In the genre of rock, there are a lot of noticeable conventions. We took these and incorporated it into our final product. Our original inspiration came in the form of rock videos and rock bands that also heavily focus upon using the same conventions such as Foo Fighters and Nirvana. However, if you looked across many rock videos they all carry very similar conventions. For example, the camera work is always heavily focusing upon the instruments being used and on the artists it is also quick paced. With the likes of nirvana we also noticed how raw there music videos seemed to be but that fitted the whole convention of grunge music and it gave us an aim to go for in the look of our music video. Sometimes there is a narrative flowing within that either focuses on what the lyrics of the song is portraying or sometimes it’s a light hearted and humours narrative that often has a very weak link to the chosen song, yet is fun to watch and pulls in the audience. However sometimes there is no narrative and the video is only of the band playing. We knew we wanted the video to be raw, so we took the conventions of having a narrative that best suits the feel of the song and using the camera angles and camera style to make it look like it fitted in with the genre of grunge. We used just us two as it showed everyone had a hidden rocker inside of them. This is another convention that is used a lot in rock music videos, and we liked the idea of having the audience able to portray the video in the way that they wish as it is the same with music, it’s how you perceive it. Moving on further, Foo Fighters was our original influence. Their song monkey wrench had the band playing hard rock music one side of the door while the same people were also on the other side of the door looking in and seeing what was going on. We took this same premise of us being one side watching and us being one side playing and adapted it so it best matched the raw nature of the video and feel we were going for. The way ours differs is by having it so that the conventions such as the close ups and the band playing were a part of the narrative other than having it aside from the narrative. This was crucial to our piece as it meant that it added to the open narrative to the video and it could be seen in a multiple number of ways.
We also looked at many band websites to see what conventions they use for this we found that every one of the websites would have the same feel as the band so we decided that our website would have to say something about our band it had to be like part of a puzzle piece that fits a band together it’s a big part of it.
We used pinnacle to edit as we needed something really basic to go on and didn’t want to cover the video in transitions or expensive special effects however pinnacle did have some effects which we did use to our advantage which was when we wanted to speed a shot up to make it more fast paced to fit our fast paced energetic feel, but by using the less glossy software it helped the rawness of the video. This rawness was also helped by us choosing a camera that steered away from being High Definition and allowed us to give a grainy and darker effect that made it look like it fitted with our genre. Because we wanted this raw nature to come across through the whole project we had it so that even the website and digipak carried the feeling across so it looked like a whole piece rather than separate items from the same band. We are pleased to say this worked really well, comments we got were that it looked really professional and that it looked like something you’d expect from a grunge band. Another program we used was wix an internet site which helps build webpages this helped us to make a website that was straight to the point, raw and dark it is very easy to use, lastly for our blog we used weebly which out of all the programs gave us the most problems but we managed to get past them and overall create a good blog.
Evaluation
In our music video our main product and our ancillary products worked together well to promote an image of raw, crazy but also a dark look about it which best matched the grunge genre. The music video and our ancillary products (the website and the digi pack) we created this sort of image and feel.
Firstly the digi pack we made had the colour scheme of black and white this helped to create the dark feel and also a mysterious feel to it as well as a sense of old school grunge that you’d probably find in the section in a local record store , next on the digi pack is a brain scan which fits with our name M.R.I but also shows a hospital feel like a patient which is a point we wanted for our music video narrative. To match the crazy part in the digi pack we have put a variety of words inside the brain scan, which shows what we would imagine would be in a mental patients head, the words would be jumbled, the words are also all meanings of crazy. The digi pack also has a very raw feel about it which is exactly what we wanted in our music video and across the project.
The website we made works with our music video heavily as it uses an image from the video on the home page, the picture is of us looking crazy and taunting which again gives the dark crazy feel to the website as well as, once again raw understanding of not having lots of special effects to overdo the whole feeling of the music, the website is also quick and straight to the point you can see the single for sale, you can then see the tour dates and a featured video straight away this really fits our feeling that we are trying to get across. we went straight to the point, fast but with a dark look about it.
With the use of common objects and schemes you can create the image we want with the digi pack, the website and the music video we use a lot of black and bland colours this gives it that darker image and shows it must be grungy music and some grungy artists which is the image we want as it fits the style of music.
Our website fits our band image as our band image is very raw and dark, our band image is straight to the point you know what we are a grunge band, so with the use of the internet website wix we had many themes and such options to choose from but we didn’t want a shiny over professional one, we chose a simple one with black as the background and simple buttons. Then on the website page everything is easily there we are straight to the point you see where we are touring, what our new single is and a video. You also see us two the band members almost taunting you, daring you to listen and get hooked to our music and lastly our band logo and name is in the corner showing everyone who we are.
Overall I think our main product and our ancillary work well perfectly we Wanted a certain feel a raw dark crazy feel and all three as you can see have points of each which help to create our own brand in a sense our own feel overall.
Another area to look at for our evaluation is how audience feedback affects our decisions and revisions. Well we believe it is massively important as it has helped us all the way through, for example with our questionnaires and discussions with friends we have asked for their opinions and their ideas on what our idea was because if the audience doesn’t like something then we would like to make it so that they do. A massive point for us was half way thorugh making our music video instead of completing it we decided to put the first half on facebook to see what people would think, this would then allow us to redo parts if people didn’t like it and then be able to get a feel for what to do for the rest of the video.
After putting it on facebook we got a mass amount of likes and found out that the audience loved it, they loved the rawness and how much it matched to the song