anaylsis of a music video

Missing you by The Saturdays
genre: pop girlband

genre characteristics

• lots of different camera angles of the band
• close ups of individual members to start and finish the song
• use very girl based locations such as the beach and a flowery meadow and a club like resort
• use of a short dance routine - sexy dance moves used

lyrics and visuals

• the lyrics do reflect the mood of the song but there is no real connection between the two things

music and visuals

• picks up the pace of end of song and video cuts to a scene of a club where everyone is dancing.

voyeuristic treatment of body

• this is used as the girls are dressed in low cut bikinis and tops and small shorts. the floatly outfits though such as the sarongs on the beach do help to reflect the mood of the song.

Anaylsis of a music video

Panic! at the Disco - Ballard of Mona Lisa
genre: Alternative rock

genre characteristics

• camera: lots of close ups used of the lead singer and the instruments and loads of long shots used to show whole band.
• Editing: there are always cuts between the performance and narrative such as everytime the drummers beat comes in it cuts to an image of him.
• Mise - en - scene: unique costumes for the band which are old fashioned and mainly in very neutral colours creams, blacks, browns and white.
• dark low key lighting is used.

lyrics and visuals

• when stating rules such as rule 1 open all windows we see a girl cross to the window and open it.

music and visuals

• when the chrous comes in there are a lot of close ups of the lead singer and a lot of fast paced editing such as jump cuts.

close ups and motifs

• motif: always use very old fashioned style locations and videos.
• motif: use same scenery from older video before it changes
• close ups of artist and band

notion of looking and voyeursic treatment of women

• no voyeuristic views of women
• notion of looking when the door opens and we get the view that the audience are looking through the door to all the people talking inside.

mood board for our music video

A mood board is a collection of photos, texts and samples to help the rest of a group interpret your design ideas. Christina Aguilera uses mood boards to design her albums and music videos.

directors commentary planning second lesson

directors commentary planning lesson 1

For the first piece of our planning for our directors commentary we all had to do a timed response to the evaluation questions. This was a good idea as it helped us plan what we needed to focus on in our products and which bits in the video we felt were strongest in our opinion. This was good as we were not being influenced by each other. This time was good for me as it gave me the chance to really think about the improvements and strengths that we had throughout this project and how to format it in the directors commentary. After putting together all the ideas from our individual timed response we are then going to put them into a script format so we can use the ideas as our commentary.

Evaluation questions

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

In our media product there are many ways in which we have both conformed to and challenged conventions of real media products. For example, we have challenged the conventions of the main artist looking glamourous as is done by the saturdays. We have done this by making our artist, emma, look like an average everyday person so that the audience can relate more to the artist.
Our video in many ways follows the usual conventions of a music video in that we have a wide variety of shots including many close ups and long shots of the artist. We also have many shots of the main artist dancing which is common of music videos.
Our digipak follows the conventions of a digipak quite well in that we have an image of the artist on the cover along with the artists name and album name in big bold lettering. on the rear of the cover we have the track listings as well as a list of bonus features also. we have included a quote from a review on the cover as well which is common of digipak to increase sales.
Our magazine advert also conform to the conventions of a magazine advert well as it shows an image from the video as well as the artist and album name in bold lettering. We have also included a sale date and the name of the shop where it would be sold.

2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In my opinion the combination of our main product and ancillary products works very well. we have a recurring theme of the use of umbrellas both in our digipak and magazine advert which links in well with one of our strongest scenes in the video of emma with an umbrella. This theme helps to link the 3 products well and effectively promotes our product.
Our magazine advert links well with the video particularly  as the main image of our artist is a screen shot from our video. The combination of our main product and our ancillary texts works well as the ancillary texts both promote the video well and help to give some idea of the quality of the video before it's viewed.
However, our song and video is about a bad day and i fell that our ancillary texts, particularly the digipak, fail to get this message across as neither indicate a bad day.

3 - What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback indicated that their was a good link between the lyrics and the visuals throughout the video and that the message we put across in our video was clear. We have also learnt from our feedback that our video was well edited and that our audience particularly liked our split screen effect.
The feedback also indicated that more locations would have improved the video as well as a greater variety of shots, also that as the song was quite fast paced the shot durations should have been shorter to be more in keeping with the song.
From this feedback I have learnt that if I were to make this video again I would have used more shots at a faster pace to keep up with the beat of the song. I would also have used a greater variety of editing techniques to make the video more interesting to the audience.

4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction + research + planning + evaluation stages?

In the construction stage of our project we used HD video cameras to film the video as well as a speaker to play the song as we shot to help with lip syncing and timing. Once filmed we used the program final cut express to edit our video and piece it together. Throughout this editing process we also used the website blogger to blog our progress, we also used this website throughout the research and planning stages by blogging all the different pieces of research and plans we did.
We used the program photoshop in the construction of our digipaks and magazine advert to edit images and create these products by adding text and other images.
we used the powerpoint program to create our pitch for our promotional package in which we pitched the ideas for our products. On top of this we used the program word at various stages to type up various bits of research.
we used the website youtube to watch other music videos in the research stage to gather ideas for our own video and in the evaluation stage to analyse and evaluate other videos.
We also used the program Iphoto to upload images for our products during the construction stage as well as iTunes to listen to our song during the planning stage.

Evaluation individual timed response

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real music products?
The first thing about our music video is how unconventional it is especially in the artists style and how we portrayed this. We decided as the song was about a bad day it was a better idea to put the artist across as an average everyday teenage girl rather than the normal glamourous look that pop girl bands normally use. I believe this was the biggest way we challenged the conventions of a real music video. I believe by challenging the conventions of having a glamourous artist we have developed our artist into a sutiable role model. By using an everyday image we have created a way for young girls to relate to the artist. Another way we developed the conventions of our music video was we decided it should follow a storyline which is something that is rarely done by girl bands or female pop artists. By doing this I believe we created a good strong link between the lyrics and visuals which is one of Goodwin's theory points. The outfits we used as well also showed that unlike Goodwin's theory not all videos need to put women into voyeuristic outfits to be successful so this was also an example of challenging the stereotype. I found we did use the conventions for our genre effectively in our video but instead of using them like normal we altered them so they could be challenged which I think gives our video a bit of a unique edge.

How effective is the combination of your video and ancillary products?
I believe all 3 products as a combination work well together. I believe this as we managed to get across the feeling of a bad day throughout all 3 products. We decided when designing the products that our visual theme that would run through all 3 products would be umbrellas. We decided this as a group because a lot of people say they have bad days due to rain or weather and this is the link we used and assosiated with umbrellas. Between all 3 products we used the same outfits, locations and colour scheme to create a strong connection and link between the music video, digipack and magazine advert. We also used an image from our music video where our artist throws her umbrella in frustration as our magazine advert image as we believed it got across the theme well and the feeling of defeat on a bad day.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
From our audience feedback I learnt we used a great deal of matching lyrics and visuals such as when the artist sings 'woke up this morning feeling bad' we actually see an image of her waking up looking miserable and finding a text from her boyfriend saying he wants to break up. The feedback also suggest a good link between the music and visuals as there are images of her being bullied which really well match the songs mood. The dark colours also add a good link to the mood of the song. They also believed by using a mobile phone in the video we gave the impression/notion of 'looking' which standard music videos have. They also said our use of planning and thinking for shots such as panning and tracking shots was used effectively and added good variation.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?
For the construction of our video we got to use high definition (HD) cameras for the filming stage of our video these were great as it not only added detail which we couldn't see but it also gave our video an amazing quality. We also got to use photoshop and final cut this was a lot of fun as its always a new challenge to use these programmes but through using these programmes we got to add in some awesome effects to both our music video and digipack such as the spiltscreen effect used during the music video and through photoshop we created the awesome effect on the digipack where it looks like i'm standing on the field in 3 different places at once. For our media products as a group we always get assigned a new blog specific for our group on blogger. This was especially helpful during the research and planning stage as anything useful we found on the internet or any new ideas could be blogged from anywhere even home so nothing could be forgotten very easily. In our evaluation we are going to get to use the studios to film a directors commentary. Doing an evaluation as a directors commentary is new and different and interesting and should be a good way to show off more of our skills as a group with a camera and on final cut when we edit it.