Our task was to create a music video, a CD digipack and a magazine advert for a selected song/band that we would find on Unsigned.com. We had to look at the conventions of our genre in order to probably complete our task. The purpose of the music video is to help advertise the song, along with the magazine advert which helps not only to advertise the song, but the band too. The digipack gives the listener more information on the band, effectively helping to advertise also. A digipack is also helpful for selling a CD in the fact that it looks nicer than a normal CD and would help draw people’s eyes to it.
A music video needs to connect with the music that it is portraying. They can have a range of performance and narrative, but often contain both. The shots used are often quick cut, depending on the speed of the music and the images being shown. The genre greatly affects the style of the video as you can’t really do a completely narrative based video to a heavy metal song as the slowness usually conveyed in a narrative wouldn’t mix well with the fast and heavy music. It is the same the other way. A slower song, such as a ballad or acoustic song, wouldn’t work as well with a purely performance based video with a performance’s fast cuts and such. Genre also affects the Mise-en-scene as often the tone and lyrics of the song help you decide what you want to put into it. For example, if the lyrics said something about looking in a mirror, it’s likely that you would put a clip of someone looking in a mirror along side it.
The genre of my chosen song was Christian rock. Because of the moral and feeling the song has, I decided that a half narrative, half performance would be best for my promo. Christian rock is a form of rock music played by individuals and bands whose members are Christians and who often focus the lyrics on matters concerned with the Christian faith. The extent to which their lyrics are Christian varies between bands. The band I have chosen has a moral, but nothing particularly Christian. It was for this reason that I tried to convey the lyrics through my promo, and the moral that the lyrics contain; choosing to do a half narrative video.
I chose to set my narrative part in the woods due to the seclusion that the trees give you. It had a feeling of loneliness that I wanted my character to be feeling, so the location was something that I wanted to enhance that feeling. The performance took place in my house, in what we call the little lounge. It is a garage conversion and so is quite light and airy; containing a large window. Having light green walls and a good amount of light, I decided that it was a good place to film the performance part of the video, it worked well, and created the sense of freeness that I had envisioned. I also asked the person I used for my narrative to wear bright clothing to make the performance more colorful to connotate happiness, while I, as the girl, wore darker clothing in the form of a black hoodie and jeans in order to show sadness and loss. This was to further show the fact that she is a broken character whom the guy is trying to tell her that she still has time and not to give up. I think the video got this thought across and shows the idea behind the lyrics quite well.I used Roland Barthes theory of enigma codes in my video; the reason why the girl in it is so broken is not actually revealed. In this way I keep the interest of the audience till the end as they kind of want to know the full story. Though I never actually reveal the answer, but instead let people come up with their own conclusions, I believe it still allows for a sense of mystery and suspense that people are still satisfied. They have enough information to come up with several different theories and may end up thinking about it more. This is good as it inspires interest and gets people talking and thinking about the video and makes it harder to forget.
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