Conventions Oliver Fox Nights

of Broken Sleep

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Click to edit Master subtitle style There are many conventions

within indie music videos, here is an analysis of how we used or challenged them.

Conventions

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Our music video conforms to indie video norms with challenges to some conventions to add originality and creativity on our part.

We

did this by using indie conventions of settings being outdoors with a great use of trees and greenery. This is shown in other videos of a similar kind, for example Ben Howards song Keep Your Head Up (above) filmed completely in a forest. added other scenes in a shopping centre and average British streets to make it realistic to the audience so they feel comfortable, then receive

We

Conventions
The

severity of the characters actions hit the audience hard as it is something unexpected. We regularly find videos of love and hardships but our video takes it a step further.

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It

shows how he wants and imagines it to go, though his love for this girl blinds him into doing something he doesnt want to do, (partially regretting what hes doing as it happens) nor

Conventions

Indie videos are either completely performance in out of the ordinary settings or wholly narrative; our video followed the latter. We initially had a completely narrative piece however, based on audience feedback we found it looked better with performance elements. After adding these shots we found an improvement on peoples opinion on the piece. I liked the shots, even though our actor couldnt mine the words very well, they made the video look a lot more professional and gave the piece a more rounded feel, ready for TV airplay.
It wasnt just about having our singer mime the lyrics but also showing him as the performing

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act we have depicted him to be. We filmed in a way establishing him as a well rounded performer playing the guitar, even though he didnt know how to play either.

Conventions

The use of natural lighting with slight tints black and white for when the character felt angry and a high contrast for blue skies corresponding with the character feeling happy or in love tying in with the lyrics.

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This

is something that gave the video more meaning and we have found it is something that helps the viewer remember it as of the strong link from lyrics to visual to connection with viewer.

Conventions

An appearance convention of indie artists (such as the band whos song we used) is long hair and suits giving the genre a dapper look which is starting to become more popular. We adapted this aspect as it kept the look current and this was something our actor did normally so it felt comfortable and realistic. The costuming also reflected how he was different from the stereotypical teenage boy and didnt quite fit into society making his battle to get the girl even more difficult. The rawness of the scenery also reflected on how the male character was acting on pure raw emotions.

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Inspirations intertextuality

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These conventions can be found in videos such as SOKOs True Love Never Die. This was also used to pay homage to artists we liked and drew inspirations from

We also used an inspiration of Birdys song Shelter with the action of playing with a strong sun beam with a hand in the forest. The transitions used in indie videos are very minimal and usually a simple cut or cross dissolve (used in Final Cut Pro).

Conventions

As I have illustrated we used a variation of conventions which ultimately establish the video to fit into the genre so it is familiar to the audience and those who arent necessarily fans of indie music. Though having the conventions in, it enables the video to be identified as an indie video with tributes paid to our favourite artists. However, to add some originality we included our own original ideas of taking lyrics literally with blue skies are calling paired with an extreme version of the lyrics being that the singer is so pained by his break up it leads him to commit the acts of kidnap and murder. Overall, I believe we have a very unique and interesting video proven by feedback and YouTube views. People have given us corrections which we amended to create a better video for those who are our target audience. But ultimately we have made an entertaining indie video that conforms to enough conventions to be established as indie but defies

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what have you learned from your audience feedback?

Heres a look at how we have learnt from the audience feedback but also acted upon it. Click to edit Master subtitle style

What have we learnt from our audience feedback

In

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the final weeks of our coursework we had done a showcase. This was on the 19th April. After we showed our videos we had given out our questionnaires so they could tell us what they thought of our videos. we also got our reviews from a year 7 class. We gathered our results and wrote up our findings and posted it to our blogs the

What have we learnt from our audience feedback

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We learnt a lot from our feedback from the showcase such as across the age groups we had impressed people with how good the video was. We had very good comments. Most people loved the settings and the narrative we had. Some even said they liked the mix of performance and narrative pieces. We had also averaged a rating of 9 out of 10. We also received negative comments when asked what we could improve. Most people had said they thought it was good but we had continuity errors with our actors hair and we featured a dog walker in the death scene

What did we learn from our audience feedback?

We

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did this by choosing a different clip to replace the original shot of a passer-buyer in the background watching a murder scene. Obviously this was not good enough so we chose a different shot which was adapted by Radhika and Hannah in the editing suit. They did this by using a shot-reverse-shot to give a more up close feel for the audience to feel more empathy and involvement. there were some things we werent able to correct such as the actors hair changing throughout the video. This was out of our hands as he got a hair cut but the viewer can clearly tell it is the same person, not that much

Also

What have we learnt from our audience feedback?

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We also put our video on different media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. We received a lot of praise for the video and we also got a lot of views from this. Every view we got on YouTube alone amounted to bout 300 views in just a couple of weeks. Radhika had also posted the video onto Facebook which as you can see from the pictures people also liked the video and thought it was well done. People loved the transitions we had used. They also loved the narrative with most people saying they followed it easily and it was brilliant. Most people also said the storyline went very well with the song as they both had a shared common theme which is love and the

What have we learnt from our audience feedback?

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Question 1: Did you think the choice of settings in the video were appropriate?

On quote summed up the general feeling was very good setting suited the song this is what many of the audience thought. One of the negative comments where all similar for this question thought it shouldnt be in a public park this is the feeling of the other negative comments we received. Question 2: How successful was the video in satisfying the conventions of the genre? For this question the audience again thought our video satisfied the conventions of the indie genre with 35 people agreeing that our video is very good. We also had 2 negative responses from our audience Question 3: How successful is the editing? From the people we asked 33 of them had positive comments ranging from all good to the transitions where sharp and clear. This is very good for our video as it was overwhelmingly liked by the audience. We had 3 negative comments about the transitions and editing one of them said could use more effects over the song taking this into consideration if we was to do this again we could look into making more editing but we and many of the audience thought we had a sufficient amount. Question 4: How successful were the choice of camera angles and movement? 36 people had positive reviews of the camera angles and movements we used. We tried to use a range of different camera angles and techniques but also tried fitting it into the conventional camera shots that indie music use. We had received 4 negative responses from the audience on camera shots with one quote being didnt notice any extra good thing average this is something we didnt want people to think but as it is a small number of people who felt this way we can safely assume that it was fine and some peoples tastes in camera movement could cloud judgement of our work. Question 5: Did the narrative of the music video suit the song overall? 35 people had positive responses to our music video which means that it was highly successful in falling into the conventions of the indie genre. We had 4 negative responses with one saying that the song and the video didnt complement each other which is disappointing that they would think this but we had good comments such as the song is about love and so is the music video. We are happy that people could see the theme that we were going for even if some others didnt. Question 6: Was the In the video easy to follow? we had 33 positive responses to this question with people saying it made complete sense and yes- it was very clear that who the main character was. We also had 5 negative responses with one saying not really if we were to do this again we could try and make it even clearer than we made it already what the video was about. Question 7: Were you entertained throughout the video? 35 people had positive reviews of our video and said they were entertained throughout the video but we had 3 negative responses to it with one saying no it got boring this is not great but its something we will take on board. But the good responses had this to say yes the story was interesting this shows that our video was entertaining.

What have we learnt from our audience feedback

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The video wasnt the only thing we asked the audience for feedback on. Earlier on in the year we had asked what people thought about our name for our singer and the song name and even the album. Here where the results that I had posted on my blog: What do you think of the name Oliver Fox? The people I asked loved the name and said it gave an exciting image to the artist. They also said that it was easy to remember as it is so different from other artists which made it different and more likely to stand out to the audiences. i had asked 10 people this questions and 9 out of 10 said they liked it and that it fit in nicely with the conventions of indie music. What do you think of the album name 'Unrest'? Again I asked the same people what they thought of this name and 10 out of 10 said they liked the name. They said that it was very appropriate given the name of our song and that if fits in with the short snappy album names that are being released today. What do you think of the song name 'Nights of broken sleep'?

What have we learnt from our audience feedback

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We have also asked a varied group of people what they thought of our ancillary task products and they all said they thought they was very good and the natural settings of one of our magazine adverts was perfect for the indie genre. They said the same for our digipack and that the set colour scheme worked very well. For the first advert they had said it worked well with the video we had made as it almost represents the messed up state of mind the actor and singer is in on our video. This shows a direct link from our ancillary product to our main video which is what we strived to