Sunday 11 December 2011

That Time Of Year Again

No not Christmas....

Enjoy the blog and the work in it and thanks for your time

Thursday 8 December 2011

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

9 frames from my music video
Frame 1-9 (left to right)

  1.  (top left) - This frame shows our lead singer singing and dancing around a lamp post. This is shown in other shots as well. This shot is during the chorus where the lyrics say 'Lovestruck, i've fallen for a lamp post.' This shot is one of the shots that show that our visuals relate to the lyrics of the song. There are other shots that relate the lyrics to the visuals outside of the chorus and lamp post although affection towards a lamp post happens more than once.
  2. (top middle) - This image typifies the way a record label might want to present and promote their artist. The shot is a close up which shows the artist and he's looking down at the camera which seems as he is interacting with the audience. It also shows that he is just a regular but random person who doesn't mind doing something comical. 
  3. (top right) - This shot shows a saxophonist playing through a green tint. The instrument he's playing, the colour and the type of clothes he is wearing shows a type of jazz/pop/ska genre being emitted from the image. This image is a representation of the type of genre the video is as a saxophone is usually seen as an instrument used in jazz but also in pop and ska. 
  4. (middle left) - The idea of this shot came from the official music video of this song where the person was sitting on a chair at the table with many clear bottles. The difference between our shot was that we used a darker lighting scheme instead of the white the official music video used.   
  5. (middle middle) - Our video had many close up shots of our artist and some of the props he was using (bottle, picking up grass). The camera style used were often shots of the lead singer doing some action, being part of something and close-ups of him. We cut between each one to make the video seem more lively and to establish a narrative that the audience could understand. 
  6. (middle right) - This is one of the shots which established the type of lighting we used. We didn't change a lot in the lighting and thought the best lighting would be that of the natural light. There were a couple of shots where the brightness and contrasts are tweaked a bit although we didn't want to change a lighting a lot in the outdoor scenes as we wanted a more natural look to the video.
  7. (bottom left) - Although there were some shots that we wanted to manipulate the lighting, especially during the indoor shots, as we wanted some shots totally in our control and give some ominous feeling of the band to the audience. We also wanted some shots like this so that we could relate to the front cover of the album/digipak. 
  8. (bottom middle) - A lot of mise-en-scene was the outdoor and it's natural beauty, although this shot does also show the costumes we wore. The clothes we wore usually consisted of dark colours and usually formal wear clothes such as black shoes, dark trousers and a dark coat. This shot shows an outdoor scene we used for our shots as well as the costumes we wore. 
  9. (bottom right) - This image shows a shot where the character moved from one location to another in the scene in a split second, almost like teleporting. I got this idea from a student video i had watched (as well as the television drama 'House') and thought it would be great to use a similar shot to that in my music video but also add some sort of narrative to it. 






  1. This image is from the song 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' by Green Day where they sing about a lonely road they walk alone. This shot shows the lead singer of Green Day alone looking at the camera  whilst the background keeps changing to different locations. This shows a relation of the lyrics and the visuals. 
  2. This is a shot from Linkin Park's 'What I've Done.' It shows a high angle shot of the whole band with all their equipment and is a shot that portrays Linkin Park as a punk rock band. It shows the type of instruments they are using as well as the costumes they are wearing the colour which is all black.
  3. The colour, costumes, instruments and the rest of the mise-en-scene show the type of genre and tone this song is trying to take, which is pop.
  4. This screen shot is from Michael Buble's 'Feeling Good' which has many inter textual references to the James Bond movies and that includes this screenshot. The shot of female silhouettes through a screen of some sort is textbook James Bond - the whole song is basically a reference to James Bond like a parody. 
  5. This screen shot is good use of camera trying to show the band member in a powerful light as well as trying to show the audience the band member. The way the camera is framed does this well as does the lighting where the band member is standing in front of the sun - this amplifies the desired effect. 
  6. A good example of lighting illuminating the whole band and their equipment as well as any other factors of mise-en-scene. The video does exactly what it wants to do with the lighting putting everything on that shot in focus.
  7. Shows the complete shot of the environment and demonstrates exactly what kind of mise-en-scene the video is using, which is a rundown or abandoned/3rd world zone of the world. Places in the middle of nowhere. 
  8. This is a shot which inspired me. I tried to do a similar shot to this one in my own music video but changed the lighting since i did not want to completely copy the shot. This shot is a mixture of good lighting, narrative and a close-up of the lead singer which makes this an all round type of shot. 
  9. Another shot which inspired me for my music video. I liked the use of lighting in this shot and how the lighting worked to illuminate the lead singers face. I also found the position of the camera and the lead singer intriguing and wanted to do something similar in my video to promote the artist in my music video. 

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