Evaluation Activity 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. Relationship of lyrics to narrative/visuals: 

In this frame, we decided to relate the lyrics to the visuals in the song. The line, 'But karma has got you on your knees' correctly correlates with the visuals - as the female character is shown in a medium close-up holding a plain A4 sheet of paper with a handwritten 'Karma' on the front. I believe this is an effective way of enabling the viewers to identify the emotion involved, as well as the rhythm/tempo of the song.

2. Relationship of music to visuals (e.g. editing sound with image): 

Editing and matching up the music to the visuals is one of the most important aspects if editing, if the music does not link up with the visuals then the audience will be confused and not enjoy watching the music video - which of course is vital. In this frame, I purposely got someone to play the drums to the beat of the song, then requiring me to match the beat of the drums to that of the music. This surprisingly did not take long at all, showing to me that if you put the effort in to the filming and do it several times until you get it right; it pays off in the post-filming stage of editing. In conjunction with the drums, I layered upon this a clip to fading in of our artist (Thomas) singing, thus this frame not only showing the relationship between the drum beat but also at the same time the lip-syncing by Thomas.

3. Representation of artist/band with reference to record label's expectations: 

Our chosen record label is Virgin Records - which was purchased by Thorn EMI in 1992. They usually expect artists/bands to have a concrete theme or interesting image - through the use of clothing/hairstyles/facial hair etc. In this frame, the male character (myself) had a plain white t-shirt and blue jeans. This clothing could have represented the usual anti-stereotypical figures that appear in some of their signed artists/bands music videos. Moreover, as I was wearing glasses [non-optional], thus this could have been viewed like more of a 'nerdy' branch representation of the genre of the song/band.

4. Genre of music and how it is defined:

Our chosen genre “Soft Rock” is portrayed in this frame by the drums that we layered over the top of our main character “Tom” singing. The drums portray our genre choice because it is the main instrument you ca  hear throughout the whole song. When we placed the drums over tom singing in frame 4, you could only hear  the drums playing alongside the singer.

5. Setting/Location:

This frame shows how we choose the location carefully. We wanted to show that they were ordinary people not super rich or poor, just average people. This keep the attention on the people and their emotion instead of distracting the audience to something in the surrounding.

6. Camerawork and editing (shot types, angles, movement; SFX and transitions):We kept the camera angles simple yet as this matched the pace and style of the video. I was more effective that having fast zooms or tilted angles. We used lots of close ups and medium shots add an element of personally knowing of the characters. It also kept the attention on the acting and expressing which, again, increased the effectiveness of the shots. In terms of editing, I made sure to keep to the agreed spectacle part of our music video genre. The frame above shows one of my proudest pieces of editing where I split the visuals into 4 screens where each screen starts upon the beat of the bass in the song. Also with this, I made sure that from the outset of seeing this frame, you see that in each screen in the background, each stage of the female character (Lucy) finding a new man (Oliver) behind his back. I had planned this from the beginning when we were filming the idea came to me and from the response from our audience feedback and in my eyes, this worked! In addition to this, I was always conscious about using a wide variety yet meaningful transitions, for example the 'luminance map' and 'ripple' transitions to give the illusion of the female character appearing next to the artist (Thomas) - symbolising him thinking about her and tying in with the lyrics. 

7. Lighting:
In frame 7, the lighting is quite dark as you can see. Looking closer you should be able to see that the lighting is a little blurry; this is because it is filming the past, and how the two characters relationship ended. We filmed the past like this to distinguish the past relationship to how the relationship is now, in the present. The darkness of the frame shows the emotion that the main character Tom is feeling, a feeling of sadness and reflects the female characters actions, as being dark.

8. Mise-en-scene (costume, props, make-up, casting, expression): 

When starting to research and design our music video, I (Oliver) already knew that we needed to cast a male and female as it can be said, they are requirements of the song. I then thought about the costumes, make-up and so forth. As the narrative of the song was of a female leaving the male, I wanted to pick up on this and give a reason why she is leaving him other than an arguement. This was when I came up with the idea that the male character can be more from a working class background whereas the female character can have more of a middle class background. To show this aspect of the relationship and their characterisation, I portrayed this aspect through costume as seen in the frame above; the male being dressed in plain colours, generally consisting of a t-shirt or in other frames such like number 6, a hat to show how he works a lot outside - playing on the victorian connotation of working class as people who tend to get a tan and work outside. I then had the female actress dress up slightly more towards a work/office outfit, expressing how she is making money and is a career woman.

 

9. Intertextuality or influence of other music video etc: