Music Video Evaluation

Our music video is about a love/hate relationship between two teenagers and our song to go with this narrative is Passenger Let her go. My role in the production was to play the role of Anna (Female lead). At school we watched many music videos within various different genres and we analysed the music videos, for example how they used different camera shots to convey the artists messages. This helped us to have ideas as to what we wanted in our video and how we could convey that through e.g. camera shots.

One of the conventions of indie pop we used was showing the band. We didn’t have a band but we had a long shot of Hussein (male actor) to play the guitar. This is because we wanted the music video to feel more authentic. Another convention that we used was the random shots of surrealism that consist in indie pop. For example we got Jessica (female guitarist) would be randomly come at the end. We did this because we didn’t want the video to be a long footage of one scene so taking break would make it more engaging and entertaining.  Furthermore I (main actress) am shown crying in the corner from shot to shot at random places and this is usually an indie pop convention of love and breaking up also putting random shots at different places of the music video. We done this because we wanted the audience to feel sympathy for the character and also to make them more engaged. Our main inspiration for our music video came from Rihanna - Love the way you lie because in its narrative the couple are in a violent relationship similarly to our one. In Love the way you lie there is a scene where the actor pulls the actress hair and we really like to use that as well because it shows violent that you wouldn’t normally see which will keep our audience engaged. Another great influence and contribution to our music video came from Beyoncé - If I were a boy. This is because at the very end of the song Beyoncé has a mode of address which we thought was very powerful because it conveyed raw, truthful and saddening emotions and the mode of address makes it personal. We decided to use it in our music video as well at the end of the song because the male couple feels regret at the end and we thought it would be appropriate to use the mode of address to show this. In the pre-production we got together as a group and we discussed what we wanted to do and how we will do it. We decided to make a story board of the scenes we wanted and wrote what would be happening in that scene. This helped when it came to filming and organising what scenes we needed to do first, second, third etc. We knew what to do when we got to our location and not waste time on remembering what we planned on doing or discuss it then and there because it was already written and rough drowned. The filming itself had its pros and cons. We managed to film many successful scenes that we wanted and done it in a successful time. However many of the time when we could film in school we didn’t because the set we wanted was being used by the school which did waste some of filming time and did miss up our filming plans. Also, our organisation was poor at times for example majority of the time when we had the permission to film in school at lesson time we couldn’t get the vital shots we wanted because we didn’t bring props which prevented us from filming. Furthermore, sometimes we didn’t use our time given the chance to film usefully for example in one of our lessons we didn’t do nothing. I think this affected our final piece because as the due date got closure we had to rush our filming which prevented us from producing the best work we could have made. If we were to do the project from the beginning I would definitely use the time given to film more usefully and organise everything thoroughly e.g. getting the props. I think this would have improved our final piece because we would have more time to do extra shots and scenes just encase we wanted to use them or thought that those extra scenes worked better. We faced a few problems whilst trying to edit our music video. My group had hardly used mac laptops so it made it hard for us to navigate what we wanted to do and how we do it which, considering our short time given to edit was really a downfall. However we asked our teacher and got help from our more experienced friends to overcome the problem which helped increase the editing processing; we also used the mac laptops quite a lot purposefully so we can get use to the new systems. As well as that, there was a problem at one point when our mac laptop was misplaced and lost. Although we found where the mac laptop had disappeared to it did waste vital time which we could have to edit our music video. Furthermore, it was my groups first time ever editing a music video so naturally it came to us as a surprise when we realised each second was vital to convey our narrative.
We will be shortly be uploading it to YouTube as it is the biggest plat form for beginners to get recognition. Also YouTube has a comment system therefore we can see the comments which we can take and use it if we were to make another music video in the future. We will be also uploading it to all social networks such as: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Social Network is a great way to get constructive feedback because it is our friend and we can ask them for it.  Social Network is a great way for us to get in contact with our target audience because they’re 15-30 and that age is usually on social networks so our video would get recognition fast. If we were to do this project again, I think the main thing we would improve on is the organisation of the group, when we will film and where etc. 

Changes

Changes

We’ve made a few changes in our location while trying to film, simply because it would be more time effective.

Change one:

Instead of filming in a café/American dinner we chose to film in our LSU seeming as the background was very artistic and more romantic. Having the simplistic, closed of male lead take the female lead to such an artistic and colourful place allows you to see the quirkier side of him, something that isn’t shown a lot.

Change two:

We’ve decided that instead of filming in a house for the little bits for violence we chose the schools plain white walls as that allow the audience to focus solely on the main characters and what they are doing rather than having a colourful background which would take away the seriousness of the piece. The plain background portrays the lack of humanity in a way – instead of having everything covered with little objects that would represent the person who owns the house, around the house, you have nothing but bare walls.

Change three:

Filming in Regents Park came across as an issue thanks to the unreliable British weather, so to stay on the safe side and ‘bring the video home’ in a sense we chose to film in our local park.  The fundamental ideas stayed the same and the park has the same feel to it, just more local and homely, giving the video more character.

 

Change four:

We ended up adding different parts to our music video to help it run more smoothly.

i) We added a song writer/artist to the song who is showns writing the title at the begging of the video because this would be a clear distincted way of people knowing the title to the music video as well as showing that there are different types of abusive relationships and different escapes from them. The idea of us writing the title out came from Bruno Mars - When I Was Your Man. 

Instead of copying the idea of the writing coming on screen via editing we made it so that the artist wrote it down on a piece of paper instead.

ii) We also added in more happy parts to the main couples relationship as in order for the audiance to understand how bad their relationship is they have to see both the good times and the bad times as shown in P!nk - Try.