A2 Media Music Video- Kyle Smith

Todorov's narrative theory consist of 5 different stages, which are:

Equilibrium: everything is normal

Disruption of equilibrium: something upsets the normal balance of life

Recognition of disruption: something effects the hero

Attempt to repair the disruption: the hero goes on his quest

Equilibrium is restored: the hero defeats the villain

This concept can be seen in many real media texts which mainly include those along the lines of pop music videos which carry out a love narrative, with an example being Taylor Swift's music video to her song "You belong with me". The theory can be directly applied to our music video that we produced which i will show you through each of the stages. Firstly, our music video begins with 3 young males walking through a door into the t.v studio, plugging in the amp and sitting down next to the drums. This establishes the location and also tells the audience that there is this equilibrium where everything is normal.

As the video progresses and approaches the time of 0:28 we see that one of the band members has text with

received a text message. Due to the characters body language the audience now realises that there is a disruption in this equilibrium and that the message has upset the normal balance of life.

The next stage of Todorov's theory that can be seen in our music video is the "Recognition of disruption"

where something or someone effects the hero, or in our case the band member who is trying to get to band practice. The first phase of this stage is when the character steps out of his door to find that a bird has suddenly pooed on him, something that effects him from trying to get to band practice and tells the audience that this journey is not going to be an easy one for him.

The second from last stage in this theory is the attempt by the main character to repair the disruption, and in this case it is the band member trying to get to band practice as soon as he can with him already being late. There are many hindrances on the way for this character with one being the man in the beer bottle costume who has a confrontation with the main character, but this does not stop the band member from continuing his journey to try and get to band practice in time.

The final stage of this theory is where me and the group attempted to challenge it. The final stage is where

equilibrium is restores and everything is back at normal but for the band member, as he arrives everything is not normal for him and it doesn't end happily for him as he opens the door to find that he is too late and everybody has left making his efforts pointless.

As our music video was split into to two different sections, one being the performance of our band, and the second being a narrative, we believed this would be a great chance to really use, develop and challenge the forms and conventions of real media texts as we had a lot we could experiment with. One interesting convention that is apparent in the way it is challenged in our music video is the change between camera use. You can see that in our video the narrative is filmed in POV (point of view) which is certainly not conventional and not seen very often in most music video, but we believed it would make our video more engaging for the audience. That is how we challenged the conventional medium, close-up and longs shots that you usually see in a music video but we did get some inspiration from one music video on the POV shots which was "Smack my bitch up" by "The Prodigy".

One way in which we used the conventional camera shots that you see in most pop rock music videos, which is what our chosen bands genre was, is the way in which there are so many various longs shots and close-ups quickly edited together that it almost goes along with the beat of the song. This something that you usually see in pop rock music video and here are some examples of our work following that convention, along side real existing media texts that follow the convention as well

Andrew Goodwin's theory identifies that there are 5 different features that we, the audience should look for whilst watching music videos. They are:
-Thought beats
-Narrative and performance
-The star image
-Relation of visuals to song
-Technical aspects of music videos

Goodwin's theory can certainly be applied to our music video with the first 4 of these 5 factors being implemented in our music video. Beginning with thought beats, throughout our music video what we believe the audience will be judging what will be seen in the music video based on the images that they are forming due to the song itself, is conveyed and implemented in the production. From our researching stages we gathered information that told us the images people expect to see in pop/rock genre music video are that of young male performers who are not "glamorous" enough to be pop stars and are not "messy" and "shaggy" enough to be rock stars, but somewhere that fits in between. And this is what we implemented with the use of costumes and performers. The performers we gathered looked clean-cut and were instructed not to where clothing that tries to enhance physical appearance. The second stage of this theory, narrative and performance is pretty obvious as to how we used these forms in our product, with the video being split into two halves, one being the band performing and the other being a narrative. The star image is something that we as a group took into account and implemented in our video to a certain extent. A lot of music videos these days show constant examples of voyeurism by selling the artist to the consumer through the use of sexual implications. This is mostly seen in pop genre music videos and although we would not go as far as to 'sell' the lead singer to the audience we would defiantly make him the star image throughout our video by giving him the most screen time. This is a convention that is seen in many similar style videos such as "Dance, dance" by the American pop rock band "Fall out boy", where the bass guitarist Pete Wentz, who is often perceived by the fans as the favorite of the band is given the majority of the screen time with him performing in the band and also the performing as the main character featured in the narrative.

The final factor of Goodwin's theory that can be seen throughout our video are the technical aspects, with the main technical aspects that you see in our video being location, the speed and movement of the camera, and cuts in the video. We used various locations in our video from a music studio where the band are performing, to the inside of one of the band members house. The use of locations aren't meant to glamorize the video as they are all basic locations but what they do it prevent the video from becoming static so that the audience won't eventually become disinterested. The speed and movement of the camera can be seen throughout the narrative performance and this is down to the use of a GoPro camera which allows to give a steady view of someones perspective with them being able to run but keep focus and not shake the camera. The main example of this speed is seen at 2:30 where the main character starts to run away from a confrontational man. The cuts as well are seen throughout the video but this time they are seen in the performance segment of our video. Fast cuts are very common convention used in music videos for songs similar to the one we used and this was apparent in our research that people thought it would be a good idea to use quick cuts that go with the beat of the song, so we did

Overall, i believe that our music video has followed the conventions shown in pop rock genre styled music videos. With the uses of quick cuts that follow the beat of the song, the balance between performance and narrative and the overall fast and speedy look of the video, i have come to the conclusion that we as a group have used conventions effectively as well as challenge them with the use of our POV camera shots for the narrative segment.

Digipak

For our digipak me and the group wanted to create this band identity that is similar to bands of the same genre. The two album covers seen above use conventions such as a shot of the whole band, vibrant colours and a bold title. As you can see below this is how we have exploited these conventions in our own work by using a vibrant colour to make it stand out, the band as the main image, and a bold font.

Due to the research i had carried out, it was apparent that magazine adverts had a direct correlation between them and the digipak. Therefore we used the same colours as well as the same image used in the front cover. The other conventions that you can see below in my magazine advert is ratings from well know music magazines, website for the band, the record label and the iTunes logo making the consumer know where they can buy the product. These conventions are always seen in artists magazine adverts and we wanted to make sure they were implemented in ours to make sure it looks as professional as possible

Two main reasons for why different people consume different forms and typed of media is to either escape from their everyday life, or to be able to gain an identity through the use of media so they can be part of certain social groups. These two reasons are seen in the uses and gratifications theory and are important to keep in mind whilst we collected our feedback as different people will have their opinion influence from the media that they consume. We didn't follow this approach to gather feedback word for word as we wanted to collect as much feed back as possible but we were certainly wary of who we chose to collect the feedback off because a 13 year old teenage girl who listens to Justin Bieber would obviously not be able to identify with our work, and as well have her opinion influence because of the 'Urban tribe' she belongs to

Rough Cut Feedback

It was extremely important for use to gather feedback on our rough cut work as quickly as possible, as we would want to mainly find out the critisism so we could improve our video for the final cut

Final Cut Feedback

Digipak/magazine advert feedback

For our digipak and magazine advert feedback we simply showed all the panels of the digipak and the cover of the magazine advert to 5 firends that fitted into our target audience of 16-35 year old males and asked for them to give 1 point on both our digipak and magazine, whether it be positive of negative. These are the points that we gathered from our feedback

Digipak

- "I like the colour scheme, it works well"

- "The silhouettes of each band member out nice"
- "The colours don't match up exactly on each panel"
- "The album cover seems a bit blank, there's lots of empty space"
- "Good detail on the back cover"

Magazine
- "looks professional with all the detail at the bottom"
- "I like that colour"
- "silhouettes are cool"
- "Looks like a real one"
- "Title should be black instead of white"

From this feedback 7/10 points were positive and the other 3 criticisms which is overall positive. We asked them to only give one point as we though it would make them think about what they needed to say more as they only had one chance to convey it, and with a better point gave our group a better understanding of how effective our products were. What i have learnt from this feedback is that attention to detail is vital in successfully making a digipak, with one of the criticisms being that the colours didn't match up on either one. As well, i discovered that you can keep things simple but still produces effective and good work, as in our digipak and magazine advert there is one colour scheme used throughout along with the same simple silhouette image, which proved to be effective as out feedback proved.