Q1 by jason marshgreen

2. Introduction
In this presentation I am going to analyse the
particular conventions we used in our music video
and ancillary product. Using screen grabs from our
music video,
• I will compare our shots with professional music
videos on the market why we used these shots
and how they illustrated the star persona of the
band.
• Compare digipaks and magazine ads with other
Rock genre artists on the market.

3. In this screenshot we see Me and Harry as
guitarists and singers, performing on
‘Castle Hill’ just before dusk.
Harry is lip syncing to the song as well as
playing the guitar performing , which
follows the convention of Rock/Indie rock
We see me and harry follow the
conventions of the rock genre image
through what we are wearing. For
example harry whereas a black t-shirt and
jeans, with me wearing a white shirt and
unbutton waistcoat with black skinny
jeans. Both these styles relate to genre
and star persona of the band.
We also challenge the conventions
through our performance in these shots
on castle hill, as we shot only me and
harry performing with no mic’s just
guitars .Conventionally you would expect
to see a drummer, a bassist and maybe a
pianist however In our video we focus
only on the two main characters relating
to the narrative. This makes it easier to
identify the story and link to the structure
of the video.

4. Lyrics and visual example
Here is an example of how we used the lyrics and
visual method from Andrew Goodwin's theory. In this
screenshot it shows harry just left of centre frame,
writing on his hand. Here he is ‘acting’ out the lyrics
within the song ‘I've bet you got a list’. This created an
interesting, engaging scene within our music video, as
it enables the viewer to interact with Harrys body
language, and highlight the line more clearly. In
comparison, The kooks – Naïve music video describes
through the lyric's ‘She's still up to get me’ and as we
see in the screenshot, she's trying to get him out of
bed.
Here is another example of where we use the lyrics
and visuals theory. The lyrics illustrate ‘the lights have
gone and the parties over’ and we see the light behind
harry and him on his own. Here we subtly use this
effect to support Harrys independence and loneliness
from the narrative story. As the shots we show of him
on his own, also represent him expressing his feelings
about ‘What he said’, may this be through body
language, lyrics or performance. We wanted to engage
the audience into feeling what the song is about, and
relating maybe to some event in that may of happened
in their lives.

5. Here is one of the examples of where we
challenged the ordinary Rock Genre
conventions. We wanted to be more unique
and creative in areas of our video as we felt
it was getting to ‘same old, same old’ similar
to other typical rock genre music videos. So
to avoid this I created a motion track scene
where by I ‘stuck’ our motion capture clip of
me and stevie walking together facing
forward's and one of harry and stevie facing
the same direction on the garage door
which made it look like it was part of the
garage. This gave a fascinating look, and
highlights the narrative story strongly by
Harry not being able to see this, only the
audience seeing. To which way you may
interpret these shots, is up t the audience,
either Harrys dreaming, reflecting back on
‘what he said’ or thinking into the future, we
let the audience work at understanding the
narrative and unlocking the clue towards the
end.
Furthermore by conjoining the performance
of harry and narrative scenes it creates quite
a powerful visual description to which the
audience can compare both sides. As in
other Rock genre music videos, very few use
the same ideology or effect in there videos.

6. One of the most iconic figures within our music video and
ancillary product, this silhouette shot captures a powerful
representation of a rock genre look and feel.
We used this shot around for about 3 to 4 seconds in our
music video, along with a photographed version for our
back cover of our digipak.
From my research into Rock genre music videos I found
that lighting was an important part into making the video
more engaging, expressive and dramatic. It created that
feeling of a live performance which we wanted to have in
our own video. So, with the use of our location, (Man On
The Moon and professional band stage) we used the fixed
lights and strobes to create different colours, flashes and
timings. However this particular shot we used our own
portable outside lights and got one of us to move the light
around behind me whilst performing. With a darkened
foreground and lit background it enabled us to create the
silhouette look.
In comparison to ‘Bring the light’ by beady eye music
video, it follows the conventions of typical lighting for
Rock genre stage set ups, with lights positioned in
particular places around the set. However we did move
ours around to get a variety of different looks to which
more challenged ordinary lighting effects.

7. For our performance shots, we
focused a lot on getting close ups of
the guitar playing as we felt this is a
strong connection to other rock genre
videos. The red/orange colour of the
guitar contrasts with the bluey
background setting and creates am
interesting overlay effect
If we compare this
with Beady eyes –
four letter word’
they also use close
ups of the guitar
and cross fades of
clips to which we
only done a small
amount of in our
music video. A
variety of colours
are also visible
creating an
expressive artistic
like look.

8. Throughout the filmmaking process we
made it clear that we all wanted to have a
‘movement’ to our video. This being mostly
‘hand held’ shots for our music video. In
particular this example shows a canted
angle which then zooms in to a close up of
Harry singing the vocals at the camera,
directly to the audience. Through research
only few Rock genre music videos adopt a
static, still camera look, and the videos
which did choose this method I found
weren't as effective to maintaining interest
as the hand held. Examples of these are
U2’s Beautiful day which I found was shot
to still and The black keys little submarines
with interesting camera angles, shot types
and movements.
I think that by using this technique, we can
keep the audience connected with the song
and with the video allowing them to feel
the beat of the song through the visuals
rather than just the lyrics.

9. Through my research I have also found that
many music videos either create a performance
based video or a complete narrative music
video. However for our music video we
challenged the convention by combining the
two towards the end of the video. We decided
to go down this route for our video mainly
because we wanted to try different and unique.
So how we did this was shooting some
performance and narrative in the same
locations, i.e. the walking with harry and Stevie
at the start and then me and Stevie towards the
middle. In essence I perform a cameo role in the
narrative, as I am also in the band performing.
Another way in which we challenged the rock
genre conventions was through our location.
Specifically our rural park location. Usually you
would expect and urban location for a rock
music video, but I feel it contrasts quite well in
our video due to the type of song, and way in
which we executed the relationship narrative.

10. Another media product that
follows similar conventions to
our video is Green days –
‘Wake me up when September
ends’.
The music video consists of a
short narrative story at the
beginning which introduces
the theme of the video and
then flicks between
performance shots and
narrative scenes. However the
narrative does not cross over
with the performance, instead
the scenes stay separate and
the song is addressed to the
narrative.

11. My final image, shows a screenshot from our middle eight where the
pace of the song slows down. This section contrasts to the rest of the
song, as most of it is upbeat and fast paced. What we did differently here
however is focus on 1 location to fit the lyrics and feel of the song, so we
chose the castle mound clips. Our reason for this was because we liked
the idea of the stars line in the song, and the shots which we took on
location at castle mound were just before dusk. This gave this section a
dream like, night time setting look.
This I believe follows the music video conventions as generally if the pace
of the song changes so do the visuals (cuts, fades, clip lengths).

12. Our magazine advert is closely conventional In terms of composition and placement of text on the page. As you can
see, The Killers (Band Name) at the top, below Man On The Moon (Album name) and at the bottom the date,
Facebook and twitter links, production studios/companies and top special features. If we compare this to the
stereophonics magazine ad we see a similar layout and positioning of the key elements.
When we first see the magazine ad the viewer is Immediacy drawn to the
orange plectrum, a marketing gimmick to try and sell the magazine. This
would also be following the conventions of other rock magazine adverts as
you would typically see this on an indie rock cover rather than a hip hop,/ pop
cover. This is evident by the use of the greyscale colour theme for the front
cover. We see the sky is grey, and the characters clothes almost black. This
enables the free plectrum, twitter and Facebook icons to be highlighted, again
trying to sell and increase the bands awareness. Furthermore the cut away
look challenges conventions of other magazine ads for the rock genre in the
way its not just a plain photo of the
band. With the centre tear in the
paper running down the centre of
the image it creates a definitive
broken apart look. This relates to the
relationship in the music video of a
‘tearing’ feeling between harry and
stevie. As well as the relationship
between the character its important
to consider the use of the
instruments to which follow the
conventions of a rock groups image
and star persona. We also overlayed
the stars time laps again to the sky
which relates to the digipak and
music video linking all three
mediums

13. With our digipak we wanted to base it on everything we experienced through the making of our video and the what the characters/Band may have felt
during the making. For example, visiting over 13 different locations within our music video some gave us some incredible graffiti type art, so we used this
for our two CD covers, and the small panda on the back cover. This follows media conventions as artists generally have pictures, themes, colours relating to
the making of there album and the story behind why they made it etc. Most of the Digipaks I have researched consist of a selection of artistic designs and
photos relating to the name of the album or hit song. We follow this also by our album name Man On The Moon which is where we shot our performance
scene for the music video.
In the making of the back cover, we challenged the conventions a little in adding a little more substance to which made the back cover just as interesting as
the front. Through research, I have discovered that consumers when buying an album tend to always look at the back, as well as the front. With other back
covers, such as the Oasis album ‘stop the clocks’ (supported in ancially post), I found only a blank colour on the back with the song names and production
companies. So instead we decided to add the silhouette panda and fade these onto the pavement. Furthermore, adding the Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube logos to advertise the band on the internet shows the up to date, practicality of the product as consumers are bale to view the album online.
For our spine we followed the conventions of rock albums applying ‘The Killers’ – band name and ‘Man On The Moon’ album name, typical to what you
would expect in a professional well designed rock album spine.
Our Front cover is our main focus point to which we decided to use only harry as the main focus. With him looking up at the stars and the glowing moon
lens flare behind the text, it relates to our music video, and magazine ad as well as the album name ‘Man On The Moon’. All these connotations are linked
with the theme of the music video, magazine ad and digipak. It follows conventions of other rock albums which relate there front covers with either the
album name or band image to which illustrates the product.
Overall I believe our theme can be a good starting point in ensuring future albums can be made similar or slightly different for the band to brand
themselves in whatever way they want to show there star persona to there audience.
For more about our digipak visit my blog post named: ‘Ancillary Product Anaylisis | By Jason