Evaluation

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

My music video makes extensive use of cuts to the beat of the audio. I researched music videos by popular artists, including Little Motel by Modest Mouse and 9 Crimes by Damien Rice and found that lip syncing was prevalent in most of them. I used this convention by having my actor lip sync the song. In addition, the visuals of my song reflect the song in that the imagery and speed of cuts changes for the closing section of the song, when the tempo increases.

The main character drinks in the street, highlighting his rebellious attitude.

The main character in my music video, representing the lead singer of the band, has several of Dyer’s common star values applied to him, specifically “youthfulness” from his age and actions within the plot, “rebellion” from the plot of running away from home, an “anti-authoritarian attitude” highlighted in the scene where he decides not to go to school, “aggression/anger” as shown in the scene where the character angrily throws his bottle away and “a disregard for social values relating to drugs” as he is shown drinking underage in a pub and drinking in the street from a bottle of Vodka. He is a constructed image rather than a real person, which is consistent with Dyer’s theory.

The main character is often shown in an extreme long shot or close up. The extensive use of close up, which is also carried through to the digipak cover, is consistent with Pete Fraser’s theory of camerawork codes and conventions in music video, designed to create an intimate connection between the character and the audience, which was an important connection for me to establish given the sensitive and emotional nature of the character’s story.

The longest take in the music video was highly emotionally charged.

I challenged the convention of the use of fast cuts, however, as my song was slow paced and so I wanted to use long takes to feel natural with the rhythm of the song. The longest take showed the main character angrily throwing away a bottle of alcohol and breaking down. I felt the use of long take here was important so as to absorb the audience into the actor’s natural and heartfelt performance. This is consistent with Pete Fraser’s theory of music video editing conventions; “There are videos which use slow pace and gentler transitions to establish mood. This is particularly apparent for the work of many female solo artists with a broad audience appeal, such as Dido.”

The cuts and speed of the camera movement speed up in relation to the music.

I used Andrew Goodwin’s theory of music video forms and conventions to great effect. I fulfilled “there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals” by using a child actor for the main character to reflect the lyrics “children, wake up” and “if the children don’t grow up, our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up”. I also fulfilled “there is a relationship between music and visuals” by cutting to a visual blackout when the song reached a mid-point crescendo and warming the colours and increasing the speed of cuts when the song switched from a slow pace to uptempo.

The use of ambiguous images in my narrative is consistent with Steve Archer's theory of repeatability. The audience has a desire to watch the video again to catch what they may have missed and develop their own interpretation of what the images mean.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

My ancillary texts such as my website and digipak are very closely tied to my main product, retaining imagery, themes and brand identity. I used the same actor throughout my three products in order to establish the star. The shots of the main character behind the bars of his school gate, and his sad lip syncing and happy epilogue shot are used in the digipak to create a tight connection with the video. The artist (Arcade Fire)’s logo is consistent throughout the website and digipak to reinforce a sense of brand identity. The digipak also makes extensive use of road imagery to reinforce the theme of journey and running away that the video makes a strong narrative point of.

After having researched websites for popular artists and bands such as Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Florence and the Machine, I used this research in constructing the layout and content of my website. I included links to the band’s videos, discography and biography. I wrote latest news updates from the band, included links to social media destinations including a Facebook Page and Twitter account and included dates for upcoming gigs. These links to social media destinations was relevant to my target audience and would increase engagement and interactivity. The list of upcoming gigs is used to advertise the artist and encourage the audience to seek them out and spend money. I also established an interactive competition for fans to get involved. The layout of my webpage used established conventions, including a header section with navigation and central content block that remained at a fixed-width.

The front cover of the digipak and the header of the website use the same photo of the character lying down on their apartment floor. This photo was taken during the screen test, so their costume did not match the costume in the music video. This meant that the photo was not very effective and in future I would be sure to keep costume consistent.

My three products were closely connected, with a shared brand identity in the form of logo and primary imagery of the child lying on the ground.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From my audience feedback I found that my video was widely well received. Positive comments I received praised the range of shots, clarity of shots and plot, lip syncing, and, in particular, use of lighting. I agree with these positive comments as I had put a lot of effort in the production process to achieve them, especially with regards to the lighting, which I spent many hours colour grading to accomplish. Many did not offer any negative feedback, but comments I did receive focused on the shakiness of the camera, use of blackout and ambiguity in opening and closing scenes. One audience member believed that the shaky camera was distracting and the scene following the main character walking alongside a road could have been improved with a steady dolly shot. However, I disagree with this as throughout my piece I wanted all shots to have some form of moving camera. The steadiest of shots I did not use a tripod, but instead a monopod, because I feel that the narrative of the character running away would not effectively be reflected in the visuals if the camera was completely steady, as that would suggest stopping rather than movement and would slow down the rhythm of my visuals. The handheld style also gave an immediacy and intimacy to my piece.

The ambiguous visuals drew a mixed response from the audience.

The use of blackout before the closing section of the song was mentioned by an audience member as being too ambiguous and not offering enough explanation for the character’s change of mentality. In addition to this, the shots of a man in the opening scene and a woman and a child in the closing scene in the main character’s house were said to be too ambiguous and confusing. However, it was always my intention from the pre-production process to have ambiguous elements that offer more symbolism than literal plot. I know in my mind who the man, woman and child represent, but I wanted to leave the images of them open to interpretation, as all good art does, to allow the audience to make them represent what is relevant to them. Rather than being a cookie-cutter story of a child running away, the reason why the child runs away and the reason why the child returns is intentionally left vague in my media product. This is consistent with Peter Fraser’s theory of narrative in music video; “Narrative in songs is rarely complete, more often fragmentary, as in poetry. The same is true of music promos, which more often suggest storylines or offer complex fragments of them in non-linear order. In doing this the music video leaves the viewer with the desire to see it again if only to catch the bits missed on first viewing.” I received greatly positive feedback for my “fragmentary” narrative, with one audience member praising my piece for “having a voice” and “nuance”, which I was very proud to hear. By uploading my music video to YouTube, I also received feedback from my fan following that I had developed from previous projects. This gave me an established audience base that I could broadcast my work to. The feedback from this online group was mostly positive, with some negative criticism focusing on the use of lip-syncing by the actor, claiming it looked "unnatural". Within the first week of release it accumulated 3,000 views.

The website that I designed for my artist was also well received, comments praising the framing, layout, imagery and logo and brand consistency. However, negative comments criticised the lack of central placement for the YouTube video embed, small content text size and light drop shadow on the artist logo. I agree about the YouTube video being left aligned rather than central and would improve this. I would also have increased the content text size from 11px to 12px. I do not agree about the drop shadow on the artist’s logo however and would have kept it, because I felt that the clarity from the background was strong enough and would not be difficult to read for most.

My digipak received mixed comments from the audience. Positive comments focused on the font in the artist logo design, contrasting photos of the main character in sad and happy emotions, inclusion of lyrics in the design around the CD slot, the symbolism of the photo of the main character behind the bars of his school gate and clear and contrasting images throughout. I agree with these as, in regards to the symbolism of the gate and the contrasting photos of the character’s emotions, I wanted to achieve a similar level of symbolism and depth from my music video in the digipak design. Negative comments focused on the spines and the lack of clarity of the lyric text around the CD. I intentionally chose for my photos to bleed out into the spines rather than design specific imagery, but I agree with the audience that this could have been improved and I would do if I did this task again. The lyrics around the CD were intended to be subtle and not necessarily legible, so in this instance I would not have altered them.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During my research stage, I used online video websites such as YouTube to stream music videos quickly on my computer. This allowed me access to a large library of music videos from which I could study. To plan for my music video I storyboarded each shot using card and pen, then scanned them into my computer. With these scanned slides, I created an animatic to present them. This involved editing them in Apple’s Final Cut Pro, cutting to the beat of the music, as if I was editing the actual music video itself. I also added zoom ins to achieve a Ken Burns effect in the editing process. This animatic proved valuable in realising the vision I had for my video, and allowing the actor to visualise his character’s journey and understand the wide range of emotional responses the piece would demand. From start to finish, the storyboarding and animatic process took two days.

Prior to shooting I acquired a Canon EOS 7D camera, which is the cutting edge of independent filmmaking technology and was only announced during my pre-production process, so filming was delayed whilst waiting for its release. This DSLR allowed me to use interchangeable lenses to achieve a shallow depth of field in my shots which I felt would give my footage a professional and gorgeous aesthetic. It also gave me the ability to shoot in slow motion which I envisioned right from the storyboarding process for specifically the closing scene of the child returning home. To achieve the slow motion effect I shot at 60 frames-per-second (2.5x the rate of the normal-speed footage) and conformed it back to 24 frames-per-second to match my normal-speed footage using Apple’s Cinema Tools. I then used Adobe’s Premiere Pro CS4 to edit my music video. This involved scrubbing through all of the footage I had captured and selecting clips for the best takes. I then placed them on the timeline and cut them together to match the beat of the music.

Before colour correction.

After colour correction.

Once I was happy with the edit, I moved on to colour grading with Magic Bullet’s Mojo software and Adobe’s Lighting Effects. This process was longer than the editing process itself, with each individual shot requiring unique colour correction and lighting effects highlighting the character’s face from the background which, in some shots, had to be key framed to follow his face as it moved throughout the frame. I settled on a thematic aesthetic of warm and Autumn-like, which was very different to the original footage’s bleak aesthetic due to being shot in Winter. As the video progressed, the colours slowly become more desaturated until eventually, in the shot of the character in the car, all is nearly black and white. After returning from blackout, the colours were bright and vibrant, highlighting the orange of the sunset, to represent the character’s rise out of depression.

I designed my digipak and website using Adobe Photoshop. For my digipak I used several layers of different images and manipulated them to create an interesting composite image, for instance the front cover shows the main character lying on a road with double yellow lines shining on top of him as if light. I broke the website design into slices then used my pre-existing web design skills to write the website from scratch in code form in HTML and CSS. After checking that all of my images used relative paths to ensure they worked when the directory was moved, all the files were moved over to my T drive to be sent to the examiner.

For my evaluation I wrote my initial drafts in Microsoft Word and then, when finished, copied and pasted it into my Blogger blog. This meant that I had to write my evaluation in past tense, which was confusing. Once on my blog I also added screenshots to emphasise my points. The use of a blog allowed me to add these multimedia elements such as YouTube video embeds that would not have been possible with a paper folder.

Final Webpage

Final Digipak

Outside

Inside

Final Edit

Draft Digipak

I decided to use a brown/sepia tone throughout my digipak design in order to reflect the guitar-led song.

The font I chose for the Arcade Fire logo is cursive in order to evoke a sense of class and elegance. I spaced out the characters a little to give the logo easier readability. The font for the album name Funeral was chosen as a serif font that resembled Times New Roman, connoting seriousness and officiality. It was a smaller size than the band's logo in order to emphasise their brand.

The image of my music video narrative character's face dominates the front cover, with a long horizontal lens flare overlapped. I used this image of a line of light to represent a road, aka the journey of the character as he runs away from home in the narrative of the video. A similar image was used on the back cover of double yellow lines on a road. I wanted to use the image of the character (a child's) face prominently on the front cover to convey a sense of innocence and happiness, appropriate for the tone of the song's lyrics.

The front cover actually has three layers of imagery taking place. The bottom layer is a photo of a road, taken from a car as it was fast driving down it. I chose this to further the symbolic theme of travel. The character's face is overlayed on top, with both a gradient mask fading him out from the corners in a vignette and also spotlights applied to his eye area and hand. This allowed me to focus in on the character's face itself, and fade away the less important elements such as skull and arm, that did not connect emotionally with the viewer as his eyes did. The topmost layer is a photo of double yellow lines, blurred and overexposed to create a lens flare-esque style of image that burns through the image of the child's face to create a beam of light. This rather complicated effect was used to convey the connection between the character and his journey. His running away in the narrative of the video brings metaphorical light to his dark, dingy life, in which he is unhappy at home.

Draft Webpage

I used my research in existing artist websites to aid the design of my webpage. I centred the content block with a fixed width. The artist's logo ("Arcade Fire") is displayed prominently in the header below the iconic imagery of the child from the music video. The navigational links are clearly displayed with a backglow to indicate their active link status. The content of the page fills the content block with a light colour so that it is easily readable against the dark background. I chose a standard sans-serif font for the text so that it was legible at a small size.

I included multimedia such as embedding the music video and song in order to bring greater interactivity to my website. Websites that I researched all included these elements in order to satisfy the website viewer's expectation of being able to see and hear the artist's work.

The websites that I researched had prominent imagery of the artist dominating the header of every page. As I did not have access to the members of the band for my song, I decided to use the actor from my music video. As he appeared on my CD cover as well, I hoped to use the imagery of him lying on the floor multiple times to develop a motif.

For the background I used a sepia-toned image of motion-blurred road to emphasise the theme of travel that I had developed on the CD cover. The white line from the road acted as a separator between the header/navigation and content. By integrating the imagery into the layout, I created a more cohesive design that was both aesthetically appealing and easy to use from a User Experience perspective.

Draft Edit

Narrative Locations

Scene-by-Scene
Child's bedroom My bedroom
Staircase and Living Room My house
Street outside house Lincoln Close
Park School Field
Bar The Magpie pub
Walking the streets Stapleford

Recce Shots














Permission
Filming in The Magpie pub permitted by verbal agreement over phone call with owner.

Mockup of CD Cover

I wanted my CD cover to utilise imagery from the music video to create a relationship, however I didn't want to simply take a frame from the video and slap it on the front. I decided to plan to capture a specific photograph for the CD cover. I wanted to capture the main character lying down on the floor to represent his loneliness and poor lifestyle once he lives by himself, in an apartment with no furniture. In addition, I added photographs of him with his family on the wall behind him. These would actually be in the set for the child's family's house, but for the cover I felt it was necessary to create a somewhat abstract and artistic image, so I transplanted the photo frames to this set to create a convergence of the two narrative destinations; the child's childhood, and the child's adulthood.

Track Decision

I decided to use the song "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire because of its rich lyrical ties to my treatment. A common interpretation of the song is a telling of the story of growing up and learning, as a child, to be an adult. Lines such as "children, wake up, hold your mistake up / before they turn the summer into dust" tell a vivid warning to children to be honest. The line "if the children don't grow up, our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up" also strongly connotes the process of growing up and seeing the world for what it really is. The narrative section of my video treatment is about a child leaving home and seeing the dangers of the world; depression, alcoholism and drug abuse. I felt that "Wake Up" was a perfect lyrical match for my treatment. Musically, the song's arrangement is very orchestral and contemplative, which also fit my criteria.

Audience Questionnaire

In order to understand what my audience wanted, I conducted a questionnaire amongst the age group:

1. How old are you?
14 (0)
15 (0)
16 (0)
17 (10)
18 (0)
19+ (0)

2. Do you watch music video TV channels?
All the time (2)
Sometimes (7)
Rarely (1)
Never (0)

3. Which style of music video do you prefer?
Wholly Narrative (2)
Wholly Performance (2)
Contains Both (6)

4. Do you prefer music videos to be...
Conventional (0)
Artistic / creative (9)
Unsure (1)

5. Would you like a music video which doesn't feature the artist?
Sure (5)
I Don't Think So (5)

6. Do you think music videos can tell good narrative stories?
Yes (10)
No (0)
Unsure (0)

My results showed me that most seventeen year-old teenagers only watch music video TV channels sometimes, prefer music videos with both a narrative section and a performance, prefer creative and artistic videos to paint-by-colours music videos, definitely think videos can tell good narrative stories but are undecided on if they'd watch a music video that doesn't feature the artist.

This affected my video because I was wondering how heavily the narrative section of my video should be featured. The consensus from my questionnaire was that the narrative story was more interesting than the performance, though it should not exclude the performance. This helped me in my editing process to determine the balance between the two.

Props Planning

Scenes exc. Opening Sequence in House
All narrative scenes following the character's running away from home will require the main character to be carrying a heavy backpack which, in the narrative, contains clothes and possessions. Because of this it should give the appearance of being full and heavy.

Bar Scene
I will need a liquid which looks similar to alcohol (Apple juice eventually used), and a glass for the main character to drink this out of.

Drinking in Street
An empty Vodka bottle filled with water to give the illusion of the liquid.

Target Audience

The target audience for my video is the young 16-24 age group. I decided to target my video towards this group because of their enthusiasm for music videos and intelligent creativity. My audience research later showed that this group were yearning for more creative, artistic and different videos that I was hoping to achieve.

Research into Arcade Fire

I researched the band itself, Arcade Fire:

Arcade Fire

• Based in Montreal, Canada
• Active between 2003 to present
• Signed to labels Merge Records, Rough Trade and City Slang.
• Two studio albums and one EP

More information on one of the band's labels:

Merge Records

• Founded in 1989 by Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance
• Based in Durham, North Carolina
• Primarily signs indie rock artists

Information on another record label the band has been signed to:

Rough Trade

• Founded in 1978 by Geoff Travis
• Based in London, England

The third record label that Arcade Fire have signed to:

City Slang

• Founded in 1990 by Christof Ellinghaus
• Based in Berlin, Germany

Camera Angle Positions for Performance

Original Performance Shot
I decided to film the performance section of my video in a vocal booth. I wanted to reflect the independent nature of the band through the video, so I didn't shoot in an exotic location which would require a big budget. Filming in the booth gave a grounded, natural, organic feel to my video. I shot several takes from both inside the booth and from outside, looking through the glass of the door. I wanted to get shots through the glass so that I could get reflections in front of the actor. These reflections felt similar to bokeh or lens flares, they added more interesting layers to the shot which prevented it from appearing flat and boring.

I also shot from a low angle on the actor, with the light in the ceiling of the booth casting a large lens flare over his head. I wanted to film this shot because it obscured the face of the actor. This made the shot more interesting and would lead the audience to want to see behind the glow of the light. This ties back to the theory of stardom, how a star must be simultaneously present and absent from the viewer. By obscuring their face, they are unreachable by the audience.

Performance by Narrative Actor
In my final cut I decided to re-shoot the performance section of my video using the same actor from the narrative in order to simplify the video and provide emotional resonance between the child's story and the lyrics. I shot the actor sitting against the floral wallpaper of his character's bedroom and mixed close-ups of the face and extreme close-ups, changing framing for different parts of the song. I had the actor lip sync looking directly into the camera, creating a strong connection between his character and the audience and bringing gravity to the lyrics he sung.

Draft Website Copy

News
Funeral wins Best International Album at the BRIT Awards
We would like to thank the BRIT Awards for honouring us with this award. We hope to win again next year with our upcoming album, let's hope!

Debut Album Funeral Released
The long-anticipated debut album from Arcade Fire, Funeral, is now available in stores. The stunning debut from this up-and-coming band is one not to miss. Download it online today from our partners, Amazon MP3 or iTunes.

Videos
You can watch the music video for our first single, Wake Up, right here. We hope you guys like it, let us know what you think!

Discography
Funeral
1. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
2. Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)
3. Une année sans lumière
4. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
5. Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)
6. Crown of Love
7. Wake Up
8. Haïti
9. Rebellion (Lies)
10. In the Backseat

Biography
Arcade Fire met four years ago when lead singer Win Butler posted an ad in his local paper. He wanted to start a band, but didn't know any musically talented friends. Régine Chassagne was the first to answer the ad and Win was so blown away by her violin skills that he asked her to join almost immediately. Soon after, fellow members Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Sarah Neufeld and Jeremy Gara came on board. They got to work on developing their style and two short years later, their debut album Funeral was released to the world. It has since gone on to become a massive critical success, bagging seven music awards and sixteen nominations. The band have now gone back to the drawing board, working on their second album, hoping to top the success of Funeral.

When asked how they achieved such success, Win Butler said "I don't really know. It's kind of confusing. It still doesn't make sense to me how we got it so right on our first album, because as I was working on it I wasn't sure if anybody was going to like it at all. It was kind of a new sound that not many people had heard before, so it could easily have been a huge flop. Fortunately, we developed a strong fan base and the response we've had has been fantastic. I'm happy we can keep making music, because that's all I've wanted to do."

Brainstorming

I had several ideas at the beginning of this process. My best idea was originally narrative-based and told the story of students receiving exam results, finding that they have all failed, and leaping for joy as they are free from the pressure of continued education. However, the story seemed too thin, so I tried to come up with a new idea that had more depth. My second idea was a spontaneous food fight breaking out in a school lunch hall, however this concept was deemed impractical to shoot as the head of my school rejected my request to film in our hall. The idea later evolved to taking place on a park, then switched from a food fight to a water fight. Following this, I came up with a new idea which I got really enthusiastic about, and it became my final treatment in the same form as the original idea.

Costume Planning

For the main character in the narrative section of my music video, I have decided to dress the actor in a range of colourful t-shirts and jeans. I wanted to personify the childlike innocence through their costume, so their clothes are vibrant and visually appealing. This contrasts sharply with the environment once the child enters the twisted reality, becoming an alcoholic, a drug addict, etc.

For the performer in the performance section of my piece, I dressed the actor in a black shirt and faded jeans. I felt this smart appearance would reflect the indie nature of the song and artist.

Risk Assessment

During the filming of my sequence, there were a number of things that could go wrong that could affect my cast, myself or my equipment. I took the time to outline these in a Risk Assessment and ensure that I was prepared and safe for whatever may happen.

Risk to Equipment
If it were to rain on the day of the filming, my camera would be at risk of getting damaged. Rain would be effective for the cinematography of some of my scenes, so I would continue to film and use an umbrella to protect my equipment.

In case of our equipment being stolen, I would keep my phone with me to quickly alert police.

Risk to Actors
In order to prevent the actor from drinking alcohol I would need to find suitable non-alcoholic replacements to double. It is also possible, walking on the pavement alongside a main road, that the actor could be run over by a car while crossing. If such a rare scenario were to occur, I would have communication equipment on me such as my mobile phone in order to quickly call for medical assistance.

Casting

I was unable to film the original artist of my song as they were unavailable, so I cast a double for the lead singer. I decided to cast a man a similar age to the original artist to give the impression of a believable singer when portrayed against the music.

Will Rogers
After a lengthy casting process in the lower years of my school's drama classes, I cast teenager Will Rogers as the main character in the narrative section of my video. Mr Rogers had a very strong background in acting, going to theatre summer schools and performing in many school plays. He was the oldest candidate for the role, but I felt that his look and his established acting experience were perfect fits.

During test filming I was initially concerned about Mr Rogers' musical theatre acting habits that seeped into his performance. We worked together on this and for the actual shoot, his performance was naturalistic, subtle and grounded. His ability to convey a range of emotions from fear to rejection and isolation was captivating. I was very impressed by his performance and proud of the end result.

Mr Rogers' costume consisted of vibrant colours; a green and yellow hoodie, zebra striped scarf, blue jeans and a black polo. I wanted his character's clothing to be very colourful and layered in order to convey a childlike innocence and happiness that is stripped away throughout the narrative.

Geoff Ramsey
I cast 34 year-old Texan Geoff Ramsey as the lead singer in my performance section. Mr Ramsey had a past career of being a roadie for a touring band and is now a voiceover artist, so he was familiar with recording soundbooth and miming.

During shooting I was incredibly impressed by his acting ability, especially as he was miming to a song at 200% of its original speed (in order to slow the video down in post-production). He was incredibly professional and easy to work with.

I dressed Mr Ramsey in a black shirt and faded jeans for his costume. I felt this smart appearance would reflect the indie nature of the song and artist.

Mr Ramsey's performance was not included in the final cut, not due to his acting ability, but the requirement to simplify the video and more closely tie the musical performance into the narrative.

Filming Schedule

Dates for Filming

• Austin, TX 28th of August, 2009


• Nottingham, England 2nd of October, 2009 (screen test) and 13th of November, 2009 (principal photography)

Actors Needed

• Austin, TX Geoff Ramsey


• Nottingham, England Will Rogers

Equipment Needed

• Austin, TX Canon 5D Mark II camera


• Nottingham, England Canon HG10 camera (screen test), Canon 7D camera (principal photography)

Weather Requirements

• Austin, TX N/A (interior shots).


• Nottingham, England Exterior shots require sunshine or cloudy skys - not rain.

Performance
I shot the performance section of my piece on the 28th of August, 2009 in Austin, TX. I cast Geoff Ramsey as the performer in lieu of the original artist as they were unavailable. It was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II in 1080p. As I shot in a soundbooth interior, I did not have any weather requirements.

Narrative and Re-shot Performance
The narrative section of my piece was shot on the 13th of November, 2009. Prior to this, some scenes were shot in a screen test on the 2nd of October. Will Rogers was cast as the main character for the narrative section. The scenes were shot on a Canon 7D camera in 720p in a mix of 24p and 60p for slow motion. Mr Rogers also performed the song for the re-shoot of the performance section.

Permission for Usage of Song

I contacted the label for clarification on the name of the publisher for the song, however they did not have it in their records. Further research also yielded no results, so I could not find the publisher to contact.

Storyboard Animatic

Director's Commentary


Song Only

Music Video Treatment

The video is a series of vignettes in a child's quest at growing up and living alone. There is an element of surrealism as he essentially lives as an adult, though on screen he has the appearance of a child. To others in the universe he appears old.

A) An only child, about 10 years old, is assaulted by his father. In anger he packs a bag of clothes and runs away from home...
B) Getting a desk job answering phones...
C) Getting a tiny, cramped flat with no furniture and sleeping on the floor...
D) Sitting on a park watching kids play - he is no longer connected to them...
E) Getting his first car, driving around town, waiting for something to happen... (This scene was cut during the storyboarding process to improve shooting practicality.)
F) Turning to alcohol, drinking in a bar...
G) Falling asleep in the gutter, alcohol bottle in his hand...
H) Turning to heroin, shoots himself up in his apartment...
I) Throws up on the floor of his apartment and cries...
J) Eventually realising that he doesn't want to grow up, and that adult life is horrible, he leaves adult life behind and walks out into the night...
K) He arrives at his old house and sees his worried parents through the window... He decides to stay a child for as long as he can, and returns through the front door.

Analysis of Website for Florence and the Machine

The main image on the official website for Florence and the Machine, recording name of artist Florence Welsh, is a photo of the artist herself. It is placed in the centre, above the fold, so that it is the first thing that a visitor to the website sees. This reinforces her star image and allows her to connect with her audience by putting a face to the music. A pair of lungs, similar to those found in the CD Cover for the album Lungs, are used as the background for the navigation menu, which highlights them and makes them recognisable, establishing a recurring motif for the artist.

The website makes use of an audio player and video player, which are both placed above the fold. The video player autoplays upon load, which massively increases view counts and engrosses the viewer. Autoplaying the video attracts attention to it and increases the visibility of the artist and her music.

The navigation menu links to sections for News, a Blog, about the artist, Media, Video, Photo Gallery, information on the live tour and community features such as a forum and membership system. These allow for great interactivity with the artist and allow for fans to be closely connected to the goings-on of Florence and the Machine, staying up-to-date and the first to know about new singles, albums, tours, etc. This improves record sales and the financial viability of the artist to the record company.

Analysis of Website for Feist

The website for artist Feist uses a large image as its centrepiece advertising the artist's newest album, The Reminder. The artist is featured in a close-up shot next to the album to establish the relationship. Below the fold, fan photos of the artist's live performances on tour advertise the tour itself and also her skills as a live performer.

The main navigation bar links to the artist's news, tour details, news articles, photos, videos, albums and online store. These pages use rich media such as audio and video to create a vivid image of the artist to intrigue the viewer and draw them into her star image.

The key image of Feist's silhouette is used four times on the landing page, once as the favicon, and also above the header image, tour archive sidebar link and the album cover itself featured in the header image. The 'rule of 3' in marketing says that you must present a key image to a viewer three times before they remember it. The use of the silhouette three times on the page and once in the favicon is consistent with this and helps create a recognisable logo for the artist.

Analysis of CD Cover for Lungs by Florence and the Machine

The main image in the CD Cover for Lungs depicts the artist, Florence Welch, standing in a forest, surrounded by birds and flowers. She wears a see-through dress and a plastic representation of two lungs hang from her neck as if replacing a necklace. The lungs, representative of the album title, cover her outside body where the lungs would appear inside her body. The choice of lungs as both the album's namesake and the visual image on the CD Cover could suggest connotations of life, as breath is needed for life, or singing, as her powerful voice comes from her lungs.

The artists' recording name, Florence and the Machine, is represented in logo form in a sans-serif, hand-written font. The cursiveness of this font suggests a hand-drawn, personal touch which allows the artist to connect with the audience on a higher level.

Analysis of CD Cover for We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse

This album cover uses a main image of a hot air balloon with an anchor for a basket, and sunshine rays eminating from it. This image is reflective of the title, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, suggesting inevitable death due to the heavy anchor pulling down on the hot air balloon, and the tone of the album title suggests acceptance of that. The font of the band's name, Modest Mouse, uses a Las Vegas-style serif typography, with no additional effects, gradients, shadows, glows, etc. This connotes a somber attitude that is also reflective of the album title rife with negativity.

The layout uses the band's logo and the album title to represent the metaphorical 'ground' that the hot air balloon would soon crash down to. This connotes a state of flux, a pause in time where everything is joyful before the inevitable, horrific crash happens and the inhabitants of the "ship" die.

The colours used are dark blue, orange and a light purple. These cool, calm colours suggest the tone of the album, somber and mellow, which is indeed reflected in the choice track, Little Motel.

Textual Analysis of 9 Crimes by Damien Rice

The music video for 9 Crimes by Damien Rice was directed by Jamie Thraves in 2006. The music is of the piano pop genre and conforms to its characteristics of a classical, all-piano arrangement but with vocals that can appeal to a mass audience, as common in the broader Pop genre.

The lyrics "leave me out with the waste" are represented in the video through the visual of additional vocalist Lisa Hannigan's head cast aside amongst waste bins in an alleyway. This surreal image later evolves as her head flies upward like a balloon and is lifted away by the wind. The lyrics "if I give my gun away when it's loaded, is that alright?" are loosely represented in the video by the young boy who, at the end of the video, uses a slingshot to burst Hannigan's 'balloon head' and she is left on the ground, her face burst apart. The lyrics "it's a small crime and I've got no excuse" could also relate to this from the perspective of the boy.


The video cuts to the beat of the music effectively throughout. During the crescendo of the music the video cuts away from the alleyway setting to the pavement of a street, where Rice pulls Hannigan's head along like a balloon on string. This is portrayed as jovial as he had earlier attempted to grab hold of her, but the wind had kept blowing her away. Pete Fraser, in the article Teaching Music Video (BFI, 2004) says that "many music videos draw upon cinema as a starting point." This is true for this video, which has a very cinematic aesthetic and is more concept-based than traditional music videos, feeling more like a short film by an experimental filmmaker than a music video.


The artist, Damien Rice, is featured in close-up shots often. He is portrayed as an ordinary person, as he is dressed in scruffy jeans and a bomber jacket, which adds to his star appeal. This is consistent with his previous videos as he wears ordinary costumes and is presented in an image of a professional, serious singer/songwriter. According to Keith Negus in the book Producing Pop, stars created from the organic ideology of creativity are approached by record labels with a naturalistic intention and a long-term plan. Rice fits into this category and is thus an organically ideological star. His music is aimed at a higher sophistication of consumer than the general pop genre.


The video is predominantly concept-based, presenting a unique and interesting visual image. The narrative-base is used much less in the boy's slingshot destruction of Hannigan's face. The artist, Damien Rice and additional vocalist, Lisa Hannigan do perform throughout the music video, lip syncing not to the camera, but to each other. In conclusion, this video is unconventional and experimental. However, it does still conform to some music video conventions, such as performance from the artist and a fractured narrative.

According to Richard Dyer in the article Stars (BFI, 1981), some of the common values of music stardom are "originality [and] creativity/talent." He also theorises that "a star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])." Rice's appearance in the music video is an image created by the record company, as he is not performing live as a true human being, but instead acting. Rice fulfills these criterion and can therefore be considered, from Dyer's theorisation, a star.

Textual Analysis of Little Motel by Modest Mouse

The video I am analysing is Little Motel by the band Modest Mouse. The video was directed by Justin Francis in 2007. The music belongs to the Indie Rock genre, and follows its conventions such as an acoustic arrangement and an unusual and experimental sound.

The video draws upon the lyrics to create strong relationships and links. As an example, the visuals include a literal interpretation of the lyrics "I hope that you like it in your little motel", by the mother putting her son to bed in a motel room. "I hope that the suite sleeps and suits you well" is also literally interpreted in the visuals by opening with a shot of the child (at this point in the video, presumably) sleeping softly in the suite (he is later revealed to have died). The repeated lyrics in the chorus, "That's what I'm waiting for", are represented in the visuals through the mother's waiting at the child's hospital bedside for him to succumb to his illness or ailment, patiently watching him and the EKG. In an article by Steve Archer, How to Study Music Videos, he says "Narrative and performance
 songs rarely tell complete narratives." Pete Fraser also offers a similar sentiment in the article Teaching Music Video (BFI, 2004) in which he says "Narrative in songs is rarely complete, more often fragmentary, as in poetry." This is true for this video, which offers a small fracture of a narrative, but does not explain further, such as why the child was in hospital and what his condition was when his mother removed him from the hospital and took him to a motel room. These narrative points are left ambiguous and for the audience to decide.


The lyrics "the remainders of a shooting star landed directly on our broke-down little car" are vividly represented in the video via a shot of the car's bonnet and the lights of Las Vegas reflecting upon it. This creates an image, as seen above, that could be interpreted as shooting stars landing upon a little car. The lyrics continue to read, "before then we had made a wish that we would be missed if one or another just did not exist." This has a strong relationship to the visual of the mother carrying her dead son, who is clearly "missed" by the grieving mother's body language and expressions.

The video (even though it is shot in reverse) is cut to the beat of the music effectively. Solo instrumental pieces in the music are reflected in the video by cutting away from the two characters of the mother and child to close-up shots of the blinking lights of Las Vegas.


The video changes pace with the music, especially once the video reaches the point in the narrative when the mother runs out of the hospital with her child in her arms, as seen in the image above. Due to the reverse nature of the edit, this happens at the beginning of the narrative, but is shown in the last few moments of the video. The music intensifies for the final chorus, with cymbal clashes and drum beats matching cuts in the edit. The visuals are faster now, with the woman running down the hospital corridor faster than previously seen, when she had been slowly travelling through Las Vegas in a slight slow motion effect. The frantic rushing through the hospital, with her child in her arms, is a strong contrast to the beginning of the video (end of the narrative) where she, in her grief, calmly and peacefully tucks her son into bed in a motel room, now dead.


The piano beats used in the opening of the song relate strongly to the visual of the twinkling lights of Las Vegas. The lights flicker on and off quickly, and the staccato sound reflects this. The flashback sequence in the video to a home movie of the mother and child playing on a park are accompanied in the music by an ethereal, dreamy sound that works well.


In an intertextual reference, the owner of the motel plays Windows Solitaire on his computer, connoting the dullness and uneventfulness of most peoples' lives in contrast to the mother who is dealing with grief for the loss her son.
The video contains no performance from the artist. It is half narrative based and half concept based. The narrative enigma of the mother carrying her child through Las Vegas is intriguing to the audience, and the concept of telling the story in reverse (with the shock twist happening at the end of the video, but the beginning of the narrative) is innovative and only successfully executed a few times before (Coldplay, The Scientist).

In conclusion, this video is uncharacteristic of conventional music videos as it feels more like a short film than an exhibition of the artist. It is experimental and the narrative is intriguing.

Directors Research

Lindy Heymann
Active between 1992 and 2006, Heymann has directed many music videos. Her most recent works have been The Stands - 'Do It Like You Do', Thirteen Senses - 'Salt Wound Routine', L'il Luv - 'Little Love' and Supafly - 'Let's Get Down'. She graduated University with a BA in Fine Art / Film, and was quickly after hired to direct her first documentary, "3 Hours in High Heels is Heaven". It was broadcast on Channel 4.

Jake Wynne
Wynne began directing in 1998 when he teamed up with friend Jim Canty to form a directing partnership called 'Jake & Jim'. He has since moved on from music video directing to feature length film directing. Wynne has directed music videos for The Stereophonics, Observer, Faithless and many more artists.

Justin Francis
Francis is a director and photographer from New York. He won an award for "Outstanding Video" for the music video for Alicia Keys' "Unbreakable". During his career he has directed music videos for artists the likes of Modest Mouse, Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas, The Cure, 50 Cent and others.