Whilst planning our music video, we viewed the videos of songs that were currently in the charts as well as other past music videos to help us get an idea as to what is popular within Indie music videos.
We chose the Indie/folk music genre but swayed more towards the Indie perspective of the genre as we felt this was more popular by our chosen audience. We believe this genre is incredibly underrated, particularly as the majority of music videos currently focus on R’n’B and Pop music, and we feel Indie/Folk is genre that should be more widely known. We also felt that by choosing this genre we could help to break traditional assumptions that Indie/Folk is aimed at older generations and help to illustrate that is can be enjoyed by younger, more youthful generations.
The majority of music videos within the Indie/Folk genre use two different approaches when creating a video; the first focusing closely on the band/singer, and the second following a storyline. This is approach we decided to take, and felt we could use this as a means of representing the more youthful aspect of the genre. This is evident within our film through our use of a young actress as this helps our target audience relate to the events within the video.
Unlike traditional Indie videos we did not include any shots of the instruments that are present within our chosen song, as this was a creative decision that enabled us to challenge the customary
conventions of Indie videos.
This is a clip from ‘Evening/Morning’ by Bombay Bicycle Club
This is a clip from ‘A-Punk’ by Vampire Weekend
Another convention that we decided not to follow when creating our video was the sense of ambiguity that is often present in the large proportion of Indie videos. It is clear when watching our video that we have not followed this convention as we wanted to focus closely on love throughout and by using ambiguity within our video would be unnecessary. Further illustrating how we have challenged the traditional conventions of the Indie genre.
Taylor Swift, a 17 year old country/folk singer in the US was a major influence when creating our music video as we liked the way in which her music videos are strongly orientated by the storyline.
One song in particular that we used for inspiration was ‘You Belong With Me’.
Within this clip she is seen to be sitting on her bed whilst she is sad about her love for a boy:
This is something we decided to incorporate into our film as there is a point in the song where we feel the singer is upset about something in the past.
Taylor Swift’s song is very girly and is aimed at a similar age range that we are aiming our video at. However despite incorporating this into our filming we decided to remove this aspect from our final film as it added a negative spin to our film that we did not want to include as we were aiming to focus more closely on the positive aspects of this relationship.
This scene where the couple are visible to be happy whist the are with each other is something we incorporated throughout our film, as we felt it was important to include a large number of shots where the couple in our film are seen to be happy as our video focuses on the positive factors of the relationship and her happiness throughout.
Throughout our music video it is clear that we have integrated many aspects of videos that are visible within other music videos of songs that are presently in the charts as this is something we view everyday. Therefore despite trying to be as original as possible during our video, naturally, we based our video on professional ones.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Whilst we were planning our ancillary tasks, we wanted there to be a clear creative link between the film and our two chosen tasks. This would provide a sense of continuity between our products and help to make them more distinctive and recognisable to our target audience.
The options for our ancillary tasks were:
-CD/DVD Cover
-Magazine Advertisement
-Website
We decided to do a DVD cover and a Magazine Advertisement as we felt we did not have the skills required to create a website at a high standard, particularly as we spent a long time filming and editing our film that we had anticipated, due to bad weather and various problems with the filming equipment.
Whilst creating our ancillary tasks, we felt it was very important to incorporate a sense of continuity into the products, as this would help with possible distribution of the product in the future (if these were actual products within the music industry) as this would make it easy for the audience to recognise the links between both the video, DVD and Magazine advertisement.
We included a sense of continuity firstly by using colours that were present throughout the video, for example, we decided to show Leah wearing a top that she wears during the music video, in the magazine advertisement:
As this is an easily recognisable link between the video and the advertisement.
With this idea of continuity in mind we chose the colours that would be present in both the DVD cover and the advertisement. We chose the colours, red, grey, black and white to feature predominantly throughout as we felt these colours created an ‘indie’ image as they were not overly bold and garish, and they were not too bland and pale (which generally appeals to an older audience). These colours also helped to appeal to our target audience which were predominantly females aged 15-25, however there is also a sense of ambiguity about the colours that helped to appeal to the small percentage of males that are attracted to this type of indie music. We also chose these colours as they appeared often within our film, for example red feature a lot in her clothes and in the rose she is holding towards the end and grey is present within the sky and in the roads.
The font we used throughout both tasks is quite distinguishable and edgy, which we felt would appeal more to our target audience. We also decided to use the same fonts throughout both ancillary tasks, as we felt the sense of continuity would be lost if we did not use the same fonts throughout.
We also made a creative decision to include screen grabs on the back of the DVD cover. This provided an instant connection between the video and the DVD, which is then followed through by including the DVD within the magazine advertisement.
The screen shots that we included were ones that we felt best represented the music video such as screenshots of our actress while she is singing as well as screenshots of the couple together as this is the focus of the video itself.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
As a group, we decided it was quite important to collect some audience feedback especially as we had spent 3 months on the production of the film; we were interested to see what other people thought about our video.
We used two methods of audience research, one being a questionnaire and another was carried out by using a flip camcorder to interview people on their thoughts on our ideas for the film.
Firstly, we conducted questionnaires to find out what sort of music people enjoy listening to and what they feel is important to be included in music videos. We conducted this by sending out 20 questionnaires to males and females aged 15 -18. We found, this was very quick and effective and enabled us to gain a lot of data in a very short space of time. We did however suffer a few problems, mainly from lack of data due to small sample numbers, we should have sent out possibly 10 more questionnaires to get a more representative view from our audience. It may also have been useful if we had gained a wider demographic as our questionnaires were only distributed to people aged 15 – 18, who were white, middle class people. These were people at our school and we found this to be quite limiting as we did not collect a rounded set of results especially as we discovered that indie/folk was largely aimed at people aging from 15 – 30 after more research into the genre.
These are the questions that we asked:
1. Which sex are you? Please circle
Male Female
2. How old are you? Please circle
13-15 16-18 19-22 23+
3. What is your favourite genre of music? Please circle two answers
Pop Hip-hop Indie Rap Folk Rock R&B Metal Club Jazz
4. How important is it to you that the artist can be seen singing the lyrics of the music video? Please circle
Very Partially Irrelevant
5. Why do you watch music videos? Circle two answers
To see the artist themselves The storyline Consolation Visual effects To listen to the music
6. How important is it to you that the lyrics are reflected in the music video? Please circle one
Very Partially Irrelevant
As we wanted to produce a music video aimed at this age group, asking them for ideas on our chosen genre proved to be quite helpful, particularly through using the flip camera, we were able to adjust our ideas to suit our target audience.
Flip cameras are an easy way to record footage and upload them onto a computer. It was a very spontaneous to use these, as our teacher had recently bought one and we decided it would be a different way of collecting data and ideas from our target audience.
One idea we were keen to get feedback on was the idea of using a green screen. When watching our film, you will see that we used a stop motion effect when filming our couple doing certain motions, such as holding hands. Our original idea was to film this on a green screen so we could add certain effects such as hearts, and a wand.
Audience feedback on this idea actually came out to show that most people favoured this idea, as they believed it was innovative and would add character to our video. Right up until we started filming, we were sure we were going to use a green screen, and this was mainly down to the encouraging response from the audience. However, the screen that we had access to at school was quite small and would not allow us to show a long shot of the couple, which is what we desired. However this is not what eventually swayed our decision, as we did not want to compromise our original ideas. Ultimately, we did not want to risk having poor footage and poor quality of shots and decided against using a green screen in the end.
Finally we conducted audience research after we had completed our music video. We collected a number of comments that helped us to see how others viewed our video, enabling us to gain a different perspective.
From audience research we learnt that:
• People liked the idea of trying to introduce folk music to younger ages
• They liked the childlike feel to the video as it suited the lyrics of the song
• They liked the fact that we entered her head, hence entered her thoughts to show where the songs perspective was coming from
• They liked the stop motion effect to show a change in scenario
• They thought some scenes looked rather staged and unnatural
• They thought the quality of the picture could have been better
Generally, we were pleased with this audience feedback, and felt that the negative comments can be used constructively for the future as something to build on.
If we had another chance to do our video again, I think we would have made a few changes.
Firstly, I feel we may not have made our video so simplistic, as we could have used this as an opportunity to show what we were capable of doing with the technology that was available to us; however we did feel this was very contradictory, as the majority of indie videos have a prominent simplistic theme throughout. It would also have been a good idea to shoot our video in the summer as this is generally thought to be a ‘happier’ more light-hearted time of the year and one that would most likely reflect the mood of the lyrics and song better than winter which is when we shot our video.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used technology throughout the production of our music video.
During the planning stage of the music video, we used very simple forms of technology, such as Microsoft Word to write down certain ideas, and to write our questionnaire. Microsoft Word is a very simple form of technology and it helped us to organise our documents to make them easy to comprehend.
We used emails to communicate with the manager of Sarah Russell. Due to copyright laws, we needed permission from the manager inorder to use the song Finally Found.
All that was available to us was an email address, so we used this to contact him. Below is the email we recieved from him, that allowed us to use her song.
(Hannah Contacted him using her email address as we felt one person contacting was better that all three of us.)
Hi Hannah,
I've just got to my hotel and got on the internet.
That's no problem at all using that song. Keep me posted with how you are getting on
Best,
Dave Swallow
Audio Engineer / Tour Manager / Tour Consultant
Analogue Engineering & Productions
Recent Credits:
La Roux Ane Brun Here and Now Seasick Steve The Hoosiers
We also used blogger to document the progress of our video. Blogger.com is an easy way to instantly post a document online. Blogger was an easy way to document our progress with regards to planning and production.
As mentioned previously, we used a flip camcorder to document our research and planning, such as audience feedback. This was incredibly easy to use and the video footage can be uploaded on to the internet within minutes and we felt this was in innovative method of collecting data.
We used a Mac for the editing of our films.
One advantage of editing on a Mac as opposed to a PC is that a Mac has a lot more computer software available for editing films, such as iDVD and Garageband, all of which we took advantage of throughout the editing stages of our music video.
By using a Mac during the editing and production stages of our film, I felt my understanding as to how to operate one improved dramatically as I do not use a Mac on a regular basis, and now I feel much more confident in my understanding of the programmes.
One of the biggest forms of technology we used throughout our production of our music video is the Internet. We used the internet from planning, by researching existing artists such as Taylor Swift and Kate Nash (by using YouTube which helped us to collect ideas from existing media products and turn them into our own) to using the internet to document our evaluation.
When filming our film we used a DV camcorder which was simple and easy to use. Unfortunately due to shortage of equipment we were unable to use a HD camcorder which may be the cause of a large amount of criticism regarding the visual quality of the film. The DV camcorder was easy to use and was very easy to transfer onto Final Cut Express.
Final Cut Express is an editing programme created by Apple Inc. We used Final Cut Express for the entirety of editing our film. Putting the film onto Final Cut Express from a DV camera was very simple, and took less than an hour. From this, we then watched the footage through and looked at which scenes worked, which needed more footage, and which ones we should delete completely. It was very easy to remove the scenes we felt were unnecessary and re-work the ones that were suitable for what we were trying to achieve.
When editing our film, we found that the colouring of our video was not quite right. Some scenes looked very dull, due to the fact that we filmed in winter. We used Final Cut Express to colour correct the colour of the picture. For example, where the couple are sat on the bench outside, we made this lighter so that the faces were more visible.
This is a shot of Final Cut Express, the blue bar represents the visual shots and the green represents the audio.
One programme that we used that did not feature in any of our products was LiveType which is used to create animated titles and credits for a film. It was a creative decision not to include LiveType as we as a group felt this would detract from the simplicity of the video, especially when all other indie/folk music videos we researched did not include a title screen or feature credits for those that contributed to the production on the video. We felt this was something that was more appropriate for films rather than music videos.
We also used a programme called Cubase which enabled us to record audio. We used this during the production of our directors commentary. It was important for us to have a commentary, as it was another way in which we could reflect on our work. Our commentary, focused closely on the creative aspects of our video, as opposed to the production of it.
The last programme we used when editing our film was iDVD. iDVD allows you to copy your film onto a DVD and create a title menu and add music and pictures. The programme provides a number of different themes to choose from and we found a vinyl one suited the theme of our song very well. We then burnt the disc to create the finished product.
Overall the use of the various different programmes, software and technology that we used throughout our production were incredible important to the reult of the finished product and it is clear that without these different programmes we would not be able to create a product to half the standard that our music video is at.
