EVALUATION 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

This question requires you to demonstrate how your research and planning has influenced your work. You'll need to review your research and planning posts and identify which elements from the music videos and artists you've researched have been incorporated into your final pieces.

Music Video:

In creating our final music video, there was various influential elements that enabled us to create our final product. The following will portray an in depth journey we went on to be able to come up with the ideas for our video using the song “The Hunter” by punk duo Slaves.

These images indicate the inspiration we took in creating the opening of our video. We felt due to the tone of the song at the start, it would look good at 0:01 in the song to appear the song name the band are preforming. Due to the band being punk, we selected the colour scheme of black and white to reflect the nature of the band and the song they are going to hear in it being quite dark and intimidating. We looked at various openings form other videos, but we particularly liked the opening from a video by Kendrick Lamar – These Walls. The simplicity of the design and the colour scheme looked worked well so we took inspiration from this and added our own font style onto the text so it fitted the genre of the song.

The next three shots shown in our video were inspired by a music video produced for the song “Marks to prove it” by The Strays. I really liked how they matched the walking with the beat of the song and showing the band setting up and getting ready to perform the song. So we decided to replicate this in the opening of our video also, by cutting the shots up matching it with the strumming of the guitar. This fitted with the conventions of Sven E Carlsson’s Theory. He stated that sometimes the musical elements shape the moving pictures. Moments like footsteps are often synchronized with the beat, so that people in the music video seem to walk in sync to the music. This is what inspired these shots in our music video.

This theory carried on into the next three shots shown, matching the sound of the song to the sequence of visuals shown in the video. The song at 0:08 to 0:09 has three guitar strums that would allow us to pursue this theoretical idea which I felt would look good in our video. The reason for this is because from taking inspiration from the music video Time to Dance by The Shoes, they use a lot of quick flashes in their video of the victims that “Jake Gyllenhall” killed to portray the idea that he had done something to these people. As the nature of our video is similar in the sense that we have a masked character who hunts down someone and in the end kills them. But this masked character is actually the lead singer of the band. I felt it would work well to engage the viewer at the start of the video to make sure they don’t get bored and are engaged throughout. This was achieved by having a close up of our lead singer and then flashing it to a close up of the masked character back the lead signer all in the space of a second to make the viewer think what has just happened which will keep them interested in the video. This would make the viewer think whether they are the same person, which should make the viewer watch the video until the end to find out as that is stereotypical in a horror movie.

To explain the actual styling of the characters shown in these images, for our lead singer, we took inspiration from the band Slaves who originally produce the song so we thought it would make sense to mimic their styling. Therefore, due to our research, we found that they like to wear circle shaped glasses and typically black clothing. We spotted that the lead singer of Slaves, when performing on the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge wore a plain black roll neck jumper. So this was in our budget, so we decided to take inspiration from this. As shown in the image on the right of the band Slaves we used a similar jumper to what the lead singer of the band is wearing (on the right” but we felt the guitarist’s glasses (on the left) looked cool and would fit the band well and make us stand out and look different which is typically the nature of punk music.

The next image we took inspiration from was from the music video Song 2 by Blur. The positioning of the guitarist was something we took inspiration from as shown in the similarities in the two images. The actual guitar we used in our video was something we took inspiration from by this video by Blur, a friend I know plays guitar and we were able to borrow his which was a similar style to this one in the Blur video. Due to my friend’s guitar having a skull strap it fitted with the punk genre perfectly as it indicates danger and violence which is also shown in the video.

For this next shot, we took inspiration by the music video “Control” by Chase and Status. In the image shown from that video it shows the lead singer of “Slaves” to be walking around the set as if he owns the stage and is the main man. I liked this idea, and we replicated this in our lead signer’s performance to give him stage presence. This video was where we first took inspiration from in sense of lighting. We liked it how the singer was slightly hidden in the shadow and we replicated this in some shots. This video used a lot of flashing lights, but as we were unable to pursue that due to the studio we recoded in, we still wanted to replicated the darkness of the image so we decided to add the black and white filter onto our video to make the shots colourless which suited our genre of music.

The image shown here is the first time we properly reveal “The Hunter” in the video. This shot was inspired by the album cover Days Go By from The Offspring. As this album cover had the setting off a bench being in a forest. This inspired the idea of our charter to be sitting there at the start of the video as if he is waiting for the victim to appear. Which links to the flashback element of our music video as it shows “The Hunter” as a kid to be sitting on this same bench which turned out to be the place of death for his brother by a man who “The Hunter” grows up to eventually stalk and kill.

We took inspiration from a live performance of the Song control in this video. As you can see the singers are both wearing glasses which fit the punk genre and are shown to be passionate in their singing approach which we replicated.

In terms of the stage layout and the positioning of band members in the shot, we took inspiration again from the Song 2 video by Blur. We feel this is a stereotypical band set up for 3 members which consist of a lead singer, guitarist and a drummer.

The next images are influenced form the CD Cover Souls of Black by Testament. We took inspiration from the mask Jake Gyllenhall wore in Time to dance, but we wanted a full outfit for our character. This black cape shown in the album cover gave us the idea for our masked character to wear all black. We decided a black hoodie would look good for our character as it makes him more human that has just disguised up as a one off thing to get revenge on the person that killed his brother. The quick flashes between the three images go with the beat of the song and influence is again taken form the “Time to Dance” music video by The Shoes.

The image on the right shows our first inspiration for the hunting down of the victim for the narrative part of our music video. The Killer Clown video shows someone walking down the street, which we thought would be a good starting point to show the hunting down as a point of view shot of “The Hunter” to show the journey taken to killing the victim.

This shot shown in our music video was inspired with the original makers of the music video “The Hunter”. It matches the visuals with the lyrics which complies to the theory given by Sven E Carlson. Which I feel allows the audience to create a connection between the lead singer and the song which is why this shot was included.

This next shot was inspired again from the music video Marks to prove it” by The Strays. It shows the drummer to be doing a drumstick trick to give off the intention that the drummer is a cool charter. I wanted this for our drummer as he can play it really good and therefore indicates this to the viewer.

This close up guitar shot was inspired from Royal Blood when performing at T in the Park. I liked how close it was to the guitar and I felt it would look good as a quick flash to go with the sound of the song.

This drumming shot was inspired form the Control video by Chase and Status. I liked the distance of the camera and how you could clearly see the drummer playing from a form angle. However, we developed this into a pan as we felt this would look good to add camera movements instead of tall being static.

This shot was again inspired from the Control video by chase and Status. As the lead singer of Slaves is performing in the Chase and Status video, I looked at how he performed to get inspiration on how he performed. It was clear he was very passionate. When he shouted the word “Control” in the video it was clear to the viewer that he meant it and came across scary and aggressive to the viewer. Therefore, I felt this would also work for our song “The Hunter” as the lead singer would be able to shout the lyrics “The Hunter” in a way that he could be perceived as passionate and aggressive which fits the tone of the song and the genre. I really also really liked the framing used for this shot in the Chase and Status video, as the head is tilted and the top of the head is cut off so it works as a shot, therefore we took inspiration from that also.

Inspiration as taken from the original music video by laves in this shot. We used Sven E Carlson’s theory in matching the lyrics with the visuals here as the lyrics are “Smiling through your teeth” therefore we displayed the image of the main singing smiling which creates a relationship here. I also felt this was a good shot to use to break it up from the stereotypical band performance and make the music video different, which fits the genre of punk.

This shot from “Time to dance” influenced us as we felt we needed variety in shots to reach the top marks. We came across this long shot and thought this type of shot showing “The Hunter” waking from a distance would work well to show his progression on hunting down his victim.

A YouTube video called “Killer Clown Vs Parkour” was pivotal in the making of our music video. We needed to make the hunting down element of our video intense and gripping to watch. The Killer Clown video gave great influence in this as we really liked the quick cuts made between the two different perspectives of the chase, and how the person being hunted down did genuinely look scared and petrified of the person hunting them down due to them looking over their shoulder numerous times. We took influence from this and incorporated these ideas into our own music video as shown in the screenshots above.

This shot from the Killer Clown video showed a point of view shot which we felt looked really good, and would work well in our video flashing these type of images to make the hunting intense. It also gave us more variety in the types of shots we used so we decided to take influence from this and include point of view shots of our own.

American Psycho was a big influence for us in the type of weaponry used in our video. The axe used in this film gave the person killing a big sense of authority and made them seem a dangerous character due to the size of the weapon. We had access to an axe so we decided to take influence from this and give “The Hunter” an axe to pursue his killings.

As shown in the image above, the angle used for the killings in time to dance was what we took influence from. We looked at various ways we could present the killing to make it as realistic as possible. This was the best one, we also used an effect of shaking the camera to add more realism to the shot and shock the audience.

We took influence from the original music video for “The Hunter” by Slaves in this shot shown. Matching the lyrics of “you keep it” to the performer pointing as if he is addressing the audience. This worked well and matched the theory of Sven E Carlson, therefore we decided to take influence.

We took influence by the chase and status video “End Credits” in terms of the start of our video and the end. We wanted to make our video stand out and be different than a typical viewing of someone being hunted down and killed. Therefore, we decided to incorporate the narrative elements to the performance scenes. Having a loop of the start of the video showing similar image to the end of the video, to make it evident that “The Hunter” is actually the lead singer of our band. However, we decided to give the ending shot the perspective of someone standing at the microphone showing the lead singer walk in. We felt this would make our video weird and different and make people watch again to try and understand the events of the video. As the ending shot suggests that there are two versions of the same person.

We took influence from the ending of the Chase and Status video “End Credits” also, as we liked the way the ending take faded in and faded out. The colour scheme was the same as the opening text displayed and in the same positon. Therefore, we decided to take influence.

Magazine Advert:

Here is a storyboard of my journey taken of ideas and inspirations to come up with my front cover image of my CD Digipak. Prior to this, we chose the song "The Hunter" by Slaves to create a music video to. Because of this, and the song title being "The Hunter" which indicates the idea of someone hunting people down and killing them. This gave me the idea of the film "The Purge”, which is a film I watched recently and included violence and scary characters in masks. I then thought of another film called American Psycho as it has relevance to the music video Time to Dance starring Jake Gyllenhaal. This is because it pursues violent acts in the music video, which I thought of implementing into my music video as it will relate to the character in our video known as "The Hunter". This leads to the next few images, Jake Gyllenhaal in the Time to Dance music video is shown at the start to be wearing a fencing outfit which looked creepy in the video and is the type of image I want to give off. This lead to the idea of Dishonoured which is a video game who features a villain character who uses a knife to kill people which links to weaponry in The Purge and American Pyshco. However, this idea failed as I wanted a character to have how as I feel this makes them more mysterious. This lead me to another idea which was another video game known as Assassins Creed, where the main character pursues similar acts to previous ideas explained. But this time he has a hood which applies to the idea I want for my digipak front cover. I then researched more different hooded characters which I then found the TV show Arrow. I felt I needed to link it more to existing CD covers to see what the idea I have in mind looks like on an album cover. This is where I found the three album covers Testament, Prodigy and MF Doom covers. These ideas combined together for me to come up with my design. I liked the Prodigy text colour so I used Black and White and then I like the background colour on the MF Doom cover so I used this colour pallet idea and combined the hooded mask elements of my idea and that resulted in my album cover.

CD Digipak:

In terms of the front cover image used for my digipak, my influence from that has been explained above. However, in terms of the positioning of text, and what text to include, I took influence from the Kasabian album cover shown as well as the Disclosure, Settle album cover. I liked the simplicity of the Kasabian front cover as well as the colour scheme which I took inspiration from. However, I challenged this design as I wanted to include the album name also, where I looked to the Disclosure album for inspiration. However, I preferred the look of the text at the bottom of the cover, and tried different ways to position the album name text and came to the conclusion that above the title on the starting letter of the band name looked the best.

For the back cover of my digipak, I took a lot of influence from the Disclosure, Settle album. I wanted to carry on the theme of the designs being simple. At first look of this design, it proposed that idea to me. Therefore, I took influence form this, however applied my own colour scheme to reflect the nature of the genre and positioning elements differently to challenge the design as I felt it could be improved slightly. I also, took inspiration from the spine of this album cover, however adding my own colour scheme again and applying a serial number for the album as it is a required element for the album.

This band shot from Slaves inspired the design of my inside cover of my CD Digipak. I liked the styling of the band, and applied the same colour scheme and accessories such as glasses as they fit with the genre of the band. However, due to our band consisting of 3 members, I adjusted the positioning to fit all members in the shot.

For the CD case design, I took inspiration from these two images. I wanted to portray the hunter in the woods as if he is hunting down the victim. As when the disk is lifted off, you will just see The Hunter standing there as if he is looking at the person with the CD album. Creating a tense atmosphere fitting the tone of the song and the music video produced. In terms of the text layout, I placed it at the points where it could be viewed best which was on the right side of the album, therefore I right aligned the text for it to be read easier.