The Eyes of a Traitor – Al clear perception was the debut album of the band. This meant we didn’t have to worry about there being too many existing videos for their songs and thus created one for their song ‘Echoes’
•Primarily male teenage audience aged 13-25.•Aimed at heavy metal fans of this age range•Aiming at a niche audience in the metal genre due to the band being quite underground
Question 1:In what way does your use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of a real music product?
The video was mainly performance based with a fractured narrative. The narrative displays the paranoia and loneliness of a man from society, constantly being on edge due to his lack of communication with anyone. The theme of this links in with the song and the genre of the song as it deals with common problems felt by teenagers in which is the primary audience of our music video.
SettingThe setting was key to reflecting the style of song and audiences expectations of a metal music video. Grainy/dirty/grim environments were used to reflect the songs dark overtones and themes as well as give the video the feel of a ‘garage’ band due to the niche audience.
Mise en scene - ClothingThe clothing we wore was related to the type of song we were playing. Since the song is a loud, aggressive heavy metal song we felt we needed to wear the appropriate clothing. Me(middle) and Mark (left) wore band hoodies, specifically Parkway drive and while she sleeps, two bands similar to The eyes of a traitor and thus shown the connection between our video and the type of music. Adam wore a dark coloured shirt to reflect the dark lyrics.
Cinematography
High angle Close up Wide long shot Over the shoulder shot
Medium close up Extreme close up Low angle close up
Cinematography played an important part in the creation of the music video. During filming I was the main cinematographer being responsible for the majority of the shots chosen and filmed. Here are a few as examples:
EditingThe editing was an important part of the video using quick cuts to link in with the tempo and aggressiveness to the song. I helped contribute towards the editing and here is an example of the speed and style of it:
All these cuts were in the space of 1 second.
Question 2:How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary
texts?
CD coverMagazine advertisement
Ancillary’sThe ancillary’s helped target my audience as they reflect the themes of the video as they show characteristics of a common metal cover and advertisement such as dark colours, symbols of death and paranoia.
Ancillary researchBefore the creation of my Ancillary’s I researched into album covers from bands similar to The Eyes of A Traitor for inspiration whilst creating my own. I also did this for the magazine advert in which I looked at adverts for bands CDs in popular metal magazine Metal Hammer and rock/metal magazine Kerrang. This helped me understand what needed to be included in my own work and helped develop it.
Ancillary researchI also looked at music videos that would be similar to my own and got ideas and inspiration from them. Videos I looked at were:
• Parkway Drive – Karma • Confession – The Long Way home• Stick to Your Guns – Amber
Here are the links for the videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeetS4vERoohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rghu60wGZU&ob=av2nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbWPydEzyb0&feature=fvst
Some of the techniques used in these videos can be seen in my product taking elements from the editing, mise en scene and cinematography.
Question 3:What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience Research
• We learnt that the audience preferred performance based videos to narrative ones
• The focus group believed the tone should be dark and chaotic
• Youtube was the main way the audience viewed videos• From the Questionnaire we learned some of the bands
the audience listen to in their spare time are: Parkway Drive, Bury Tomorrow, TRC, Stick to Your guns, Avenged sevenfold and other bands similar to these.
Question 4:How did you use media technologies in the
construction, research, planning and evaluation?
Adobe Premiere
Adobe premiere was the main software we used during the production of our video. It allowed us to chop, move and add effects to the movie clips we imported. This was helpful in the editing stage as we could cut the video in to the order we wanted.
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop was the main software I used for creating my ancillary’s. It allowed me to create my CD cover and magazine advert using a variety of effects, fonts and styles that would appeal to my audience.
Youtube
Youtube was useful towards the research stage of my product as it allowed me a range of videos for my to access and analyze for implementation on my own product. It is what we used to upload our video to and also allowed me to embed my final product to my blog, proving to be a useful video hosting site.