Evaluation Writing- Josh Iggulden

There are some general conventions that need to be considered when making a music video. The video should involve a fair amount of lip synching by the artist to show them singing the song. It can also be quite abstract, with different camera angles as well. The video needs to promote the singer and show lots of close ups of them so the audience can see what they look like. In a lot of videos the singer is looking very glamorous and wears expensive clothes to make them seem rich and powerful. The video also needs to sell the song and be relevant to it, and also keep the viewers interest at the same time. These were all conventions for us to consider for our music video.
Our video is quite ‘non conformist’ and challenges the typical forms and conventions of a normal hip hop video, more than it uses them. There are instances where the forms are used, such as the hoodies and tracksuits we wear. This is a typical convention of a hip hop music video and something that you see in most videos in that genre. There are lots of instances where we challenge the typical conventions, such as the locations we used. We used various locations, most of them outdoors, to vary the different shots we took. All of these locations are different to the usual party and club scenes that you would be used to seeing in a hip hop video, such as J-Kwon’s ‘Tipsy’, which we have included in our audio commentary. We also filmed a live performance scene. You sometimes see this in hip hop videos, but they will be wearing tracksuits and hoodies. For example, Eminem has a live performance scene in the videos for ‘Lose Yourself’ and ‘Business’. This is the same as our performance scenes but he sticks to the hip hop conventions and wears a hoody and tracksuit bottoms. We wore suits to make it look a bit retro and go against the usual forms and conventions once again.
Along with the music video we created two ancillary products: the magazine advert and the digipack cover. I think these look really good and the combination of the three together works really well. There are lots of ways we linked the three together. One is the colour scheme of black and pink. This is used for the title at the start of the music video, with the black background and pink text. It is also used on the magazine advert and the digipack cover, which is black with most of the text in pink.
We also used the glasses as one of our main motif. In a lot of the shots for our video we are wearing glasses. We also have the image of the pink glasses on the front of the digipack. This instantly enables our audience to recognise what group it is. Another way that we link the products is the locations that we used to film our video.
Most of these locations have also been used to take the images that were used for the collages inside our digipack. This is another use of a motif that the audience can use to recognise us. Another motif is the wall with the words ‘safe bloofs’ on. This almost became a motto for our group as the location is good and we got some good shots for the video and images for the digipack cover. We also have the ‘iglu & hartly’ logo to link the magazine advert and digipack cover as the same logo has been used on each product, with the same colours as well. This would make it easier for anyone wanting to find the digipack in a shop after seeing the advert. The representation of the band also links the three products together well, as the music video has a very humorous feel. This is what we were aiming for, and have also used that for the images used in the digipack and the magazine advert. The video and images represent the band as very fun loving and funny. We had feedback saying we had a ‘Goldie Lookin’ Chain’ feel to our band. This is because they are a hip hop band who are humorous and don’t stick the normal conventions of hip hop either.
The feedback we received for the ancillary products was good in places, but some of it I didn’t agree with, such as “There could involve more about what it is advertising because if I didn't know it was for a digipack I really wouldn't know what it was”. I don’t agree with this as we wanted to make the advert as simple as possible and give the minimum amount of information with fans still knowing what it is.
The same group said that the front cover was really effective as it is simple. I agree with this. They also said “Really, really don't like the grouping of the pictures though. It makes the pack look amateur doesn't compliment cover”. I agree that the picture grouping could have been a bit better but we wanted the inside to look quite amateur as we have gone with that look for the video and the advert as well.
The same group also gave us feedback on our rough cut but some of it was quite confusing to work out, such as “It’s consistently different which relates to the song” and “The lack of variety makes the audience lose interest; doesn't change pace”. With feedback contradicting itself like this we weren’t able to take anything from it.
The feedback for our rough cut version was better, particularly from our teacher. She gave us constructive comments that we could use to change our video for the better, such as “More close ups of performance. More graffitit (or other) more abstract images to use in edit”. We agreed with all of this feedback and filmed more abstract shots to put in and fit in with the genre of our video. We did, however, disagree with the comment “Some shots rather daft”, as the daft shots gave the video the humorous edge that we wanted.
During the research we used technologies such as ‘youtube’ to watch music videos from the genre of our song and analyse them. This gave us ideas of what to do in our video. We then used a camcorder and a tripod to film. The tripod meant that the camera could be held steady and would not leave a shaky picture. When we had completed our filming we uploaded the film onto ‘final cut’, a programme on the Mac. We used this programme to insert our song from iTunes and then cut and edit our video. We added some different effects such as ‘glow’ and ‘colour tint’ as well. We were unable to add any effects to the last half of the video as we did not have enough time.
When we had finished our final version of the video, it was exported from Final cut and made into a Quicktime video and uploaded to youtube. We then had to produce our two ancillary products. We took lots of images with a stills camera and uploaded them to our Mac. We the created both of the products on ‘Photoshop’, using the templates that were in our group folder. Throughout this whole project we have also been updating our blog using an online programme called ‘blogger’. This is where we put all of our design ideas, roughcut, and any research we did, so other groups could see what we had been getting up to, by viewing our blog from the Long Road Media website. We were also awarded ‘blog of the week’ one week, as a testament to our continued hard work and good ideas.
I think that all of these new technologies have opened up filmmaking or music video making to a wider, amateur audience, as anyone with a video camera and a Mac can film their footage and edit it using Final Cut. I think this is a very good thing as lots of people can create their ideas now, whereas they wouldn’t have been able to before this technology was around.