good music video is a clip that responds to the pleasure of music, in which that the music is made visual, either in new ways or in a way that accentuates existing visual associations.' - Andrew Goodwin 1992. This is the theory of Andrew Goodwin, he feels that a music video should respond to the music, it should link in a way which is exciting and interesting to watch. In relation to this I feel my music video does not live up to this standard in the sense of being exciting however the video does have visual correspondence to the song by amplifying the lyrics in the video. A code and convention of Music videos is censorship when a video is made it has to be regulated by the BBFC (the British board of film classification) when a video is censored it means it is not appropriate for the audience, Michael Jackson, the Prodigy and Robbie Williams have all be censored. Therefore when planning our video we needed to make sure it was appropriate for our target audience. Another convention of the music video is that the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals should amplify or contradict what is happening on screen, also the relationship between the music and the visuals should also amplify or contradict the video. Our Video matches up to this in the sense of amplifying. By highlighting lyrics in our plan we managed to create a visual image for the lyrics by choosing a relevant scenario. In some areas we did not meet the usual codes and conventions, a on going trend which is becoming extremely popular is to have frequent reference to the female body, this attracts a male audience and goes against the Andrew Goodwin theory by superficially basing there music videos on image not amplification. As our song has a sweet innocent feel we chose to amplify and not use a superficial method however, this goes against us as the majority of males who watched this video did not enjoy it as much as females. To meet both criteria we could have had shorter shots of more personal close ups of the main actress. Also our video did not have frequent close ups of the artist, record labels demand this as it helps for people to identify the artist. I feel this would have made our video better and also more personal as when the camera closes up to the singer, we could of seen more emotion from facial expressions.
'A
I have used a collection of new media technologies to produce my media project. To film my video I used a XM2 camera to record my video, then I also used a Casio exlim camera to capture images for the digi pack and poster, I also used this camera to illustrate my blog with evidence of my group work. Once I had all my footage I used programmes such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere pro and Adobe After effects.
To store and present my work I have used the website blogger where I have gained information for various social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace to obtain information about the band, personally I felt he information given from the networking sites is not very reliable as they wrote it themselves and have not took it seriously there for our information is not very interesting. To create the poster I duplicated the layers then desaturated the layer on top, then by using the eraser tool simply rubbed away this layer to reveal the coloured image under it. Then simply used the burn tool to add more of a flowing look by altering the opacity this made the image more flowing. I used a very similar technique to create the digi pack. By using two images of him walking through a park I simply cut around him using the magnetic lasso tool and placed this cut out version of him in front of original photograph of him walking, making sure his legs where going in a sequence to create the vision of him walking. This was a hard image to create. I wanted the image to look like one long panorama, everything needed to match and flow correctly, as the background was very busy with all the trees it was hard to match each image. However by spending a lot of time on this I felt our digi pack has a professional look to it. Personally its my favourite part of the project. The video is not what my group had originally planned as seen in my previous planning on my blog, it was scheduled we where to produce a stop frame animation, in which two tomatoes travelled across the land together whilst growing old together which is a big element of the song. Due to lack of time and also it being very hard to take the images to produce the animation as the texture of the tomatoes would not stick down to the back ground I had set up, this idea was impossible to create. This error was very hard to overcome as we now had little time to plan a new video, therefore we decided we could still use the original plan of couples sat in the park on a bench, but as this would become boring to watch throughout a whole video, we decided to add a performance, because of our late decision we could no longer get the band to perform for us so we had to use an actor. This was hard as the actor had to learnt the music and the lyrics in a small amount of time, which became a problem when lip syncing the video as he did not know all of the words, this is shown in our video. When we put the shots together of the bench and the performance our video was boring and lacked a narrative. This is where I feel our video is poor. As the deadline was near we did have to rush the narrative scene, we did not have much time to choose actors, therefore there acting in parts of the video does not seem believable, the main couple where meant to look very in love and sweet together. However they did not and our audience picked up on this. Therefore we decided to put these shots in black and white, as it adds a more romantic sense to the video. When our video was watch by fellow students, we obtained feedback. The audience felt the song was well amplified with the visuals and also the genre of the music matched the video, which is something we really wanted to achieve when creating an image for the band. The audience also felt the setting was appropriate along with the costume. However not many people would refer this video to a friend as it was not exciting, which I agree with. Our video on a whole achieved negative feedback. 
However our poster and digi pack remained successful. The only improvement that the audience felt needed to be made to our digi pack would be to make the spine of the pack more flowing like the rest of the pack. However they did feel it was done to a high standard and that it matches the poster well. The posters negative feedback was that it could have been brighter to attract more of an audience; this could be achieved by altering the curves or the brightness and contrast on photo shop. 
I asked a group of people what they thought about my music video, digi pack and poster.
Alex Grant "I thought the lip synicing in the video was poor, i didnt like settings either, however i guess it suited the song. The narrative parts were badly acted out. I did like the part where they were sat on the bench. I felt that suited the song really well. I liked the digi pack, i think thats the best out of the work. Its good how the image moves on through the cd case, its cool how the poster matches, i dont like the black border though.
Chloe roper "The video matches the music really well and so does the costume along with the mise en scene, yet the performance and acting lets the video down, I think the bench scenes are too repedative. The poster is good i like how its broken down into 3 images like the digi pack, this will help the audience find it when shopping. I really like the poster and digi pack, good use of photoshop"
Andrew Burton "I didnt really like the song at all, but i thought the video was cool, i really liked the special effects and how they images faded into the next. I liked the poster aswell but felt the digi pack was a little rough around the edges"
Katie goodier "I didnt like the poster, i felt the picture should of been a bigger image of the artist so you could idenitfy him more. The digi pack is good, yet you still cant identify the artist, however the editing is very good. The video is not polished. It looks like some areas dont belong. However the video amplifies the lyrcs most of the time."
Chris Gerrard "i really liked the video, i thought the lyrics really matched the video. The use of couples helped show the romance the artist wants to convey. I thought the digi pack and poster were also good, i liked how they matched and both went from black and white to colour, the video also did this which was a cool special effect"
Ben New "The only thing i like is the digi pack, the rest just doesnt really make much sense, i didnt undertsand the narrative to the video. It just felt like they tried to force the lovey doveyness onto the camera with a sheer amount of couples looking cute. I thought the poster was silly as you cant see the artist."
I am now going to compare and contrast my own products with the work of professionals to analyse the quality, codes and conventions and if there are any major similarities or differences between the works. My video has a main narrative and a performance however it does have filler shots of couples on a bench, in which we use the effect of cross dissolve to swap from couple to couple, this effect is over used as our audience feedback tells us.ronan keating when you say nothing at all A video that is similar to this would be Ronan Keating 'when you say nothing at all' the similarities obviously would be the use of a park bench and couples however the shots to other people do not use cross dissolve they simply have different people sat on different benches, by looking at our audience feedback, our audience would of preferred this as it would of resulted in less special effects. Oasis songbird Another video that is quite similar to mine in a performance sense would be 'Song bird' by oasis; this video is shot in one of our similar locations of our Digi pack and poster, in a field. The video is similar to ours as they both have shots following the performer to his location however oasis use a tracking shot and our video used a wide angle. The oasis video meets the codes and conventions of the record label demanding close ups of the band, throughout most of the performance the video is shot in either mid shots or close ups, our video was completely in full shots.
Our Digi pack is quite similar to the one above as it contains an image that runs right the way through, it also contains information in the same place however this digi pack contains a fold out information book, due to the amount of time we had to produce our work we could not do this, however I would of liked to do this as it would make the digi pack more appealing to sell. This digi pack also mixes colour with black and white, we have also done this, I feel it makes our digi pack look more professional as we are using more complex photo shop techniques. Our poster also contains this black and white mixed with colour effect,
however the poster above is extremely bright, we chose to match our poster to our Digi Pack, but as I look at this poster it is extremely eye catching by using bright sharp colours and the use of the female body it is a lot more appealing than ours. However the album this poster is advertising has a very similar front cover, as does ours. By matching the pack to the poster this helps the audience to identify the poster to the pack, making it easier to find, therefore more sales. In conclusion I felt my video was not successful in terms of meeting the codes and conventions and attracting an audience however some aspects where good, such as the amplifying of lyrics. If given more time I feel I could have achieved a lot more, or if we were to have this idea originally we would have had more time to work on the narrative rather than using our whole planning time, planning a video that was impossible to make. With this more time I would have been able to find actors suitable for the part and also have time to re-shoot the performance and get close ups of the artist. In comparison to my video I feel the promotion work has been successful, and I am proud of the finished design. I have learnt that creating a music video is a hard task as every little detail has to be correct to ensure your video is successful, which ours is not. However good promotion acts a vehicle and can change your outlook on something just by impressing you with a good design
