Hazel-Jane's A2 Media Blog: February 2013

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When we first started the process of making a music video for a new artist, we had to consider the factor of reaching out and connecting to our audience. As our artist, Amy’s Ghost, has its own identity of their genre of music; a mixture of alternative, singer/songwriter and a mellow gothic sound, we wanted to try and capture the essence of this across in our music video, connecting audio with visuals. This hopefully would be positive in our audience feedback.

Positive Audience Feedback:

“The concept of the white and dark showing the different emotions coming together, is really powerful”

“The lip-syncing is in time for the majority of the music video”

“The fast-paced shots of the actor in black is effective, it shows the thoughts in her mind which links with the title of the song”

“I love the backwards slow motion of the waterfall, that’s really good!”

“When the actor in black slowly walks up the forest hill is one of my favourite shots. It’s really effective, showing her being mesmerised by this vision in white”

Negative Audience Feedback:

“The moving waterfall image is good, but would have been better if the frame didn't cut into black, before moving onto the next frame”

We agree with this statement. In the filming process we wanted to find different forms of transitions for the music videos. Filming the waterfall footage was one of my ideas. Once uploading the footage on the Macs to Final Cut Pro, the footage visually was really effective, creating a mysterious atmosphere which links well with our artist.

Originally we were going to leave the waterfall footage as it was originally filmed. However, after making our first draft cut, our teachers thought the idea of positioning the waterfall image into a photo frame would be effective. We decided to take on their advice, positioning the footage onto the photo frame, which is shown at the beginning of the music video. We looked on Youtube to see how the capture a moving image into a still frame, which benefited us as a skill in this editing process. After positioning the waterfall footage into the correct place and lining up the other transitions that we used (dissolve, cross-fade), we formatted the footage into video, too see the outcome.

Waterfall Image:

What we thought the outcome would be, turned out to be a problem, as it created a black frame around the dissolve transition that we used. We looked onto Youtube to find a solution to possibly change this, however there was no information to video tutorial to show us. We decided to leave the problem as it was, using fast-paced shots and multiple transitions to hide the black frame. If we were to go back and change our music video, I know we would leave the waterfall image as it were, as it still created a great effective on our music video.

“There isn’t a lot of shots of the artist singing, which kind of takes away the aspect of the music video, and turns it into a film”

We disagree with this statement. We understood that the convention of a music video includes close up shots of the artist singing; however we wanted to take a different approach.

In music videos, artists often have some narrative based storyline in their music video, whilst others’ decide to include a narrative based storyline throughout the majority of their music videos; showing some to minimal shots of the artist singing. Our artist, Amy Ghosts, let me and my partner Rebecca to have the freedom to be creative in coming up with a narrative for the music video, as the single ‘Victim of the Mind’ hadn’t been released yet from their new album. Although we had the freedom this narrative based music video, lead singer Amy, wanted the plot line to involve a person being carried out from her depression. Having an artist give us this amount of freedom to use the narrative to create the artist plotline was thrilling, as we had many ideas and ways of interpreting this.

In our storyboarding we decided to include some footage of our artist singing, however not throughout, as we wanted to portray our narrative based storyline. When filming, we took the time in filming good angles, close ups and other variety of shots of Amy, which would not only portray our bands identity through Amy’s eye make-up, but their style of genre. For example, quick flashes of Amy herself in the woodland, to show the mysterious concept of the song.

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We feel with the few but effective close ups of our artist, it still classes as a music video without the visuals of the artist. From our research and planning into music videos, we found out that narrative based music videos are becoming quite common. For example, Justin Timberlake’s recent single ‘Mirrors’ is mainly narrative, and only at the end of the music video does it feature him.

The main concept was to show a meaningful storyline throughout a music video. We don’t believe that a music video has to always include the artist/band to make a good music video, that audiences enjoy watching.

“The lighting was inconsistent”

This is a fair point. The lighting used when we filmed the footage in the house was inconsistent throughout, as we used candles and some artificial lighting to create an eerily atmosphere.

Similarly, some of the end footage due to the bright sunlight made the footage look as if we had Photo-shopped, even though we hadn’t. This reflects on our protagonist Amy, dressed in white, the visuals were too bright. We tried to turn some of the footage brightness up, in order to try and neutralise this in the film however we couldn’t. Apart from this, the lighting in the woodland footage was perfect, as the lighting didn’t reflect brightly when uploaded to the Macs.

Overall, we are pleased with the feedback received from our audience, as the majority of the comments were positive. The negative comments received were obvious pointers that we could see ourselves when submitting the final cut of our music video, for example inconsistent lighting and the black framing of around the moving waterfall image. However, the comment of not a lot of close ups of our artist we feel is unjust, but we have justified our reasons behind this. Apart from this, we feel the actual core of the music video was well made and a good success.

From receiving feedback on my music video I have learned a lot on the codes and conventions of music videos, for example close up of artists singing. The main thing that I have learned is good research and planning and good time keeping. I know myself and my partner Rebecca went into great detail for our research and planning, discovering articles of brand identity, iconography, font style researches and finding the means of what fonts connote, also researching into similar artists, for example Lady Hawke, Fleet Foxes.

By going into great detail for our research, it deepened our understanding of our music video, helping us transform our storyboard to visuals on the screen. As we filmed our music video in the beginning of September we could import the footage onto the Macs, before deciding whether to re-film. Allowing ourselves a lot of time to film, gave us the time to carefully select certain footage for our music video.

A good example would be the fast-pace edits at the beginning of our music video, showing our protagonist Jenny, who has depression. The fast-pace edits shows Jenny’s thought process around her, which links extremely well with the title of the song ‘Victim of the Mind’.

The reasoning behind this album artwork was to show the link in our music video, of the victim and the mind. To begin we looked at the main concept and message of the video, which is: a person battling through their depression to a point where they can begin to heal. The masks reflect this in our album artwork. Our album artwork shows multiple links from our music video.

Firstly, the symbolism of the rose reflects within our music video, showing the purity of Jenny as she finally comes out of her depression.

Secondly, we incorporated our own drawings and sketches for the the artwork. This is similar to Amy's Ghost, as she designs them herself by using sketches, water paints and her creativity.

We developed the sketch of the mask to create a outline would be later painted. We then tested several backgrounds and decided upon a three layered red background that is not only warm and somewhat comforting but also dark and the main connotation of blood.
We positioned each aspect from what we had decided to place in the album artwork and tested which one would best suit our artist and her images.