As a group, we were given the task to create a music video, a digipack and a magazine advert. We also completed pre-production and post-production work, such as analysing professional music videos, target audience research, lyric analysis, notes on the artist, treatment, set/location details, casting notes, costume details, shot lists and digipack research. All of this work supported and/or assisted in different stages of the production process when making the music video.
We chose to create a music video to the song ‘Marching Band’ by artist Joe Brooks. Joe Brooks is a singer/songwriter from Southampton. He started off by putting videos of himself playing guitar and singing on YouTube and MySpace, gathering a strong following. Nowadays he’s a signed artist currently touring internationally, as can be seen from his MySpace page. http://www.myspace.com/joebrooksmusic The genre of this song can be applied to all 3 genres of acoustic, indie and pop therefore reaching out to a wider audience. The music video was based on the theme of love, which is a stereotypical convention of music videos. However, ‘Marching Band’ converts this stereotype by linking in the unlikely theme of death. Both these themes contrast as love has positive connotations, whereas death signifies negativity. A predominant convention in music videos is a narrative and performance element. The 'Marching Band' music video meets this stereotype as it is made up of mainly narrative; however there are some elements of performance in it. This is similar to the music video for ‘Smile’ by Lily Allen, because this video uses mainly a narrative cross-cutting with performance. The Lily Allen music video and our music video also share a similar music genre of Britpop and the artists are both singer/songwriters who were first discovered through their MySpace page. A music video that didn’t have anything in common with our music video is ‘Higher Ground’ by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. This is because it was made up of all performance which suited the genre of the song which was rock. Our music video had a lot of emotion and meaning in the lyrics so we felt that the song needed a strong narrative to support it.
In ‘Marching Band’ the performance elements are shown through the constant shots of the singer lip-synching along to the song. The general plot shows a man trying to deal with the loss of his girlfriend; however he ends up committing suicide. The music video constantly flashes back showing the couple happy and in love. These flashbacks are made clear to the audience because they’re in black and white, whereas the rest of the video is in colour. There’s a lot of ambiguity in the music video that we allow the audience to come to their own conclusions about. For example, it isn’t shown explicitly what happens to the girlfriend. After various people viewed the music video a lot of them thought that the couple have just split up or she has left him. However, the fact that the girlfriend had died is implied through the mise en scene. The opening and ending shots which show a plain black background is the first signifier of death, because black has connotations of death and implies that the story won’t end happily otherwise we would’ve used a brighter, happier colour. Also, on the ending shot the words ‘Happily ever after?’ are written, because the music video ends in the main character killing himself these words could indicate that the couple are both living happily ever after together in ‘heaven.’ Relating to this is the last shot of the music video where we repeat the scene in which both characters are arriving home, and they’re seen walking through the door and down the hallway holding hands. However, this time there’s a white fuzzy wash put over the scene with a ghostly effect on the movement of the actors which again insinuates that they’re going to ‘heaven.’
The narrative has a clear structure, showing a beginning, middle and end. The beginning of the music video shows the main character alone and grieving for the loss of his girlfriend. There is the occasional fade to a flashback where the protagonist is spending time with his girlfriend and their performances showing them as loved-up and happy. This was done to make the ending even more tragic and have more of an effect on the audience. One particular shot that stands out and shows the strength of the relationship in the beginning is the close-up of the hands interlinking in black and white. This represents that the couple fit well together and suit each other. It is also effective because of the symmetry of the shot and the recurring theme of doors being repeated again in the background.
The middle of the music video shows a dramatic change of location in that there are a lot more shots outside. This change represents how the main character was bottling his feelings up at the start (shown by him being inside), and now he feels ready to go outside and open up to someone. At this part in the music video a lot more low angle shots are used, as oppose to the high angle shots earlier on, to show that although he’s still upset he isn’t as vulnerable and sensitive as he once was. The middle of the music video is also where we started experimenting with special effects on Adobe Premier. For example, there’s a flashback in black and white where the couple are sat on the bed watching TV, but then the girlfriend disappears and the shot goes back to colour. This was achieved by filming the couple together, asking the boyfriend to remain still and removing the girlfriend from the frame so the transition was smooth and unnoticeable to the audience.
The ending of the music video shows the protagonist trying to talk to his friend, but ending up getting angry because his friend doesn’t understand what he’s going through. Then he is shown walking home which demonstrates continuity because of the many different shots that are used in this sequence; however they all link together successfully and smoothly. The music video finishes with the main character committing suicide, which is executed in a subtle way. The main character is seen finding the pills in a draw, and then there is a jump cut to a close-up of his hand falling off the bed with the pills dropping out of his hand and rolling along the floor. This had the strongest effect on the people who viewed the video because everyone commented on how effective and dramatic it was.
Out of Andrew Goodwin’s ideas about illustration, amplification and disjuncture; ‘Marching Band’ uses amplification. The lyrics were interpreted by my group as a story about a couple who wanted to be together but there were other factors that were stopping them. This came across in lines such as ‘Crashing through a deeper ocean, Drowned in waves of pure emotion.’ This first verse shows how upset the songwriter is at having to split up with his girlfriend. He also describes their relationship as ‘a faith like oxygen,’ which connotes that he can’t live without it like people can’t live without oxygen. The two most repeated lines in the song are ‘it’s us against the world’ and ‘try stopping us now.’ However, after watching the music video the lyrics have a different meaning. Now they sound like they’re written after the girlfriend dies, but just before the main character commits suicide. A good example is in lines like ‘I can promise you our life brings lies to pain such a sweeter ending how am I to know if this is our last embrace.’ The words in bold stand out a lot more after understanding the narrative of the video because they have connotations of death. Therefore the video amplifies the original meaning of the song.
How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipack and magazine advert)?
The ‘Marching Band’ music video links closely together with the digipack and magazine advert. The images in the ancillary products were taken directly from the music video. For example, the image on the front cover of the digipack and the magazine advert shows the artist leaning against a tree looking thoughtful, which is also used in the music video. With this shot we tried to communicate to the audience that the lyrics of his songs are deep and meaningful, with serious messages. Also, this image demonstrates the photography element rule of thirds with the vertical lines of the tree and the artist. On the back cover the shot of the pills on the floor from the music video was used as the background image. This was a risky choice as suicide is a serious issue and anyone in the shops can see this image blatantly when they pick up the CD to look at the track list. However, it links in closely to the music video and provides an effective background to the song choices. It is also a very dramatic shot, with a shallow focus technique used and the one pill that is still rolling, which could represent the main character being alone. The back cover shot contrasts with the front cover shot because even though the back cover image demonstrates the rule of thirds as well, this time it’s horizontal with the lines of where the floor meets the wall and the lines of the pill bottle. The rule of thirds effect on an image is used to catch potential buyer’s eyes because people are used to seeing symmetry and the main feature being in the middle of the frame, therefore using rule of thirds makes the image unconventional and different.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
To gather audience feedback, the target audience for our video was gathered together in order to view the music video and reveal their true thoughts and feelings about it. We had a series of structured questions to ask, however as we started to engage with our audience the session ended up as a more relaxed conversation about the ‘Marching Band’ music video. During the audience feedback the students revealed that they liked many of the shots, such as the handheld shot tracking backwards and the shot where the pill rolled across the floor. The handheld shot was given positive feedback because it made the audience feel more involved with the artist as he was walking and lip-synching, so it made them feel like they were walking with him because the shot was wobbly and unsteady. The reason for them liking the shot of the pills was because of the way that the pill rolled. One of the students said that it enabled the ending to be more dramatic and it also made them reflect on the tragedy as the pill was rolling. As well as this, most of the audience members were shocked when we told them that the way the pill rolls out of the shot was improvised, because we didn’t plan or anticipate it. The audience also took notice of the way that the girlfriend disappears just as the lyrics say ‘how am I to know if this is our last embrace.’ They thought it was effective that the audio matched the visual exactly at this part.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout this project new technologies were used to help in every stage of production, especially digital technologies. The main example is the use of Adobe Premiere. This allowed us to use non-linear editing software, therefore allowing us to be creative in ways that would not be possible with analogue editing. For example, being able to film the shots in any order and move them around on the timeline to create a certain effect. Particular tools that we used on Adobe Premiere are the fades to black and white and transitions such as dissolve. These enabled us to give variety to our music video in order stop the audience getting bored while watching it. It also allowed us to use special effects like in the scene where the girlfriend disappears, which got positive feedback because of how professional it looks. Another example of a new technology that was used during the production is Photoshop. This software enabled us to do things that we would not be able to do with conventional photography/printing technology, because we could create different layers for the text and the images. Also, Photoshop allows you to put a wash over the whole image which links the different layers and pictures together so nothing looks odd or out of place. Lastly, I’d just like to mention Blogger as another new technology, because it has allowed students to submit their work electronically without using up paper. It is also useful for group work as text and images can be shared over Blogger. 
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