Evaluation

After completing the planning section of my music video I clearly distinguished my target audience which I shall be referring to throughout all my theory work. I aimed for my target audience to be young viewers between the ages of 12-18 purely because the content of the music video is childlike and my alternative music genre is specifically aimed at a similar target audience. The main purpose behind my music video is to follow Andrew Goodwin’s theory and entertain my young audience by creating a music video that is repetitive and simple to follow. My young viewers can understand the purpose of the video by reflecting upon their childhood experiences in order to relate.
My music video is both narrative and performance because by having a variation of both music video types it means that I am able to cut between the narrative and the performer singing to help narrate the story and this conventionally makes the music video contemporarily realistic for my audience. The main idea which I kept referring to and using throughout the making of my music video was to repeat certain camera motifs for example when the young female actor in my video is moving rapidly and swinging a blanket in a circle. I decided to repeat this motif by rewinding and reversing the motif but this time decreasing the speed to show the young girl reflecting back on her memories. I wanted to reinforce how the young girl is reflecting on her experience with her imaginary friend as it is coming to an end. Another repetitive motif sequence which I decided to include was the young girl dancing outside in the fields, we added a special effect to blur the imagery so that it clearly distinguished to my target audience that this was a dream that the young girl had already lived. I used a range of establishing shots particularly outside to clearly distinguish the location as to where my actor was. I wanted this to set a prime location to commutate that she used to spend her time being free outside with her imaginary friend. I included a range of mid-shots and long shots of the back of the young girl running away from the camera, the blurred imagery and unsteady camera shots were intentional to create an informal hand held camera effect to target my young audience. I wanted the hand held camera effect to represent an informality to portray the child’s youthfulness and freedom and communicate that she is unaware that she is being filmed to narrate that she is with her imaginary friend in a world of her own. This informality came from my inspiration of a music video by the Los Compesinos, this band use a lot of blurred imagery in their music videos as though it’s been created as a home style video. This informality helps portray the representation of memories and events that have happened in the past.
This intention clearly ran with my narrative as it clearly distinguished at the beginning of my video that the range of conventional close ups and extreme close ups to reinforce the young girl searching for her imaginary friend. There is an extreme close up of the young girls diary placed on the bed as she wrote the lyrics to the song in her diary. The reason I chose to use this shot is because it helps progress the narrative in the video. I wanted it to be clear to my audience that the young girl is trying to communicate to someone what she isn’t able to verbally communicate, which is why she’s writing the message down on paper. The simple and basic idea behind my music video made it very easy to follow music video conventions as I had my artist holding a hand held guitar and singing into a microphone, I also conventionally chose only one location to video my performer. This made it clear to my audience to differentiate between my performer and artist. I have followed music video conventions by having a clear structure and ending to my music video, as we see the narrative unravel and come to a close we see the narrative end as there is a close up shot of the young girl getting into bed to confirm that the story was just a memory. The correspondence between my action in my music video, the song choice and the lyrics worked effectively and communicated with one another. The purpose and the main theme in the song Peter Pan is to reinforce the idea of having an imaginary fairy-like friend during your childhood. I have taken this idea and expanded on the theme and purpose to make my video have a clearer and more effective narrative structure. The combination between the music genre and the location in which we set the music video, I felt worked effectively. As we shot a lot of the music video in a field outside, it reinforced the idea of nature and freedom gained as a child. This idea reflected the song lyrics “teach you how to fly” as the young girl ran around the field as though she was pretending to chase her imaginary friend. We chose to shoot a section of the music video of the young girl having a tea party with her imaginary friend the combination of a fast motif as the beginning illuminated by a slower motif towards the end which creates the imaginary feel for the music video. We used a range of close up shots of the young girl setting out the cutlery for a tea party. We see an extreme close up of her drinking from a cup. We chose to hold a cup towards the camera to create the feel as though the camera is the make believe friend, following the girl as she explores her freedom. The camera reinforcing the imaginary friend can also be distinguished in a scene where the young girl is running down a flight of stairs trying to search for her imaginary friend. As the camera follows her down the stairs, by decreasing the pace of this shot I was able to make her slowly turn towards the camera with an extreme close up and then gradually zooming out so got a mid shot of her waving her hand, as though she’s communicating to the camera as her imaginary friend.
To portray the characters youthfulness and happiness I included a lot of close ups to portray her excitement this is conventional to use close ups in music videos to portray the actor or artists mood in the mood. It clearly creates an intimacy and connection between the audience and actor when they can clearly distinguish the characters face and their mood. It was very important that I conventionally used these close up shots because I wanted to create an active audience relationship.
During the planning for my music video my orginal intention was to have a animated Peter Pan which would've been created by drawing the image and animating it into the video. During the planning we did interpret this idea as we created different images for the animated character. However we found this idea very time consuming and I wasn't sure whether this would be very beneficial and productive because the idea could turn out unsucessful and time would have been wasted. Instead we then considered perhaps using a male actor to play the part of a young boy which would be the young girls imaginary friend. The reason we went against this idea was because we felt it would be less obvious and more intruiging video to watch if we kept the imaginary friend asthough it's in the childs mind. This enables an audience to interpret the video as they wish to and allows for us to be less strict on the idea, to make a more personal experience for my audience.
As my young audience is the main source behind my music video and their opinion is crucial, I carried out a short questionnaire to receive productive feedback on my video. I asked a series of questions relating to my music video about the camera shots, the correspondence between the song choice and the action and what they thought of the music video as a whole. I gave my questionnaire to ten members of the public between the ages of 12-18. The feedback I received was interesting however mostly positive. A few generalised comments were made about the narrative, some of my audience were unsure what the main narrative was until I explained it to them. This should be clear to my audience, so an improvement it would be to perhaps change the structure and order of the narrative so it became clearer. Another feedback comment was the blur effect which I added to distort the colour of the young girl’s memories. Some thought it wasn’t as effective as the rest of the music video because it was unclear to see the range of camera shots and fast cut imagery. Another feedback comment I received was about the pace of the editing and that some was slightly out by a few seconds. However, I strongly disagree with this statement because the hand held camera effect which I used a lot in my video was purposeful and intentional to create a youthful distorted effect. As a whole the comments praised how well the song choice, lyrics, narrative, choice of actor and range of shots communicated together. Overall from my audience feedback I thought it was constructive criticism and as my target audience enjoyed the video it means I am hitting the right audience I intent to attract.
In order for me to create a video that was successful I had to overcome working with a range of media technologies that were relatively complicated. After downloading the music and video recordings onto the computer it was crucial to sync the action and the lyrics and beat of the music together. In the song choice by Jose Vander’s there were a lot of fast cut ins of strong beats which meant an instant change in the action. It was important for me to change the camera shot so that it matched with the music for example on the line “I’ll teach” I had my young actor quickly move her head towards the camera, to show a sudden change in movement and mood. Also as I chose to have a performer in the video is was important for us to sync the lyrics with the movement of the artist singing the lyrics, I overcame this problem by experimenting with the pace the action and finding a meeting point between the speed.
After completing the music video I designed a digi pack and poster in order to illuminate and support my music video. I had to communicate the childhood and make believe theme which I have running through my video and reflect this in both my practical projects. I drafted a series of eight products altogether, four initial digi pack designs and four initial poster designs. This enabled me to experiment with colour and imagery. Before choosing my final design I again carried out audience feedback by creating a questionnaire to again given to 10 audience members between the ages of 12-18. This feedback enabled me to choose which design would be the most effective to illuminate my music video and song choice. I effectively received my audience feedback and was able to take my final designs further to a finished product.
To conclude, by consistently referring back to my original objectives and my young target audience I have managed to productively create a finished product that is aimed and appreciated directly by my target audience. Directly, I feel as though the most effective part of my video was the collaboration between the song choice and the narrative as I feel the childhood representation was clearly supported and presented. As a generalised improvement I feel I could have used a wider use of locations to illustrate that the girls imaginary friend was a part of her during her childhood, for example a few shots of them at the park or in a more childlike setting. However, as a whole I feel a well thought out, thorough project was completed.