Evaluation - Tani McDowell

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

We chose our song because it was a fast paced and energetic song, which we felt we could make an interesting video out of. Our Music video is indie based so we decided to research, study and watch videos in the same genre or sub-genre. Overall I think our video is quite conventional of an indie-rock video because it has usual conventions such as cutting on the beat and being fast paced, with low production qualities that are of a Do It Yourself production. We looked at a lot of indie, rock and alternate-rock videos [Vampire Weekend, Elbow] and noticed that a lot had a lot of focus on the band and their performance in them but there were also others that told a story and this was what we wanted to do as with the lyrics and since we had established contact with the an actual band we had to ask them questions about the lyrics to form some sort of basis for a narrative. Since the band King of Spain was unsigned band with no music videos of their own we wanted to make our product as authentic as possible, so we largely based our production on the live performance, tying in some narrative which related to the lyrics.

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

The combination of both our ancillary texts and main product are very effective. We used photos of two of the band members performing on stage from a previous gig that they did and blended them together to make it abstract because we wanted to carry through the conventions and genre of our indie band. Such conventions as creating the poster and CD cover from scratch, and not using a design based upon another band, as that only tends to label the band as another product of mainstream business in linking it to a major recording company (Sony, Warner, Universal, BMG, EMI). This ensures creative thinking and independence for the band as some labels grow from such independent status and gradually become more commercially oriented (often prompted by the success of one of their acts), eventually becoming subsumed by a larger conglomeration or a major label. One example of this was Creation Records, a label Alan McGee started in the 1980s on a small scale, which, in the 1990s had success with Oasis, subsequently becoming much more commercially oriented before being acquired by Sony. The important thing when designing the CD cover poster was to make sure that as a independent label it would not be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being overly "commercial" or exploitative of certain artists or trends. Examples at various times include Fat Wreck Chords, Matador Records and Sub Pop. Epitaph was often the focus of similar accusations; however in 2005 label management signed an agreement with RIAA arguably making them no longer "independent".

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

At first there were doubts that the narrative of a 'Boy & Girl' story would work with genre of the band's music. So we created numerous rough cuts and the feedback we got from the parts we had done all said that the shots of either the band's performance or the narrative were too long and it needed to be faster paced, but the narrative worked really well. Also that the media product was lacking an 'artistic dimension' with no literal or visual reference to the title of the song, so we came up with a bright strobe light with a fast blinking effect to reference the title and a flicker head lamp to flicker at 10 frames a second the tracks lyrics. For our rough cut we had the vision of how we wanted it to be produced but still had a lot of gaps missing, such as artistic creativity and using the style of a conventional independent rock music video. Feedback from our peers was good to receive as our video is an indie genre (specifically lo-fi and it is an underground band) but also the fact that our audience would mainly have been teenagers and to get feedback from them is very important as they would be the ones who enjoy it most.

Our genre characteristics; people thought it was very typically portrayed in an indie style by having young actors, the clothing is typical of average low/working class person and promoting artists who where similar clothes, that the narrative and footage is shown well. Thanks to the feedback we managed to pull through and make a good music video, by adding in more shots at random times so that the video had a much faster pace to it as well as adding an 'artistic dimension' to the music video to make it abstract and a little weird/odd in.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used a lot of technology in planning and creating our music video. We used this blog on ‘Blogger’ to record all the planning, research and progress we did, and we also used Final Cut Pro 7 to get all the clips of our video together, to edit and create the video. I think creating our music video would have been a lot harder and more time consuming without the use of the Final Cut Pro Studio editing system and instead used iMovie 09. The reason why we used Final Cut Pro 7 to edit our music video was because we could match specific frame rates of the video with the lip movements of the individual band members. This made it more suitable to use when we noticed the lip syncing problems that another group was having when using iMovie 09. The editing system of iMovie 09 is not so precise with individual frame rates and it is very limited in editing functions in comparison to the amount of editing functions that be done with Final Cut Pro. For instance when applying a visual effect to the video with Final Cut Pro we adjust the position of the visual effect so that it the effect would focus on one specific area within the video, such as adjusting a bright yellow coloured focus on the band member’s faces while surrounding the background with dark green colouring. The system for iMovie 09 is clearly not advanced enough to make more than basic editing additions to the video.

The Internet played a key role in the inspiration and planning throughout our objective, which I believe had the biggest effect out of all new media technologies on our music video. We also used Photoshop to create our ancillary products. We filmed all our footage on a JVC HD camera (don't know, with which it was easy to transfer the footage onto the computer, and import it into Final Cut. In terms of how difficult it was to sync the shots, we were quite lucky in the fact that a lot of the shots seemed to sync themselves without much effort, which is how we managed to get such a great looking video made in such a short amount of time. This helped ease the creation of the video. In conjunction with the cameras, we used a tripod to hold the camera in static positions; this was especially helpful when it came to close up shots and hand held camera movements for a shaky, but steady, panning to not set up the band as an established play group but as a wild, rebellious underground movement.

Photoshop played a big part in our overall completion of all our ancillary tasks. We used it to create our poster and CD track cover. We initially came across the problem of having the incorrect size format for the CD track cover and the improper font for the poster advertising the band's live performances which branded the band as merely another unheard of labelled band trying to make its debut. We overcame this dilemma by downloading free brush tools from a website that we found from Google.

In conclusion I am very proud in having worked with an actual band and creating a first official demo music video for them before anyone else; however, I am disappointed that we did not use green to enhance the music video. It is not that we did not attempt try to use green screen but because of the quality resolution of the Panasonic SDR-H8 HDD camera had poor image quality compared to the image resolution of images placed into the background using green screen. Any images played into the music video using green screen would have obscured and contrast the footage of the narrative and the band's performance in the recording studio by standing out too much and not blending in with the rest video.

Audience Feedback

The general feedback that we have received of the final cut of our music video from our peers and target audience, 16-28 as well as older audience members outside our target audience has been generally well received with positive remarks on the input of using an actual band to perform for our project. The narrative has also been appreciated for not subtracting or distracting any of the overall performance of the band. It has been noted for having a very typically portrayal in an indie style by having young actors, the clothing is typical and promoting artists who where similar clothes. Our target audience of 18-25 have responded very well to the video but felt that the age of the actors in the narrative didn't feel very appealing and unable to relate to them because of their young age but they well liked the performance, look and feel of the band that was woven around them. Unfortunately we had no young adult looking actors to work with, nor could we find any to help us, so we stuck with the young actors that we had. As a result the video perked up an small interest of 15-18 which was unexpected for us because we thought they would find the genre of the track and the fact that it was unknown band uninteresting.

The feedback that we have received from the band, King of Spain, has been very positive over the final out come of the video and are currently considering ways of their own to spread and use the video for themselves for future reference. This has given us the possibility of during a more 'professional' music video for the band in the future should the need be.

CD Cover Research

This is CD cover for the British indie-rock band Radiohead.The Bends was the first of the band's full-length records with artwork by Stanley Donwood, in collaboration with Yorke, who went under the name "The White Chocolate Farm" (later shortened to Tchock). Originally Yorke had wanted to use an image of an iron lung as the cover, but he lost it. The eventual album cover was created at the last minute by morphing a photograph taken by Donwood of a medical dummy with Yorke's own face. It is also the last Radiohead album whose liner notes and artwork include pictures of the band members. This CD cover is a postmodern representation of the band Radiohead has it does not include all members of band in a group mid shot of each other has most commonly found with music bands. Using constructed artwork rather than a group picture of a band or a computer generated image, establishes that the band has creativity and originality, even if the art work is inspired by someone else's piece of work, that their are creating from scratch and is a statement that the band is marketing their work not themselves to the consumers. The medical dummy is modelled after Radiohead band member Thom Yorke, the lead vocalist and songwriter. This dummy could be an interpretation of how making the main image focus of the CD cover on the band members facial image rather than their work, then they would be considered another marketing gimmick of the music label industry. This is not standard norm of independent music artists who sell themselves out and lose their individuality as portrayed by the dummy modelled after a band member.

Treatment of the music video

Name of artist: King of Spain

Title of track: Flick the Switch

Outline of ideas:

• Boy meets Girl story and fall for each at first sight.
• Boy can't afford to spend money on Girl since he his broke but once he reveals this to the Girl, she reveals that she is broke as well and the Boy and Girl make up establishing their relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend.
• Lyrics of the song to appear when the chorus sings "and all I want is you / and all I want is you" over footage of the band's performance in the studio whenever they sing those lyrics
• 360 degree pan angle movement of the Boy and Girl in a dark room with different colours blooming in sync with the drum beats.
• A bright strobe light flickering on & off to reference the title of song.
• Stylised use of colouring to make the performance int he studio more interesting.

Resources need:

• Two actors (17-25) one boy and one girl
• Final Cut Pro 7 editing system
• An empty wallet and an empty purse
• Stage lights or another source of high powered lighting
• Dimmer lights and flicker lights
• Two to three cameras with high definition, at least one hand held camera
• A tripod
• A busy shopping district

Justification of ideas in relation to genre and artist:

• The ideas of the narrative is a different, if not opposite, interpretation of the band's narrative of the song. As the song was about a man having dominate control over of his sexual desire because he could spend tons of money on her and stuff she wanted but couldn't get.
• Hand held camera filming for edgy camera movement for a free roaming structure.
• The 360 degree pan movement with different blooming colours serves to act as a sense of weirdness or unexplained accepted sequence to enhance the pleasure viewing of the video.
• The reference to the title with a flickering light tells or gives meaning to the audience a reason as to why its is referenced in the song. This is used with the flashing of the lyrics playing footage of the band as it adds an artistic dimension to it, and serves as a reference to the song.
• Rock and Indie-rock bands often focus on the band's performance but requires ways to keep the audience interested in watching the performance. So using stylised colours and visual effects to make the band's performance more artistic, more edgy and less boring.

This is our poster to promote King of Spain's tour. 'Come Play With me' is an actual tour that is going to happen this summer and King of Spain will be taking part, The tour is promoted by 'Shifty Disco'.

For this poster I have used original pictures from the band member that were available at their website. The title on the poster is part of the actual King of Spain Logo, with I cropped and enlarged to fit the picture. This poster is supposed to be advertising the band and their upcoming performances; the style of the poster is pretty much my original idea, I tried to make as original as possible, but the way that I have placed the name of the places they will be performing was something that I saw in a NME magazine.

STEP BY STEP

1) This is the first image I used, I decided to use the 'sponge' effect to make nearly everything black and white so that the guitar would stand out more, and I also enlarged the picture a little and tilted it slight to the right.

2) Then I got the lead singer's picture and enlarged it as well, and decreased the opacity of the picture so that it had this transparent look, so we are able to see both pictures, and also I thought that the blending effect looked really good and unique.

3) After I used the bands original logo at the bottom of the poster, and from that logo I used a tool to crop the title 'King of Spain' from their original logo. Also I used an effect to change the colour of their logo and make it sort of negative and white so that it would stand out.

4) Then I added the extra information like the 'website' at the bottom if people wish to know more about the tour. and added the name of the tour 'Come Play With Me'

Finally I added the name of the places they would be playing and tilted it to the left to make it more appealing and original.

Narrative Storyboard

Bibliography and band web links

List of references for sources of information used to analyse and discuss music videos, and for information regarding the band King of Spain:

• Wikipedia for some basic information on Michel Gondry, Independent music genre and lo-fi music
• The Internet Movie Database
• The King of Spain home website and its MySpace and Facebook pages: www.myspace.com/kingofspainmusic, http://kingofspain.co.uk/, http://twitter.com/kingofspainuk
• Shifty Disco website www.shiftydisco.co.uk
• LongRoadMedia.com
• YouTube.com
• Media Magazine

Auteur Study: Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry is a French film, commercial and music video director and an Academy Award-winning screenwriter. He is noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scene. He has scripted inspiring imagery in the form of commercials, music videos, shorts, feature films, and other media. He is partially credited with reviving the music-video format in the 1990's. Michel Gondry's age is deceiving, however: his works are marked with a child-like explorative eye. Like old-school hip-hop Gondry's films are his playground. He tells stories about people and their lives while questioning our definitions of reality. His characters are honest and human and his worlds playfully reflect the interaction between the worlds we live in: nature, society, and the mind.

In his video clips and commercials, he was a pioneer for a lot of things. For example the video clip he made for IAM (Je danse le Mia) was the first video clip using the morphing technics. And above all he invented the technique of several cameras taking pictures in the same time around somebody. This technique was used for the first time in a commercial for insurance, then in Björk's Army of Me" video clip and in The Matrix (1999).

His career as a filmmaker began with creating music videos for the French rock band Oui Oui, in which he also served as a drummer. The style of his videos for Oui Oui caught the attention of music artist björk who asked him to direct the video for her song "Human Behaviour". The collaboration proved long-lasting, with Gondry directing a total of seven music videos for Björk. Other artists who have collaborated with Gondry on more than one occasion includeDaft Punk, The White Stripes, The Chemical Brothers, The Vines, Steriogram, Radiohead, and Beck. Gondry has also created numerous television commercials.

Our Top Ten Music Videos

The previous post of our Top Ten Music videos did not include video links to view them. For analysis on these music videos please look for our older post under the same name under our December archive of the blog as this post does not contain the analysis of the following music videos.

The embedding code for the Daft Punk - Around the World music video is disabled, so unfortunately we can't show it.

Short Version

Long Version

Flick the Switch music video

King of Spain

This is the band we have filmed for the performance of our music video project called King of Spain. We first developed an interest in the band when we sampled their music on their MySpace page when we were looking for a 3 minute track to use in the video. What particular peeked our interest in the band was the demo version of their song Flick the Switch, which after several listenings to the song we instantly knew that this was the song we wanted to use for the video because we felt that the song had depth and different interpretations without the restriction of a defined narrative by the lyrics. Also because the band was unlabelled and not signed on to create any of their songs into a music video by a record company, this meant that we didn't have to follow a similar narrative or structure that was already predefined by previous videos.

Their website and blogs told us that their next gig would be in London at the Notting Hill performing ArtsClub. We then arranged with the club manager to get permission to film the band performing at the club, which we were allowed to do. After King of Spain's performance at the club our group leader asked them to perform for our music video which the band happily agreed to for us. Thus our contact with the band was arranged and we begin pitching and sharing our ideas with the band for the music video. Since we were using a demo version of the song 'Flick the Switch' the band gave us the permission to place the video on YouTube as the official Demo music video version to the song. The studio performance took place in a private recording room at East Putney.

King Of Spain, who have been together for 3 years, were also featured on ShiftyDisco10, a triple CD compilation album celebrating the Indie label’s tenth birthday back in 2007. They also run 'flux=rad', a regular night at London's legendary 12 Bar Club aimed at showcasing the best in lo-fi/alternative music.

Genre Analysis

Indie rock is a genre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s and earlier.

This term is used to describe the means of production and distribution of independent underground music.

A variety of musical genres and subgenres with varying degrees of overlap are associated with indie rock. Some of these include lo-fi, post-rock, sadcore, C86, mathrock, shoegaze/dream pop, jangle pop, indie pop, noise rock, noise pop, riot grrrl, post-hardcore, tweet pop, alt-country, post-punk revival, dance-punk, indie punk, baroque pop, and indietronica.

Modern indie rock is often traced back to The Velvet Underground's self-titled debut album, released in 1967, which was ranked #7 on Blender's list of the 100 greatest indie rock albums.

Allmusic notes that every "left-of-center rock movement owes an audible debt" to this album. The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet sounds is also commonly listed as a highly influential starting point. Later, the punk movement of the 1970s had a direct impact on the DIY aesthetic that later became a cornerstone of indie rock.

In 1980 the term ‘alternative rock’ was more or less the same as indie rock.

Since early 1980s indie music charts have been complied here in the UK.

Aztec Camera , Josef K, Orange Juice where some of the indie pop artists that have emerged from a guitar-based alternative rock that dominated the indie charts.

Some of the British indie rock bands of the 1980s were The Smiths, The Stone Roses, and others who has influenced directly 1990s alternative rock movements such as Shoegazing and Britpop.

In the United States, the term indie rock was particularly associated with the abrasive, distortion-heavy sounds of Husker Dur, Sonic Youth, Meat Puppets, Dinossour Jr, The Replacements, and Pixies.

1990s brought major changes to alternative rock because bands such as Nirvana broke into the mainstream, widespreading exposure, which sort of contradicts the whole ‘underground music’. Bands such as Green Day and The Offspring have also become popular and where grouped as ‘alternative’. After that the meaning of the term alternative changed as the mainstream success attracted major-label companies.

So with this the term ‘alternative’ lost the original counter-cultural meaning and, the term ‘indie rock’ became associated with the bands and genres that remained underground.

The emo movement, which had grown out of the hardcre punk scene in the 1980s with bands like Rites of Spring, gained popularity as the 1990s progressed.Sunny Day Real Estate,The Promise Ring, The Get Up Kids and others brought a more melodic sound to the genre. Weezer's Pinkerton introduced the genre to a wider and more mainstream audience. Years later, the term "emo" would be applied to a wider variety of more mainstream bands by the music press.

In recent years, the line between indie and mainstream has become increasingly blurred, with traditionally indie bands like Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie signing major label contracts. Radiohead ended their contract with EMI and self-released their seventh album, In Rainbows, in 2007.Indie rock bands without major label backing increasingly turned to the internet for promotion, as music review web sites that specialize in indie music such as Pitchfork Media saw their influence grow.

Websites such as MySpace and blogs have helped some of these bands to commercialize their works and eventually have ‘followers’ that would go to their shows in bars and pubs.

Some people have say that indie rock is the sort of thing that you cant really explain what it is, but they know it when they hear it. It's loud and despicable, or quiet and polite, careless and sloppy, or carefully composed, complex and pretentious, or simple and unassuming, and, to the fans who ear it it’s the cooler and more relevant than any other style of music, just buy the simple fact that it has its own style.

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Lo-Fi - is a term used to describe music in which the sound is of a lower quality than the usual standard. The qualities of lo-fi are usually achieved by either degrading the quality of the recorded audio, or using certain equipment.

Recent uses of the phrase has led to it becoming a genre, although it still remains as an aesthetic in music recording practice.

Lo-fi's roots can be dated as far back as a set of live cylinder recordings created in 1900–04 by Lionel Mapleson from a catwalk 40 ft (12 m) above the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.

In the same historical period, commercial field recordings of folk music had begun to be created in many nations of the world, recorded catch-as-catch-can by early record producers such as Fred Gaisberg of HMV.

It was not until Bob Dylan decided in 1975 to officially release a set of The Basement Tapes first recorded as music publisher demos in 1967, that the first lo-fi pop music milestone was reached.

Indie and Genre

The word "indie" is often used to refer specifically to various genres or sounds. During the 1980s, "indie" was synonymous in Great Britain with jangly guitar pop of the C-86 movement. During the 1990s a lot of Britpop bands were referred to as "indie", despite most of the movement being signed to major labels and dominating sales charts. More recently, the word "indie" is sometimes used as a synonym for new wave revivalist bands such as Franz Ferdinand and The Killers. The word "indie" is sometimes used as a synonym for alternative, a word which often bears the stigma of being associated with cynically manufactured mass-market teen-rebellion music from major labels. Such usages of "indie" may be considered inaccurate for various reasons: for one, stylistic qualities are often not accurately correlated to commercial independence or adherence to indie principles (this is particularly true when a sound becomes popular, its leading exponents are signed by major labels and more success-oriented bands and production teams attempt to imitate the style; this ultimately culminates in commercially driven artists sporting the same stylistic traits the "indie" artists of a year ago had). Secondly, however pervasive any style of music (even one as broadly defined as "guitar pop" or "post-punk rock") may become at a particular time, it by definition cannot embody all of indie music, as, by indie's nature, there will be indie artists, labels and entire local scenes operating outside of this style and its definitions.

Indie Culture

There are a number of cultural traits which could be more useful in pinpointing what "indie" is about than specific musical styles or commercial ownership. Indie artists are concerned more with self-expression than commercial considerations (though, again, this is a stance that is affected by many artists, including hugely commercially successful ones). A do-it-yourself sensibility, which originated with punk in the 1970s, is often associated with indie, with people in the scene being involved in bands, and labels. Indie often has an internationalist outlook, which stems from a sense of solidarity with other fans, bands and labels in other countries who share one's particular sensibilities; small indie labels will often distribute records for similar labels from abroad, and indie bands will often go on self-funded tours of other cities and countries, where those in the local indie scenes will invariably help organise gigs and often provide accommodation and other support.