Tai Evaluation

The brief was to create a music video that follows the main conventions of a music video whilst representing a theme. My group submitted a video for Gary Jules' version of 'Mad World' which was originally released by Tears For Fears. We also created another video for Simple Plans 'Welcome To My life' because like 'Mad World', the lyrics can be connected to isolation, however 'Welcome To My Life' is more upbeat and the audience may prefer it to the monotonous 'Mad World'.  One of the ways we followed conventions is by conflating performance and narrative; with the video being based on the theme of isolation. The narrative and performance were mostly shown as one instead of as separate scenes. Alternatively, we could have represented our theme better by isolating the narrative from the performance.
I had an active role in the production process: I was the cameraman, main director and contributed 5 blog posts to the research and planning. To prepare for this task we analysed music videos to identify conventions and ensure we understood how to implement them into our own video.

'Mad World' by Gary Jules falls under the genre of a pop ballad; although, it was initially released as an alternative rock single. Pop ballads commonly feature a lot of performance scenes, therefore it was important for us to incorporate this into our video - along with a narrative. We linked performance and narrative by displaying a character who is simply unable to be dispelled; matching the flat and dark tone of the song. A scene from another video which provided inspiration for one of our own is from Ed Sheerans 'The A Team' The female protagonist within the video is shown sitting down and unmoving. The footage is sped up which gives the effect that she is separated from the rest of the world because everything else is moving at such a fast pace. Emulating this allowed us to represent our audience and our theme. We went to oxford street where I recorded Shahel sitting down at a bench for around 5 minutes. In the editing process we sped up the clip in order to achieve the affect.

The recording process was mostly successful. It was done on my phone - a Nexus 5. We filmed without a tripod, which is something that would have been useful because of the heavy wind, making it more difficult to maintain a steady hand. I felt that it was important for us to display a variety of shot types in our video to show our skill and understanding. We filmed at well-known locations that our audience will recognise, such as St Pancras International and the Alexandra Palace. One way we could have improved the way our group worked is by combining more peoples ideas instead of just picking one over the other with out any compromise. Another problem that we had (which actually turned out to be helpful) was getting lost on the way to Alexandra Palace. We ended up unintentionally exploring London which gave us inspiration for our video because of how different life is in certain areas. The video was edited on iMovie which was convenient for our group due to one of our members (Shahel) being experienced in using this software. This was helpful as he was able to introduce the rest of the group to the software, thus bettering our understanding. A post-production problem was that a couple of scenes were in portrait whereas the rest of the video featured landscape shots; causing marks to be lost off our provisional grade for the video. This problem rectified once we re-recorded the necessary scenes.

Our music video would be shown on music television channels because an audience that enjoys watching music videos and not just listening to the song will most likely be browsing these channels. When filming we took it into consideration that some people may be uncomfortable with being caught on camera, therefore the majority of our shots isolate the protagonist from the public crowd - this is also effective in representing our theme. Overall our music video is mostly effective, but there is definitely room for improvement. Time management was generally inconsistent and some tasks were rushed with minimal effort. The main thing that would need to be tweaked is the way the lighting seems to fluctuate from shot-to-shot. Perhaps we could have presented the lighting in chronological order, as if telling a story.

We represented the group of people that feel as if they are remote from the rest of the world; The protagonist idly moves from place to place, with the same gloomy expression and desolate body language - he isn't even trying to fit in anymore and is in complete isolation. By presenting the protagonist in this way the audience may have an emotive response. This shows that we have been able to create a video that connects with the audience in a way that most videos don't.

Creating this video has been an intriguing experience. As I was one of the leaders of the group I did a lot of talking throughout the process which has improved the way I am able to enunciate my ideas. In future projects I will try to be more efficient with my time management. If I am a leader in the project, the most important thing for me would be to gather everyones ideas before making any final decisions.