A2 Media Evaluation

Matthew O’Neill

Our Group’s Song choice is:

“Dog Days are Over”

By Florence + the Machine

Andrew Goodwin once stated: “Video conventions will differ according to the genre of music, but there are three key conventions

to consider:

Narrative: the video tells a storyPerformance: the video is dominated by live

ore band performanceConcept: there is a theme or concept behind

the video”

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

1

Narrative

From our first discussion group we had ideas in which we wanted to take forward for our actual video. We had a number of songs that we might use but we finally decided on “Dog Days are Over” because we knew that we would be able to be creative with the track. Some ideas that we would be able to take forward.

The PlotOur idea was to have three clowns sat in a barn applying make-up. The circus Ring Master then enters and takes the clowns to a performing area. The clowns refuse and run away, “Run fast “ (Lyric) but the Ring Master chases after the clowns and holds on tight and takes them back to the performing area. The clowns then run away again and come to a clearing in the middle of a wood that leads to a clearing where the clowns proceed to run away. The Ringmaster is always watching , giving a magical feel to the video. The video then dramatically changes and the clowns go back in time, which symbolised by a change in make-up and the video going in reverse.

Performance

For our performance element we decided to include live instruments. Natalie is an accomplished pianist and has her own piano so we were able to record her playing which would fulfil the live performance element. We also recorded each performer singing the lyrics so that it would appear that we were singing the track. We were also able to use these recording as transitions between scenes. We originally also had a recording of Natalie playing the drums, this drum beat is very significant as it remains throughout the track. However we decided that the recording did not look aesthetically pleasing as the drum kit was rather old and a number of worn patches which didn’t look professional.

Our ConceptOur concept was based around our preliminary ideas which were, the circus,

gothic elements, colourful costumes, colourful make-up, a forest and a barn.

Mise en Scene• Here are some examples of the settings that we created.

Mirror (Which also featured in the forest sequence, used for make-up and reflection close-ups)

Bunting

Red and White tape(Used to help portray the circus theme)

Editing

In this section we superimposed Lauren singing in to the forest sequence. We did this by changing the opacity of the clips and placing them along side each other so the ran at the same time. I feel that this sequence worked well and made the clip appear more supernatural. The clip is also more interesting to watch and made good transition from one part of the forest to the next.

Sound + elements of editing

In the video we did not use many sound effects, we did however find a clip of circus them tune which we placed at the beginning of the track. The sound clip played over the top of the clip where we featured a young girl falling to sleep. Which makes the video look like a dream that the girl is having. We used a distorting effect on GoldWave which makes the sound clip makes it sound broken and eerie.

To listen to the clip click here

It was a this point in the video that that the sound clip featured

http://www.goldwave.com/

The Advert

After researching music magazines and album advertisements it becomes clear of what is needed to make the advert a success. Images are needed to draw in the audience attention, also, if the they see the band that they like on a advertisement chances are they are going to read it. However, our advert challenges the typical conventions of placing the artist on the front cover. In stead we have used a unknown actors placed in a situation that can relate to Florence's lyrics and music style. We also included release dates and used a continuous font like Florence+ the Machine had on her album advert.

Florence + the Machine A2 Media Group

Name of artist

Album Cover

Additional information

The Digipack

A typical Digipaks is a compact disc or DVD packaging. Digipaks usually take the form of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. Our digipack has six sides to it. When researching I discovered that Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums. This fits well into our specification as our new video fits well into the re-release of Florence + the Machine album, Lungs.

Florence’s Costumes Our Costumes

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

2

• Filming started at the end of October. At this stage we had created our storyboards and had completed all of our planning stages for our video. So when I came to filming we had all of props, costumes make-up designs ready. The themes of video were very apparent from the preliminary stages. Our main focuses were, the following themes; The Circus, Dark/Gothic narrative. These were some of our preliminary ideas “typical bright, happy colourful circus would be effective, so we decided on a Gothic feel adding a sinister side to the video”. At this stage we also knew that we would centre our videos around four characters. A Circus Ring Master and joker and two female clowns.

Traditional Ring Master Costume

A small selection of famous Jokers

Initial Theme

Once we started to set up our first location we realised that the positioning of the straw bales would make a good picture of or CD cover so we placed the writing dog days are over on the bales for a creative touch. That way the front cover of our Digipack is a similar image to a frame that is in our music video. Like Florence + the Machine we have used the same image for our Digipack and advert. Which uses synergy and convergence.

Continuity

As this album is a re-release we had to include new information to the old one including new songs “You Got the Dirty Love (featuring Dizzee Rascal)…

“Heavy in Your” from the twilight saga Eclipse…

and “Dog Days Are Over” which features the new video which we have created.

• Digipack

The images that we used on the Digipak were taken whilst we were producing our video, using the same locations and wearing the same costumes. We choose the images carefully and only chose images that we thought would appeal to our target audience. We also used a collage of pictures taken form the forest location that give the audience a feel of what was yet to come in the music video. We used Photoshop when arranging the photos to place them strategically on the covers. We also deleted a number of images due to the huge number of images taken.

Want have you learnt from your audience feedback?

3

Audience Research VideosOur audience research consisted of two videos, the first was a short video of a

male fan and the other of a female fan. We compiled a number of question for the two fans to answer. The Questions were as follows.

1. Why do you like Florence and the machine?2. Do you like any other Alternative artists?3.How long have you liked Florence and the machine?4. Favourite song and why? Do you like the video for it?5. Favourite music video and why?6. Any songs on her album that you don’t like? Why?7. Do you think her costumes are effective? Why?

By using two fans one male and one female we thought we would gain an unbiased opinion about the typical Florence and the machine fan.