The Music Video

This is my media blog. Throughout the blog you will see lots of different posts regarding my production and other forms of media based interests. Shown above is my final production and after this will be both my ancillary texts and my evaluation questions. Enjoy.

Ancillary Text 1 - Magazine article

Ancillary Text 2 - Poster

Media Evaluation Questions 1-4

A2 Media Evaluation Questions

Shown below are all of my media evaluation questions for the A2 course

Production Editing

With my production, I did not do a large amount of editing as I felt the light and colour treatment of the shots did not need considerable amounts of work to it and I also felt that it would have a more realistic appeal to the whole production if I did not edit it too much.

The main thing I did edit was the speed of some of the shots and the transitions into other shots. I tried to slow down some of the shots with my actor running to give it a more dramatic effect and so that I could get more use from using less shots. The slowing of the shots needed to be relatively consistent with each shot so I tried to ensure that I slowed each shot to the same time (either 0.6 or 0.7) as this meant there were no elements which were overly slow and all of them managed to compliment each other well. I did however slow one particular shot down much more and the clip can be seen at the end of this blog.

In terms of editing transitions, I only really used a very blunt transition of just going into the next shot and I also used a fade which lasted for different times depending on which shots I was trying to put together. I used these as they are the most common ways of transitioning shots in both music videos and in films, also they were more relevant and looked more suitable than those that looked as though they would be found on a power point presentation made by an 11 year old. This gave my production a more professional look to t and this would have increased the quality of the music video and hopefully increased the interest of the viewer(s). I also used the transition of fading the text out at the start just to introduce the band and song name as this is the way it is traditionally done by channels such as Viva and 4Music.

Final Song Choice

After changing my idea constantly about what song I was going to use in my final production, I decided to use an acoustic version of an original song. I chose to do this as I listened to the original and the lyrics were very relevant to the storyline but because it was by a slightly "punk rock" band, the beat was a bit harsh for the mood of the video and there was a lot of heavy electric guitar and drum use. This was not ideal for my production as the atmosphere of the production is relatively slow and this needs a softer and more comforting track to go with it to make it seem as though they compliment each other well. The original song can be seen below:

I had listened to the above song plenty of times as I am a fan of the band and therefore have listened to a lot of their records. Because of this, I decided to see whether or not their acoustic version of this song would fit into the production with a more complementing fit. The lyrics are the same and the way it is sung is completely the same but the difference is that it is very light drum use and just an acoustic guitar, which gives a softer touch to the song and makes it seem more suitable for the mood that the video is trying to portray. This is why I decided to choose this song and therefore this is my final choice for my production. The song can be seen below:

Characters

As my production is a music video with a genre of a love/break-up story, I felt that I needed to ensure that my characters fitted the traditional conventions of music videos with this genre. Therefore I decided to have a male character and a female character. I decided that I would act in my production myself as this meant it was easier for me to control what sorts of shots I wanted and how I wanted the actor to play the part. In terms of the female actress, I asked one of my friends, Sarah, to play the role. I wanted the typical characteristics of an actress for this particular genre. This would include someone who is smaller than me, is very innocent looking and just what a typical girl would be classed as. For my actor (me) I tried to dress in very basic colours to give a feeling of not being very interesting and not being very bothered about anything. This is so that it supports the way the argument starts at the beginning of the music video. Pictures of both the actors in their costume can be shown below:

Sarah

Ben (me)