This feedback was mainly directed at the continuity of our video. Comments made were that the video as a whole flowed nicely and that the camera transitions were good. These are obviously great comments to hear because it means that we had smooth continuity throughout which is one of the most important points for a narrative based music video or any film in general.
Sound quality was also mentioned in a good light, which i was actually quite surprised about as i thought the sound could of been better as it was just a basic small studio recording, but if the audience thought it was good then it's clearly not as bigger problem as I thought. If we were to do it again though, I think I would still try to get hold of a better recording even if this means setting it up and recording ourselves.
By looking at this feedback it's clear that our storyline worked well overall, especially how it fitted with the music. I watched our music video again after seeing this feedback and saw an example of when the "mood of the music fitted with the story" The example is where me and Nathan are sat on the sofa and I look annoyed with him because the music goes into a slightly more serious tone and starts to build up like the story does. It also comes in with the lyrics "see now you're having fun" which creates a sarcastic view, again fitting well with the story.
Another comment was that they enjoyed the ending and thought it was good. Creating a satisfying ending was something we aimed to do as we felt it would be a little annoying for audiences if we left the love based story on a cliffhanger.
From this persons feedback we learnt that generally our editing worked well however, we maybe shouldn't of cut back to the band as much as we did. This could be because it disturbed the story too much or just looked a bit messy.
Our media product conforms to many different forms and conventions of real media products as we use certain things and events that are typically associated with teens/youth because they are our target audience. We conform to ideologies of typical teens such as the 'boy likes girl' love story which has been in many other music videos as it's a typical story that a lot of people can relate to. An example we looked at in our research was New Found Glory's song - Dressed to Kill, where both of the main characters like each other but they are unaware and this maintains throughout the video and then ends on a cliff hanger. We were inspired by this video and decided to use the general outline of the story and develop it a little more, as our ending would be a resolved happy one. There are many different categories that a music video can fall into which are performance, narrative, artistic/stylistic and original. We wanted ours to be narrative and performance so that the audience had something interesting to watch as well as seeing who the band was, however when creating out video we were unable to get hold of the singer, so our video is challenging the normal conventions of a music video as it doesn’t show the singer during the whole video, or the other band members faces. Most videos within the pop punk genre use performance throughout for example, Forever the Sickest Kids – Whoa Oh, All Time Low – Weightless and Blink 182 – Feeling This.
The pop punk genre often uses the setting of a gig or a party, for example You Me At Six – Gossip and Jimmy Eat World – The Middle, these videos often use sex as a form of advertising to people. Our original idea was to conform to these conventions within the genre because we knew that parties, gigs and sex are associated with teenagers quite a lot and we wanted to make sure that our video applied enough to our target audience. However, we encountered many problems when trying to film these scenes, one main one being that we didn’t have the full band and also not enough people to replicate a gig so we started to re-think ideas and found that we were able to experiment with the different forms and challenge them in a way that worked for our music video.
Pop punk attracts a mixture of mainstream and non-mainstream audiences because the genre often lies between the two. The edgy guitars and punk side to this genre is what puts it in the non-mainstream area meaning that audiences would be interested and entertained by underground culture and unconventional approaches such as Sum 41’s video for ‘Fat Lip’ which consists of loads of punk/rock/grunge orientated people having some sort of gig outside in what looks like a previous factory or building area, with scenes of people skating around and dressed in foil covered boxes which is definitely not mainstream to say the least. Our music video challenges this because we stick to quite mainstream themes and events throughout such as a typical ‘love story’ between two young people which can be seen in many pop videos such as Justin Bieber - Baby. This then means that we are conforming to the pop side of the genre by continuing the mainstream themes and ideas behind some of them.
In most music videos, be it pop punk or R&B, there is nearly always video footage of the singer and the other members of the bands faces for example A Day To Remember – Have Faith In Me and Paramore – Misery Business. Now as we weren’t able to get hold of the singer, we couldn’t film them, however if we wanted to we could’ve got someone to pretend but as we said before we thought this would a good opportunity to experiment with these particular conventions, especially as the narrative style to our video conformed to the mainstream and pop part of the genre quite a lot. So we decided against having footage of a singer which therefore challenges these forms and conventions of making the lead singer the main focus of the video which is often what usually happens, it only takes one look at any of Paramore’s videos to see that Hayley Williams gets much more exposure during their music videos than any of the band.
In most music videos of all genres, the people who create the video will first listen and interpret the lyrics of the track so that they understand what the song is actually about. This is often used especially for narrative videos because they can then base the story around the lyrical meaning so that the piece as a whole makes sense and fits together. We used this idea because we didn’t want to have a video that didn’t match up to the lyrics as it would probably leave the audience quite confused unless we created something very abstract. When going through the lyrics we got from it that it the girl in this story already has a boyfriend or is already dancing with a different guy and throughout the song the other guy who wants her is consistent in trying to get through to her by saying and proving how much happier she will be with him instead of the guy she's dancing with. We then developed this idea more and created the narrative through filming so that the two seemed to go together. One way we did this was by matching up the scene where the girl is sat on the sofa looking bored and annoyed with her boyfriend next to her, with the section of the song that has the lyrics “see now you’re having fun” to create a sarcastic view that fits the storyline.
When editing another common thing with music videos is that they cut on the beat on each shot to enhance the bridge between the track and the video and make it look more seamless for example All Time Low - Weightless. Our video uses this technique because we wanted to create a more polished product instead of one that looked sloppy and unfinished.
This is the inside for my digi-pak design, as you can see i have a very simple design for the place where the CD goes but still kept the same colours and themes throughout. I've conformed to the conventions of other digi-paks by giving a short bit of information on who is in the band and what they do and keeping the same sort of image of the trainer with the photcopy effect on it.
This is the front and back cover for my digi-pak, and again i have stuck to the general conventions of digi-paks by having the barcode, website and other contact information on the back.
