Evaluation Question 1

Ideas From Theories We Have Followed from Diana Baukerte on Vimeo.

What I Say In The Video:

Andrew Goodwin published a book called “Dancing in the Distraction Factory” in 1993 in which he discussed why he believed that music videos should not follow a narrative style. He didn’t necessarily agree with the ideas that Todorov had. Todorov’s ideas followed a story like sequence; almost like a beginning, middle and end. It starts with an equilibrium where there is a balance between good and evil in the universe. There is then a disruption where a negative event takes place. There is then recognition of this disruption and the protagonist is usually the one that notices it. There is an attempt to repair the disruption caused by the antagonist. Finally, equilibrium is reached and balance is restored.

However, it doesn’t mean that music videos are very “avant garde” it just means that they are easier to steer away from the narrative style. The choruses are parts of the song that are repeated and this means that various scenes can be repeated in music videos.

Illustration is where the video narrates the lyrics to the song, amplification is where the video introduces new meanings to a video but doesn’t contradict the lyrics and disjuncture is where there is little connection between the video and the lyrics. 

Carol Vernallis’ theory was more focused on the editing of a music video. She summarised her theory with four main concepts. She believed in amplification where the lyrics are brought to life on screen but the video may be fragmented and pose questions that may not be answered. She believed that editing should match the beat of the song but may break some rules e.g the 180 degree rule. When it comes to camera movement and framing, she raises the idea that every music video that accompanies a specific genre of music has its own shot types for example many pop videos use wide shots to capture the dancers. She also mentioned diegesis “the world within the music video” which may involve repeating the same shots at different angles so that the audience has a good sense of the world within the music video.

Our video went against the ideas of both Goodwin and Todorov. I think our video followed Vernallis’ theory the best. Our video didn’t follow a classic narrative structure but it also wasn’t very “avant garde”. Our video showed amplification where new meanings were given to the lyrics but we didn’t steer too far away from the lyrics either. Our editing also matched the beat of the song with quick pace changes as the choruses tended to be more upbeat which Vernallis mentioned.

 We decided to create our music video this way because we wanted to make it appealing to our core audience (18-24 year old females). We researched other music videos from the same genre and none of them showed disjuncture, although many did show illustration. Therefore, this is clearly what the core audience were most drawn to so we followed the same conventions.

Influences from existing videos - Kizoa Online Movie Maker

What aspect of the video influenced you:

This video influenced some of our shot types (camera-work) and actual content for our music. We decided to draw inspiration from the scene of the artist in an empty bath. In Taylor Swift’s video, it snows inside her house. This was an idea that we liked but knew was not possible to do ourselves successfully. We decided to place our artist in a bath because it shows loneliness visually; the artist alone in a cold bath.

Bloom influenced our shot types as well as locations. The song itself in the folk genre and shows similarities with our song as you can clearly hear the guitar in both songs. Many of our shots are very similar to the ones of this video but the concept is different. The locations however, show similarities. Both videos are located in a very green, outdoor location.

this video influenced our editing style. In this video, shots of the artist alone cut between shots of her and her lover together which creates a flash back effect. We decided to adapt the same editing technique, however, we also changed the colour of some of the footage to make it black and white; this made it even clearer that these scenes were flashbacks. Also, our flashbacks were concentrated in the chorus parts of the song whereas Gabrielle Aplin has them spread throughout the video; not specific to either verses or choruses.

We were influenced by the choice of costume from all videos. All costume was loose fitting and muted in colour. Two of these videos also had guitars in them which influenced our choice of synergy props.

How conventional is my website and digipak?

I managed to link my digipak and website by using the same background and images for both.

Conventions challenged:

My digipak design looks “busy” the background I created incorporated lots of images that linked well together to create one effective background (the pictures were also faded and decreased in opacity to make sure it wasn’t overpowering and didn’t take the focus away from the artist). Most digipaks of other folk artists are kept very simple, with one coloured or patterned backgrounds and minimal design, costume and writing. Basics of digipak design are used.