for enjoyment, fulfilment, something to do or just because it’s what we enjoy.
To film our music video, we used digital video cameras and a tripod. The cameras were very useful in that we could choose the settings for the shots; the contrast, the colour, the distance and the framework. I enjoyed working with the cameras because they were so easy to use, and quite self-explanatory. The post production was probably the most fascinating part. During the editing process we used Premiere Elements and this was incredible. You can use so many tools to improve a certain shot rather than having to re-film it, you can also change the speed of the shot; for example our argument scene at the beginning of our video was slowed right down to create a slow motion memory feeling.
With our digipaks and magazine adverts, we all used Photoshop. This proved entirely useful as well. I took photographs using digital stills cameras and my mobile phone and changed the colour to black and white. I also took stills from our music video on YouTube and put them in my CD cover. When in Photoshop, I could move the images about, change their contrast, add text to them, airbrush them and make them look more professional, and even control how much of an image I wanted, and crop the rest of it. I enjoyed using Photoshop as it really made a difficult job into a very simple design working time. In the beginning I was unsure about the whole idea of it, but I soon became accustomed.
Our whole work is put onto a blog to be assessed. We use the website Blogspot or Blogger. It is again so simple to use, and it’s easy to upload slideshows and PowerPoint’s too. A lot of my work is based around Blogger and its advantages are that it is easily accessible. I don’t need to give my teacher a hard copy of an essay or an evaluation; I can just simply send him a link to my blog. This way, I know that he has got it, rather than losing a paper copy. The disadvantages include the fact that a piece of work can’t be marked in much detail if it is on a blog. A teacher can’t pinpoint a sentence or paragraph or phrase in a blog post, they can only mark the text as a whole without detailed responses.
Media students are now becoming involved in the debate about Web 2.0 and ‘amateur producers’. Because we are producing work that is of a ‘professional’ standard (i.e. we have the technologies available to produce work of a high standard for our educational position), people in the media world with qualified media jobs are hitting out at us. Cheap distribution through sites like YouTube and Blogger is reducing the ‘street cred’ (if you like) of the media world. There are not very many jobs available in the media, and people feel that young and ‘amateur’ producers are exploiting this. In my personal opinion, we are not making films and videos to intentionally get a job within the media, we are doing it either for enjoyment, fulfilment, something to do or just because it’s what we enjoy.
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