The end of an era

By Juanita Wyght

Our media product conforms to the general conventions of real media products that similar features. However, at the same time it completely challenges them. We have added lyrics over the video using Live Type to add a sing-a-long feel to it. In a way this challenges general conventions of our genre (techno/electro alternative). Our inspirational videos; Just Jack, B.o.B and Jamie T... although are of various other genres different to ours, have easy to visualise elements of the music videos that you would expect to see when hearing both the music and the lyrics. In this sense, we have developed forms and conventions put forward by other bands in the past with similar elements as ‘I’m In Love’.

The lyrics of the song and the voice of the artist reflect the language of a typical London Lad. We have our main guy Peter walking around areas surrounding the River Thames: Southbank and Richmond – typical places associated with London. Our digipak reflects the London theme by having Peter in certain positions in front of particular backgrounds. VERY LONDON!

From our audience feedback, it is clear to see that many people had a specific view about what they want to see. However, we could cater to these needs because it is hard to put one precise genre to ‘I’m In Love’ because it doesn’t really have just one. The music isn’t hip-hop or R&B, there’s a form of rapping in the lyrics but we couldn’t call it grime, so in the end we decided that a mix between techno, electro and alternative was a label that we were satisfied with.

We also found that more males than males would be listening to genres surrounding, even though a lot of females would be as well. Therefore it was necessary for us to make sure our video appealed to both genders.

We used various technologies specifically in the research and planning stages. It was essential to us to use the internet to watch videos of the same genre and see how videos that contain the idea that we wanted to use was and the edits around it. Also, we used iMovie to create animatics of our storyboards to show roughly where shots would go in the song and weather we are editing to the lyrics or the music.

Blogger is the MAIN thing we have been using: to keep tack of all our work from the very beginning to the end as is Issu.

All the equipment is completely essentialAs is the programs that are on the Mac

In addition to all of this we have used social networking sites to promote and gain recognition for our band Boy In The Element.

Myspace

Youtube

Twitter

This is because not only do they appeal to digital natives. It also makes it easy for other people to search for our artist, see what he’s doing and what’s going on in the life ofBoy In

TheElement

Looking back at our AS coursework, I feel that the quality of the work we have produced this year is of a much higher standard. Although we did get good grades, I think that our music video this year is much more successful than the opening sequences last year.

We have spent much more time planning with careful consideration and determination to make the music video a complete success. Unlike last year, we have a lot more things to consider such as Goodwin’s theories of pop music videos. Although pop isn’t the genre of our song it is a necessity to take these theories into deliberation.

•Demonstration of genre characteristics

•Relationship between lyrics and visuals

•Relationship between music and visuals

•Use of close-ups•References to the notion of looking

•Intertextual references

As we couldn’t really come up with a definitive genre ‘I’m In Love’ we couldn’t put representative genre characteristics into our video. However, we did feel that our video represented what we instantly pictured when hearing the song fir the first few times. After listening several times we gathered certain ideas of images and ideas we wanted to incorporate into the video.

The relationship between lyrics and visuals is helped by the additional lyrics added during the post-production stage over our music video using Livetype. The lyrics assist to amplify the theme in the song. During this stage we have also added little hearts to illustrate and express the lyrics even further.Our music video has a relationship

between the lyrics and visuals as apposed to the music and visuals. Although, we have included stop-motion in our video in places where it fits the music perfectly. We have also sped-up the video in two places to exaggerate the music also.

There wasn’t many places to add in idea of looking or watching someone, however, we did add Vicki looking into the camera winking when Peter has the flashback and also when we are watching Peter drinking coffee from the outside of the shop; we are looking in on his life.We only have a few close-

ups in the video because we felt it didn’t really fit the fact that our video was a journey. However, there is one at the beginning where we first meet our main guy Peter and also one where he comes closer to the camera during the rapping part of the song.