Evaluation

The Genre of music we were working with was Electro Pop.Genre characteristics for electro pop include, Dance routine, Perfomance and lipsyncing.

Our Product’s were a music video, advert poster and a dig pack for the artist’s Cut Copy and specifically their song light and music. The song is of Electro pop genre with hints of Dance and Indie rock.

Our video is a narrative of the song. The story we tried to illustrate with the video was that of a band member performing the track under the influence of drugs and ‘tripping’ out on the streets. The main thought process that lead us to choose this scenario is that the genre characteristic highly associated with electro pop is the use and presence of party drugs. We took this into account and decided to go with it, as it would be something the audience would be familiar with.

The more common or conventional format for a band music video is one in which all the band members are presented and usually involves a choreographed dance routine. Therefore in comparison , our music video was different to the convention , as it focused on one character rather than a whole band. However we still incorporated most of the conventions of a band music video such as, lip-syncing and a performance.

The video is focused on one character , the character takes a pill and starts to trip out. Because the pill taking is right at the start of the music video it gives the viewer an idea of what the video is about as well as keep them engaged to see how events unfold as a result of the character taking the pill.

Our video was conventional in terms of the way approached the ideas of lip-syncing and having a performance. We used Goodwin’s analysis of music videos to research how other electro bands went about having a performance in their music video. One of music video in particular that caught our attention was the Music video of ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ By Prodigy. This video was the most similar video to what our pre production ideas where. This is because we intended to have the video mainly recorded by Point Of view shots and these are heavily used in the video smack my bitch. Particularly the opening scene of the smack my bitch up video is similar to ours as both videos start in a bathroom showing the character getting ready to go on a night out through point of view shots. Another point of Goodwin’s that we took on board was the notion of looking and voyeuristic treatment of the female body. In one scene we had our character walking past a shop that sells female underwear and him walking up close to the window to take a look and he starts to touch the window in a sexually suggestive way.

Our music video , poster and dig pack compliment each other a items of promotional use. We used each one to target a specific aspect of marketing. The video features very little presence of a band , this is was so that the song and narrative of the video where the main focus of the audience. The advertising poster on the other hand features a large picture of the band on it. This is because the poster as a media tool is more suitable to rely a more detailed representation of the band as interviews and comments from the band where on it in order for the audience to have a better understanding of the band. The DVD cover as a promotional tool was focused on selling the whole package and more importantly the band , as a brand. It therefore featured the cut copy logo as the sticking image on the design of the cover. This makes the DVD easily recognisable and easily associated with the band cut copy.

Audience feedback for the final product was positive. Through out the production we found that feedback was important in helping as achieve the final product that we did. After our first filming session we learnt from the feedback the main thing that was missing from our video was a performance and lip-syncing. We were going to include these in our final product anyway but the feedback emphasised the importance of having a performance and lip-syncing in our video.

We also learnt that the story/narrative of our video was clear and well understood by the audience as the audience saw the relation between the character taking the pill and tripping out with the visual effects we used such as the kaleidoscope effect which emphasised the character being under the influence.The psychedelic lights with the electronic bass line. This was the feedback we got based on Goodwin’s first point of analysis which is does the music video represent genre characteristics, ’Possible drug influence mixed with filter effects, kaleidoscope. Also drugs are connected with electronic music nowadays. Would expect more lip syncing for genre of music.’


However we also learnt some negatives from the feedback such as , not enough lip syncing. from this we have learnt that in order to create a very good product there should be a proportionally amount of a lip-syncing or performance to go with the narrative/story of the video.

Our video project was created with the use of programs and applications such as , Mozilla firefox, Final Cut, Photo booth and various internet based resources such as you tube, wikipedia, and blogger. These applications and software were very useful as they were used for most of the work that we did. Most of our research of videos and ideas was internet based mainly on the video sharing site you tube. this gave us an almost unlimited access to the media products we wanted to view. Watching music video’s on you tube enabled us to compare existing products to the video ideas that we had. Due to copy right concerns we had to contact the band in order to get their approval for us to use their song and create a music video for it, we where able to contact the my space through the social networking site My space. Without out the technology we had this would have been a very lengthy process to try and get hold of the band and would have hindered us from progressing to the pre production stage.

Chisanga P.