Music Video
- A convention of a lot of Indie music videos is having the band wearing their own clothes and are not particularly costumed I found this was the case in The Drums video - http://sarahdixonmediablog.blogspot.com/2010/09/video-analysis-drums-forever-and-ever.html but in The Killers video I analysed, Smile Like You Mean It - http://sarahdixonmediablog.blogspot.com/2010/09/video-analysis-killers-smile-like-you.html the band were wearing dark suits which suited the dark theme of their video. So for costumes in our video we didn't use too elaborate costumes. The main character wore normal clothes, if a little scruffy, to show he represents just a normal person, the interrogator wore more formal clothes to show his dominance and place in society and Jenny wore a dress to show her vulnerability and feminine role in the video.
When carrying out my research I noticed that The Killers tended to have storylines to their video, for example their Mr Brightside video(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqay9-U0vMQ&feature=related) and Smile Like You Mean It (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9uyb35McKM&feature=channel) so we decided to follow this convention with our video. There is no performance just miming of some key lines of the song by the main character. I think this worked well as a performance using instruments would have required a lot of effort and valuable time to find actors, instruments, practise and set up and then a high quality, realistic performance would have been hard to achieve. Having a storyline adapted from the song's lyrics is a very common convention of music videos, as identified by Andrew Goodwin's 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory'. In our video there is a definite relationship between lyrics and visuals.
- Our video's storyline incorporates a primary common theme that I discovered when doing my research - looking back over a time from the past. This was shown in The Killers video where the primary theme of the video's storyline is someone (who is possibly dead) looking back at significant events in their life. In The Drums video they seem to be looking back at by gone era, the 80s, and their image revolves around this past time. In the White Lies video, the name 'Farewell to the Fairground' already gives a direction to something that is gone and the video's theme seems to be people leaving and then returning home, back to their roots. In our video the main character is looking back over past events through a series of flashbacks and is therefore showing and developing this convention well.
- Effects were used in our video for example the scenes of the ghostly Jenny moving eerily using an effect on Adobe Premier. This is shown to be a convention as shown by the use of similar effects in The Killer's Smile Like You Mean It video.
Again, with reference to 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' by Andrew Goodwin, one of the conventions of music videos is the reference to looking, for example a screen within a screen. This is especially emphasised in our video through the theme of CCTV. This illustrates the theme of being watched and paranoia in the world. We used this our video to make the main character see more claustrophobic and vulnerable as he is unaware that he is being watched. We also used it too show past events, this portrays not being able to escape your past, and to show the ghost of Jenny. Overall making the CCTV quite a sinister part of the video. This gives us a clear and original main concept to our video.
Digipak and Advert
The primary convention of the digipak and adverts, found through my extensive research, is that they all link together, with the music video as well. They use common themes of colour, text styles and most importantly image. The advert is simply the digipak enlarged. These help prospective buyers to link the products together. The image used for the digipak and advert is like the final scene of the video and his seemingly gloomy fate will make viewers wonder about the storyline of the song and therefore the content of the CD. The CCTV theme is continued throughout all the products by adding the timecode in the corner of the digipak and advert.
Like many digipaks of the Indie genre a lot of post-production has been used. I used a lot of effects on the ancillary texts such as overlaying the blue texture and adding shadows to the Killers logo and 'the trilogy'. It was shown to be a convention of the Indie genre as it was widely used in all the digipaks and adverts, especially the Yeasayer products. This post-production is often found on the Killers products, the Sawdust cover especially.
- The elements of the digipak and adverts often reflect the mood or tone of the music content it is promoting, for example the Bombay Bicycle Club ancillary products were soft in colour and simply produced with little text and a painted image which reflected the acoustic-folk nature of its music. So for my product I recognised the indie-rock genre of he music that has dark lyrics and storyline within its content. So I used dark colours of varying shades of blue and greys. This gives it a bleak outlook of mystery that will intrigue prospective buyers. The mise en scene of the products also reflect the album title - 'the trilogy'.
The products all feature the conventional elements that all digipaks and adverts have. Such as barcode, record label logos and information, release date and the songlists.
- When looking at how the products have challenged usual conventions there is not many elements to note. The use of a photo of a character fro the video as the main part of the advert/digipak isn't something not usually seen with digipaks, but we felt that by linking together all three products so strongly would make the stand out. There is also very little text used on the advert, which is quite unusual, but I thought that this mysteriousness would intrigue people viewing it to know more about the album.
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