Louis Warwick's Evaluation

Our group devised a Music Video and supplementary products for the Indie song 'Lights and Music' by Cut Copy. Throughout the entirety of this project our group thought it was integral to maintain a certain image. This would help towards keeping continuity to a high standard; as well as making sure no shots seemed out of place or irrelevant. We tried to include stereotypical boy band elements within our music video, such as our devised dance routine and close-up miming into the camera. This was to establish our boy bands necessity to be linked with other, similar bands surrounding the indie music genre. It also helped that out chosen track had a rather rhythmical sound to it; inevitably dancing in the video seemed natural, as it is displaying the feel-good-factor that the artists would wish to get across in the viewing of the video. I feel that our product really compares with forms and conventions of real media products. By using Goodwin’s analysis of imagery and sound we can see that our video does indeed demonstrate characteristics of genre, our band’s indie clothing and style of dancing and general movement all linked to the genre of the song. Although the lyrics and visuals only related on a couple of occasions (during the walking at the beginning being one example) the music and visuals where constantly correlating. We had futuristic shadow effects during the more electronic music and a guitar appearing throughout the sounding of a guitar being played. All band members faces were captured within the close-ups and the four-way split screen image incorporated all band members individually whilst simultaneously retaining the groups boy band representation. This as well as the miming and dancing performed helped towards making our group in becoming relateable to current artists.
After looking back at our final, finished video we realised that there were several moments which could defiantly been improved upon. Had we filmed a wider range of locational shots we may not have been so hard pushed to include some of our weaker footage. Certain transitions from shot to shot were slightly too long and could have been interrupted with an entirely new shot. However, the pace throughout was consistent and the normality of an over-busy music video was not portrayed which, I believe, enhanced our video as it was easy to focus on the action taking place, each individual shot also gained greater significance which additionally worked to our advantage. In my opinion the day to night transition was one of our most powerful shots and was extremely effective, zooming in on the sun, only to zoom out and the audience is left staring down into a flashlight. At this point our mise-en-scene transformed into night time imagery and was the introduction for our boy band’s entry. The message that was connoted was that this boy band only comes out at night, to party.
Our boy band look needed to be established; hence keeping all of the band in similar costumes and including our iconic ‘sunglasses at night’ helped us create a unique image. We displayed a neon, partying persona which, in turn, related to the song ‘Lights and Music’, but also allowed us to use edgy effects, incorporating our new age boy band. Using devices such as filtered lighting allowed us to create a shadow effect which we used to recreate a nightclub esc feel during shots of dancing. These lighting effects continued into the creation of our digi pack, where we used outlining of rainbow coloured beams to boarder our textual info and band member faces. These coloured lines helped highlight key information on our digi pack, making it standout, which is inarguably what is required in such a competitive industry. With our shots all occurring at night with bright lighting emphasising our band during dance and miming shots, as well as the filtered lighting within the video, we thought to maintain a clear representation of our group as an artist it was vital to preserve these features within our poster and digi pack. The night time video needed to be incorporated within our digi pack; hence, we designed black backgrounds for all parts, as well as presenting rainbow lines which relates to the filtered lighting within our video. All of the following helped make sure that any theme or motif our band displayed would not look alienated from the rest of our products. Another group’s feedback on our ancillary tasks claimed they liked the vibrant colours on the digi pack and the silhouette of the guitar. The colour strips that lead from the front to the back show good continuity in addition to the group member’s faces being shown on the cover; this all is imperative in making the band distinguishable. They also thought the shooting star effect on the inside of the cover and the colourful stripes being used again were effective. Most probably due to the fact that this added feature was in keeping with the overall outer-worldly fashion in which we clearly designed the digi pack. They also approved of the colour stripes outlining the world, again, these related to the rainbow lines featured on the front and back of the digi pack. With all elements linking to one another our band has a particular image and brand in which we can move forward from and become a recognisable product.
We decided to scrap the majority of our footage, as it was shot during the daytime; this was due to the fact that it contradicted our initial idea of a partying boy band on an energised night out. The daylight shots didn’t seem to correlate with the darker, night time shooting; consequently this took away from our various differing locations we would have included had we incorporated both day and night filming. Although, I believe, we managed to include a range of camera angles within our final piece, the foremost example of this was during the dance routine. Some of our feedback included comments on the relevance of dancing in relation to the song, however, I believe the dance routine was a simple way of merging the group together, making them appear as one boy band rather than four individuals. Nevertheless, I feel our lip syncing could have been varied, as the same location was used to capture all group members miming. Possible lack of continuity could have been perceived as there was only one person singing the vocals to the entire track, whereas, our group decided to divide the miming between all band members in a boy band esc fashion.
Our group constantly added to our blog, keeping up with our progression. This planning was important to aid us with keeping up to date with our work, and as we had all suggestions up in writing it enabled us to merge ideas together, thus, creating the finest outcome to our work. Incorporating other professional products of posters and music video’s from current artists helped spark inspiration for ideas guiding us to create a proficient looking piece of work. Using software such as Photoshop and Final Cut allowed us to design a much more professional outcome to our finished products. Such resources can often overcomplicate tasks such as these; this may have been the case within our video, as certain effects which were used appeared as somewhat supplementary and possibly unneeded. We could have used the time we had to our advantage to enrich our video if we used the editing time allocated to film differing shots, although these shots would not have been dark enough, consequently appearing out of place. Finally uploading our work onto YouTube meant our video sat along side thousands of other recognisable artists; a place that, in my opinion, was well deserved.