Directors commentary script

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms + conventions of real media products?

Livvy:         The genre of the song we chose was folk rock/ indie, which gave us a wide range of possibilities for our music video, as the conventions were very open. The main convention was it could be artistic and very creative, but also we had to avoid mixing it with the genre conventions of pop music. We decided to emphasis the main convention by our main character in the narrative being a mime, which is a very profound and skilful art form.

Rachel:    Our music video is controversial to many conventions of real media products as usually there is a link present within the video to the lyrics of the song. Although some actions of the mime are featured in the lyrics, for example the mime making a heart shape with his hands to the lyrics ‘loving somebody doesn’t make them love you”, the plot of a mime love story is totally unrelated to the song. This gives a unique twist to our music video that perversely conforms to conventional music video requirements of selling the artist and attracting viewers.

Maura:     By shooting a lot of our footage in a natural environment like the park scene we also followed the other conventions of a folk rock video as many include natural instruments or just singing so the setting goes well with what the music is about such as in Bon Iver’s video Holocene where it is set in a very natural outdoors setting.

Rachel:     Our music video uses the conventions of other music videos by using footage of the artist throughout quite a lot of the video and shows them singing to the camera so that it is clear who the artist is to the audience. A lot of these shots are close ups so that we could comply to the demands of the record label which are to sell the artist as a product and to ensure the audience knows who the are. We also used notions of looking (voyeurism) as the mime is looking longingly at the girl within the video as he is trying to get her attention, which is similar to other music videos.

Maura:     Although I think to improve we could have used more props for example a guitar as they are usually included in folk rock videos and I think it would have made it even clearer what genre it came from.


Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Livvy:         Our music video and ancillary products (a magazine advert and a digipak) have a very strong link, even though we didn't directly use images from our music video. We thought that it would be better if we used a strong theme that linked the two products with subtle reference to the music video, as if it is a complete package. We chose the theme of circus advertisements, but not modern times advertisement, but older, almost Victorian style. In the planning phase we found a film called "Les Enfants du Paradis" which we found had a really nice feel to it and this made us choose this style.

Rachel:     The aim of this style is to make the audience feel as if by getting the digipack they are being admitted to the weird and wonderful world of Jack Johnson the artist and would get access to exclusive behind the scenes action such as on the video set and tour, which we have included as two of the special features of the digipack. All three products work together to create a slightly eccentric view of the artist that encourages them to want to find out more by buying the products.

Rachel:    The unique and unusual theme of mime artistry promotes the artist as he is shown to stand out from other conventional artists that may conform to regular music video ideas.

Maura:     We could have however done a lot more with this and added more to our DVD by creating and inside design which used the juggling balls in more focus which I believe would have worked well in the place where the DVD itself would go as the shape of both would fit together. But overall I feel that we were able to create three products that when seen next to one another it would be clear that they were all related to the same video.


Q3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Livvy:         The feedback we got from our audience was in general positive, they said our lip-syncing was of a high standard, which has taught me that the method of putting markers on our music track, to mark when the beginning of versus and choruses, worked well. Although they said our music video was to narrative heavy, so it would have been useful if we had filmed more scenes of the artist singing.
They also enjoyed our use of multiple locations because they found it made the video more varied and interesting, thus making it more watch-able.


Rachel:     The feedback from the rough cut showed us that we needed more close ups on the artist as we hadn’t got and it wouldn’t sell the artist enough but the lack of close ups until the end did make the ending where the two mimes meet very powerful. Our final cut feedback showed us that although we had increased the number of close ups there was still not enough so in future products we need to include more.

Maura:     I think we have developed our video a lot from when our rough cut had feedback as one of the main points for that was to change the tone of the video and we done this by using filters so the whole mood of the video is changed. They also said that they did not see enough of the performer so we added some shots of him so that it would break up all the scenes of the mime.




Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

Maura:     Throughout the process I have learnt how to use many different types of technology and been able to develop skills on those I have used before. The first thing I used when in the planning and research stage was ‘blogger.com’ this is where all my research and planning would be displayed. To research into music videos I used youtube.com which was able to give me so many music videos and ideas as to what kind of thing is usually included in different music videos.

Rachel:    Final cut was used a lot during the production of our music video and it helped a lot to create the old style atmosphere of the video because of the wide range of effects it has on offer such as the noise filter and colour corrector we used to make it look dark and grainy and in the style of old mime films. Photoshop was useful for creating the digipack as it allowed us to edit the circus poster and ticket we found to show the information we wanted to include.

Livvy:        In the construction of our music video we used HD handheld cameras, which were easy to use and gave use the opportunity to film close up shots without the camera feeling overpowering over artist and mime.
Having a blog was also very useful to us in the research and planning stage, and the evaluation stage, because it meant all our work was online so we could look at home, or in college, or blog articles where ever we were, if we suddenly found inspiration or found a good location etc. Using a blog also meant our work was neatly stored, and made it easier to link all our products together as we could get inspiration for work we'd previously done for the Music Video.