Evaluation Part 1.5

One convention of music videos is the
technique of cutting to the beat. This is used
in most music videos especially in the rock/
indie genre as percussion often plays a large
part in the style of music.
The split style for my music was also
fuelled by the fast paced editing between
narrative and performance. While this could of
become confusing the placing of the cuts
allowed a narrative to be created and an
audience could understand the sequencing.
Therefore editing became the narrative device
adding pace to the music video.

One music video in which I found very inspiring
was the button to button music video by the white
stripes. Here is a short storyboard showing the
technique .

For my music video I chose only to use non-
diagetic audio as I felt this was appropriate
and fulfilled the conventions of existing music
videos.
I wanted the audio to become almost as source
music does in a film. Source music in film is
where diagetic and non diagetic music gets
mixed as the band plays the music it becomes
the soundtrack to the dream sequence. While
all audio is recorded and synced to the digital
film cut it appears to be diagetic and non
diagetic.

My music video develops and challenges the
following conventions of real media products…

 Narrative-Anti-love
story
 Surrealism & Audience Interpretation
 Intertexuality
 Camera Technique
 Editing
 Production
 Band Image

While creating my research one element in which I experimented
with was the idea of having narrative running throughout my music
video. While I decided not to create the conventional boy meets girl I
created sequences in which had a relationship aspect. This was
created through the angles and editing.

As a director, I deliberately didn’t want to
create a love story as I find this a very cliché
narrative in music videos as this is often the
objective of the song. So I began by looking at
music videos which do follow the cliché and
then looked at how I could develop this into a
narrative with a deeper meaning. One
possibility was using surrealism and role
reversal so I also looked at some surrealist
theories.

• One of the music videos I studied closely in my genre
research
• A video which complies to the love story narrative
• Also has a performance aspect

 Use of point of view shots
 Male perspective (sexualising the female
subject)
 Band performance intertwined with narrative
 Cut to the beat
 Use of natural light in an outside location

 Only female character
shown
 Performance dominates the majority of the
music video with no direct link to narrative
 Slower frame rate in some sequences
 No linear storyline but a montage of
memories
 Un-Concluded ending

 Doesn’t completely comply to surrealist
conventions but does contain aspects in
which made any spectator more of a
participant.
 Audience created there own meaning of the
anti-conventional representation of a
relationship.
 Switch between third and first person
perspective–role reversal ending
 Ending with no specific meaning allows
audience interpretation

The ending of the music video clearly has no
resolution and has no specific meaning this
therefore eaves the audience to create their
own meaning an interpret the audio and visual
content. This futhur establishes a participant
status and gives the audience he chance o
decide how the narrative ends. This is one way
in which I challenged the convention of
mainstream music video narrative the
audience is no longer passive as they choose
the narrative.

One aspect in which I developed was the use of
using intertextual referencing from different
outlets of the media such a film and
photography…

Dream sequence from Sleepy
Hollow-Tim Burton (1999)

My Music Video

Lunch Atop A Skyscraper-
Charles C. Ebbets
(1932)

My Music Video

Conventionally a tripod is used throughout the
music video shoot in the industry but this can be
limiting. In some of the high angle shots I created
in the performance segments of the music video I
was required to use handheld camera.
This also gave the performance aspect a more
rugged and raw style.
The narrative segment was filmed using the
handheld technique as it was all point of view
angles and so it was important to show the
movement of the camera from a characters
perception. The movement of the camera
represented steps and was held a little higher than
my eyes as this would e more realistic and would
give the impression from a male perception.

While studying music videos of a similar genre I
noticed that all used a cut to the beat technique.
After seeing the button to button music video I
wanted to create something one step further .
Inside the roof of the barn there were large metal
beams holding the structure which reminded me
greatly of the image by Ebbetts and so I decided to
make my music video unique I would make the
band appear t be appearing and disappearing. This
took a lot of practise with the camera and took a
significant amount of time in practise runs to
perfect the tecnique. This was one element of the
music video which I found took the most planning
and cooperating and communication with the
band.

This image was taken on the last location visit where I aske one of the
people on site to demonstrate to the camera what I was trying to
achieve . By doing this I realised that I would need some kind of
support for the band and heir instruments for them to feel safe and so
scaffolding was introduced.

After looking at existing products I felt that band
integrity was often lost when major production
companies were involved and so I felt as in
independent it was important for me to develop if
not keep the original band image. To develop upon
how they wanted to convey themselves I also
wanted it to be about their talent and so I chose to
make the video primarily a performance based
video. The band were also given wardrobe choices
which I chose out for them as well the purpose of
this was also because the video would be shown to
their existing bands and I felt this was a way of
reaching my target audience appropriately.

While producing the music video I followed the
conventions of how an industry produced
product would be made.
 Research into the genre, music videos,
technical aesthetics
 Pre-production paperwork
 Production schedules and professional filming
and collaboration with band
 Use of Industry based programming
 Target audience reception and feedback

Evaluation Part 1.5

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Evaluation Part 1.5