2. Who are we and what are we doing? We are 2 A2 media students who have tried to portray a character who has just lost his girlfriend. The music video we are doing is by The Streets and it is titled “Dry Your Eyes Mate.” The song is about losing a girlfriend and coming to terms with the loss. In our take of the video, we see him go through an average day trying to get on with his life. The video follows him through his journey, alone. The film is in black and white to convey the emotion and pain. By doing this, we were trying to resemble that his life has been drained of all its colour and life.
3. Who are “The Streets”? The Streets are a British hip hop/garage act originating from Birmingham, England. The Streets was formed and led by Mike Skinner. Skinner has become a popular figure within heavily urban areas like London because the majority of his lyrics relate to urban environments and situations. The Streets are popular within the growing youth culture as well as They have released 4 studio albums with a 5th being released in Spring 2011.
4. Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challeng forms and conventions of real life media products.
5. Andrew Goodwin In order to answer this question, we must look at what Andrew Goodwin said about music video. He believes that we must look at the relationship between visual and lyrical. As well as the relationship between the visual and the music. Other things such as demands from the Record Label and other advertising strategies have to be considered.
6. Video We decided to make the video a journey. We wanted to show him go through a normal day without his girlfriend. It is not a performance, and there is no lip syncing. We believed by making him silent throughout the video, it would make the video more solemn.Perhaps you could say he is “lost for words”. Close ups are used to promote the artist, as well as showing his emotion.
7. Is this typical for a hip hop/garage video. Some would say yes. Most garage songs are performance based. An example of this would Oxide and “Neutrino’s” – “Only Want to be with us cos’ we’re famous”. Oxide and Neutrino supported The Streets. Most have shots inside nightclubs because the target audience are young hedonistic party-goers. In hip hop, you mostly get lip syncing videos however, narrative/illustrative based videos are not uncommon. We thought by not lip syncing it would make it more emotional.
8. However This song is not the typical garage/ hip-hop song. The beats per minute is considerably slower than an average song. The slow rhythm represent the feelings of the video.
9. Relationships Between Lyrics and Visuals “Looking to the left a bit, then looking back down”. Carlos is in the couples bed and looks to where she would be sleeping. Shows that he is missing her. The audience gets to acknowledge that she has only just left him.
10. Relationship between visuals and the music. Final Scene. Candle Blows out when music fades out. Represents the end of him and his girlfriend. Shows he is moving on. Ring present in shot to show how serious the relationship was.
11. Alone Carlos is often seen alone during the film. He has been used to being with his girlfriend and is struggling to cope. The slow pace represents the emotion of Carlos.
12. Question 2 : How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task.
15. Who was our campaign aimed at? The Streets lyrics often relate to people who will be in the lower class bracket. The majority of people in this bracket will be living in urban areas. We thought it would be necessary to use an urban setting which could also relate to the lower class. The first album cover was a block of flats, while the second album, which our song was taken from, has a picture of a bus station. We decided to go with the public transport theme and used the train station. We have a theme of loneliness running through our Cover as does our music video. Due to this, we are looking to aim at the “strugglers”. The Streets are also highly popular with the growing youth culture, so we thought it would be necessary to put in a pull quote from a leading Radio DJ as well as choose ratings from popular young music magazines such as NME.
16. CD Cover. We thought it would be necessary to use an urban setting. The urban setting relates to audience we are targeting. The first album cover was a block of flats, while the second album, which our song was taken from, has a picture of a bus station. We decided to go with the public transport theme and used the train station. The CD cover is a journey. He starts off coming out of the train station and by the 4th panel he is on the train ready to go home. In all 4 panels, he is seen alone which relates to our music video “Dry Your Eyes Mate”. The train station is used in our film as well.
17. Poster. On the poster, Carlos is seen sitting on the train waiting. Star ratings from popular youth magazines (NME) are used as well as a pull quote from a DJ popular (Zane Lowe)with the target audience. In the video an NME sign is present in the corner suggesting that it would be broadcasting on that music channel. We thought this would work because it will attract the audience we are after. “Mike Skinner Is a Lyrical Genius – Zane Lowe Radio 1.” Record Label published on it as well to make it look professional.
18. Why did we choose the train station? The train station has a lot of different areas. Allowing us to look through different shot choices. Examples, the shopping area, the platform and the actual train. The train is often used by people in the lower and working class brackets, which is the target audience for the album. We used the train station in our video. The station was lit well too, causing minimal fuss in editing.
19. What else did we do to make it effective? We used the streets logo, which has been present in all of their 4 studio albums. We used a font and typed the album name in lower case letters just like the 4 original albums. We added record label logo’s, a barcode and a parental advisory sticker to make it look authentic. The CD cover takes us through a journey. We first see him walking away from the train station, then we see him walking to the train and then finally being on the train. In every picture, we see him alone, which resembles the lyrics of our music video. The “strugglers” could also relate to this loneliness.
20. Does the Ancillary relate to the main task? With the CD cover consisting of the artist (Carlos) being lonely, this relates well to our video. In all the video, Carlos is seen alone struggling to come to terms with his loss.
21. Has the campaign been effective? The CD cover in our opinion has been a success. We kept it simple and this made it look better. We like the theme of the train station, we believe it works well. By using the Streets Logo and Parental advisory sticker on the front, we’ve made it look very professional. This could be said for the font as well. We used no capital letters in the album covers name, just like the original CD pack.
23. Feedback – Location. When completing our first draft, and showing it off to our peers, they would say that it needs a bit more “depth”. We believed this too after looking back on our efforts. The problem was, our draft film only had 2 locations, the house and the park. We needed to spice it up and we did so after talks with our peers. We decided to add urban areas because that is where the band is most recognised. We also added in some typical places for couples to go, to show that he is struggling being alone. We decided to shoot in the train station. Where there is a Costa coffee and shops as well as the platform.
24. Feedback – Long Takes. Quicker cuts were also said to be needed as well because yet again, the film was too boring. In order to see how we can improve our video, we looked at the original. Although there is not much going on. There are many cuts from different angles which also showed the artists loneliness. By using more of these, it was easier to convey his feelings. We decided to add in different cuts from different angles to make it more lively. In order to see how to do this effectively, we looked at the original video. There is a bit where there is 12 shots in 16 seconds. This allowed us to convey more emotion as well as mike the film more fun to watch.
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26. Feedback We’ve had a lot of compliments about are film, here are a few. “...I think it’s really good, especially the final shot.” “It’s a lot better since you edited in the new locations.” “I think you have conveyed his emotions well’’ However, this is some of the criticism. “You need more shot variety” “It would be good if you could include more shots of the girl he is missing”. “His head has been cut out of the shots too often.”
27. Question 4 – How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage.
28. Final Cut Express. The tool used to cut and edit our film. Final Cut was extremely to use. It was easy to cut the clips as well and place them on the sequence. There are many tools allowing us to decide which effects will benefit the outlook of our video. The tool we used was the “tint” tool in the “image control” section. The “tint” tool allows us to change the video clip into black and white. We thought this would benefit our film because the bleak colours describe the mood.
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30. Adobe Photoshop. To construct our poster and CD cover. The biggest problem for us was getting our clips to fit the CD cover size. Firstly, we had to make a freeze frame in Final Cut, then convert and save it on the desktop. We then transferred into Photoshop but they were too big. To combat this, we used the transform tool to cut it down to size. The crop tool was then used to make sure there was no picture outside the CD frame. However, one of the most important tools used was the lighting effect in order to make the character (Carlos) look lonely. We used it on the back panel so we could place the song titles in the black area.
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32. Internet For Research. Our Blogs were electronic. We updated our blogs with PowerPoint's by uploading them onto slide share. We could look at facebook/myspace pages when researching the group to see what they are posting. E.g. Tour Dates, Statuses, video links Etc. YouTube allows us to look through past videos in order to see the built stereotype through made by the videos. After our 1st draft, we went on to YouTube to see the original videos in order to see how they convey the emotions. Google allows us to track such things as album covers and lyrics, aiding us with our blogs.
33. Other Media Technologies HD Camera - In order to film the footage. Live type – In order to create our credits.
