Lewis Burfoot

This will become a video, this is just what i plan on talking about and displaying in my final evaluation.

Typical codes and conventions
· Narrative storyline, which is a very common occurrence in videos these days, especially where the lyrics can be acted out in a story, our video incorporates this
· Close ups, Yet again another very common occurrence in videos, it focus’s on either narrative characters or singers/musicians
· Focus on instruments, not as common in videos focusing on the singer, but since we had a band we wanted to focus on the instruments so that the audience can see the skill of the band members.
· Band in the narrative, but the band was only visible to the audience, more challenging typical codes and conventions, as normally the band interact with the character in frame, but in ours they do interact the narrative character however is not aware of it.
· A very controversial song, although poppy, a very dark meaning, a big challenge towards codes and conventions especially mainstream, our song isn’t mainstream which does make it easier to challenge the code and convention, but still get it to work.
· Blurs, popular in videos where they try to show themselves ‘breaking the rules’. This isn’t actually very common in rock videos, I found that it is more common in rap, but as we want to be seen as going against the grain, with such controversial lyrics, I felt it worked.
· Location, a garage, feels very grungy, almost band rehearsal like. Performances often take place in a location where the band practice, or perform, and a garage like the one we chose, felt like we were close to where the narrative was happening which was the general idea, it also stuck with typical codes and conventions with performance.
· Black was a popular theme (every guitar was black) darker side of the band. This ties in with our ancillary which has lots of black in it, but it also shows the darker theme of the band.
· Outfits where mainly flannels, which shirts such as jack Daniels shirts, which is often the kind of product placement you may see in videos, and the large amount of similar wear ties the band together.
· Outro of song, band stop playing and leave. Flashbacks. Slow mo, more apparently in slowly melody songs, so we challenged the codes an conventions by putting it in a more upbeat song

Similar videos that have all of the codes and conventions that we used, also some which were inspiration for our video, while the genre main be different from our song, the actual band that we chose does perform a similar genre.
- Papa Roach – between angels and insects (garage scene and performance)
- Dragon Force – Heroes of our Time (Close up of instruments)
- Suicide Silence – You Only Live Once (unusual themes, death being the main one)
- Avenged Sevenfold – Dear God (black and white)
- Foo fighters – Ever long (band in narrative)
- Good charlotte – Lifestyles of the rich and famous (similar outfits)
- System of a down – (the whole video is in slow motion where it is narrative)
- Limp Bizkit – My generation (blurring of the shirt)
- Bullet for my valentine – Tears don’t fall (narrative)

Technologies

A laptop was used for editing, a portable version of Sony Vegas 8 meant that we could plug it into any pc with high enough specs and run the editing software off of it, this meant that we could edit anywhere, though mainly a laptop was used as we could take it around with us easily
A canon Digital SLR was used to take pictures for the ancillary, and the studio at Edgbarrow was used for certain shots. I took a few of the pictures while the rest of the group took others
Photoshop CS4 was used for the editing of the photo’s large contrasts where add to distinguish person from background, and the magic wand tool was used to select the people, then a Gaussian blur was used to make the outline smoother.
Ancillary was done in black and white, because we felt it stands out, while it doesn’t have a very strong correlation to the video, the fact it was both this and that, black and white. I felt it went with the song which was happy and sad, very contrasting things, but both being apparent.
Certain parts of the album we kept very simple, the use of silhouettes throughout the ancillary were used, and there where MANY versions until we where happy with it. While certain parts where a bit simple, we did feel it worked very well.
In the editing I did some of the simple editing, cropping clips, framing and syncing, the rest of the group also did this, however I did certain parts of it that the rest of the group didn’t, for example the end of the video where there are stills was me, the pixilation on bottles was also me, and I also colour corrected the footage, so that colours where more vibrant and the blacks where darker.

Mixture of main task and Ancillary
The ancillary was done in pure black and white with no medium which could not actually be said for our main task, while we had black and white, we also had shades of grey, and the performance was very vibrant colour, we did this however to get a contrast like in the ancillary, but the colour scheme of the ancillary was more related to the song, as it was a very happy upbeat song, with a very depressing meaning, which is very this or that, very black and white.
Audience feedback
We couldn’t decide on certain parts of our poster and it was constantly changing, at the end we had two versions that we liked but couldn’t have them both so we asked for audience feedback on which one the preferred.
At the end we did have two versions, but after talking to people about which one they prefer, we finally chose one, which was the version with the text wrapping around the people and the fleshed out the design more so it did not look as boring. This was also the case with our poster, we had two versions but after asking people we found out that across both the album and the poster that the text wrapping was more popular.