Bobby Celentano's Music Video Evaluation

Music video evaluation
Bobby Celentano


IN WHICH WAYS DOES YOUR MUSIC PROUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHANGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
1. Links have been made between the lyrics and the visuals in terms of the narrative. Andrew Goodwin states music videos demonstrate genre characteristics and there is a relationship between both lyrics and music, and visuals. These are two of his six points he feels are needed to successfully evaluate a music video. (“Dancing in the distraction factory” Routledge 1992). The ideas that the girl is regretting letting him go and now he doesn’t want her anymore, she can’t stop thinking about him. The overall idea was to represent him as in her subconscious, due to the fact she can’t stop thinking about him and this is why he shows up around her throughout the narrative. The music video helps to show the way in which a record company would want their artist to be represented by making them seem really down to earth, this is done using the outdoor scenery, trees, sky and also the images from the digi-pack and the magazine advert. The video represent the genre of indie/rock in the sense of clothing, as the artists are dressed in indie style clothing and also in the fact they play their own instruments puts across the rock style of the genre. We used a mixture of camera methods where we had the camera moving along with the character, for example the security camera style we used. Also still camera work was used in certain parts so as to see both the character and the artist move past the camera one after the other. In terms of mise-en-scene we used the private viewing room in the seven oaks store (with permission), a bedroom for the female character and also the roof top of a car park for the live performance. We got a few ideas from other music videos we had seen, which were not actually within our genre. Bowling for soup’s song “girl all the band guys want”(2002) gave us the idea of having the band on the T.V within the shop whilst the girl goes past, we did this by superimposing the footage onto secondary footage. Fountains of Wayne’s song “Stacy’s mom”(2003) gave us another idea, to actually have the girl watching the band on T.V whilst sat at home and this was also done by superimposing footage. The third idea came from Wyclef Jean’s song “Gone till November”(1998), this gave us the idea of having the artist follow the singer whilst singing but without her actually knowing. Our digi-pack is similar to other album covers as well as our magazine advert, as they both use the general conventions. For example the digi-pack used a barcode, production company logo, band as the main focus, names of songs, what’s on each of the cd’s/dvd’s and also band websites. The magazine advert used a release date, where the album will be available, an out of five rating, NME review, websites and also the picture of the band as the main focus to catch the viewers eye using the rule of thirds.

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?
2. As a combination the main product and ancillary texts were very effective, as the digi-pack and magazine advert really help to reflect the bands image. The idea of showing them as everyday people rather than hot shot celebs, and putting across to the audience that they are really down to earth, true artists. Also as the name of the band is ‘IWASACUBSCOUT’, it makes you think childish. Which brought us back to thoughts of school, and the idea of the writing was a result of this thought which helps to put across the bands childish side. Also the text used helps to show the genre of the band, due to the use of broken up styled text. To achieve the look, as a group we went out to take photos for our digi-pack where we included lots of woodland scenery, which we felt helped to put across how we are very natural and down to earth artists. It really just emphasised what we were trying to put across to the audience.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
3. From feedback we found that what many people enjoyed from our rough-cut was the live performance. It was said that we needed to add a narrative which we then did, and the use of more locations and shots which in turn we also did. The result of this was much more positive feedback and an overall better final product. From the feedback slips we received from other members of our class, we found that there wasn’t much we needed to change. We took on board any points people would want to see changed and it helped in terms of creating a successful final product. Its really about producing a product that appeals to the audience, and if we didn’t take into consideration their criticisms the product would not be a success.

HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?
4. We used a number of media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation of our final product. We used MySpace to try contact the band, which sadly failed due to them splitting up. YouTube was a big help in terms of us being able to view a number of the bands performances to add with our overall ideas. Final cut was used in the construction stage of the final product in terms of editing, and Photoshop was used to construct the digi-pack and magazine advert with the help of templates. Our work was all recorded on a digital camera which was then downloaded on to final cut on the Apple Mac computer, for the final editing stages. Once the music video was finished we moved on to creating the evaluation video, in which myself and Damien went back into our roles of ‘IWASACUBSCOUT’ to undergo an interview styled documentary answering these four questions. We shot the footage onto a digital camera then uploaded it onto final cut, after getting it in order we the took footage from our music video which we added so that we could show exactly what we were talking about to help give more understanding to the viewer.