Sophie Avci - Filmed Evaluation Question Four

Below is my response to Question Four on the evaluation.

Deadline Day

Being it the deadline day today for the Evaluation it seems to me like this is the day when its finally over. Despite still having to film our question 4's which i hope to do on Friday or as soon as possible that doesnt really seem to count. I feel as though it is today that the weight of the coursework for this subject has been lifted...finally

Music Video Evaluation Question 1

This is our music video for the song The Competition by Kimya Dawson.
Even though it would be extremely helpful to compare with one of Kimya's own videos she doesnt have any so therefore i cannot explain how they differ and/or are different.
A video from another artist of a similar genre which i will compare and contrast however is Dance Anthem by Regina Spektor. To substitute not having one of Kimya's Videos i will also compare Corinne Bailey Rae's Put Your Records On as this is another of the same sort of genre and one that i have done a textual analysis on in the past.





The main elements to this genre we feel is that despite trying to sell to as many pople as possible the artists want to fit into the niche market and like to think of themselves as independant, without being referred to as the typical indie sub culture. It would seem that in the majority of these artists videos the lead vocalists are the main characters and a lot of the time are having a good time or are light hearted. Regina Spektor may be an excpetion to the good time rule but her videos are still light hearted and i think ours is particularly so - hitting people in the face etc. I think keeping to that typical convention was important for our video because at best its difficult to find the defining rule of an anti-folk video and without this aspect it would be even more so.
As the lead singer is most of the time the one in the narrative of the video we thought fit to do so also so even if an audience only was a short clip of the video they could still tell who it was performing.

Featuring in both the Regina Spektor and the Corinne Bailey Rae videos another typical element to this genre of music is having the location set outdoors during daylight hours or close to dusk. Again we stuck to this convention as we liked the idea of riding a bike (presumably as did Corinne Bailey Rae) and riding a bike inside would have proved alot more difficult.

One thing that is predominant in videos of this sort of nature is the use of stop motion. Although the 'Put Your Records On' video doesnt contain any I know alot of the Regina Spektor stuff does and we liked the look of this opening sequence from Dance Anthem of the 80's so we used some to represent the character crying. We thought it gave a video a nice effect when it swaps to stop motion every now and then, even if we did just use it the once.

Having just one narrative location is typical as well, and if not one then two or the bare minimum. The Corinne Bailey Rae video has only 2 and Regina Spektor's has only one! Our video, like Dance Anthem only has the one but is a big location as most of the shots are tracking.

Unlike either of these videos though and one way our video does challenge the genre convention is that ours has many flashbacks (filmed in sepia) which are a lot of different locations of different places the character has been in her life.

All in all our video pretty much follows all conventions of the norm for this genre, it has strong elements from both the above videos and a lot of our own ideas based on the conventions and fits into the anti folk category quite nicely in my opinion. Our production does only really differ in location but even this difference is surrounded by similarities in that the type of location is extremely similar.

Music Video Evaluation Question 2

With all products in the media industry there is a constant synergy between related produce for example a logo or particular style of an artist. With the professional industry in mind when we were creating our video and Digi Design pack we have incorpporated similar styles and colours in all three so it can be seen as all the same artist.



When we started planning both the inside and outside of the CD cover and the website we knew a constent theme was important from our analysis of other artists so from doing our own textual analysis of our artist we chose a set of colours which represented her best - creams and brows and colours of the natural spectrum. Initially when we knew what we were doing but hadnt yet done anything we started with just a blank canvas, straight away with the creamy colour we liked - The colour of the wallpaper on the website and inside Cd cover.



Despite having problems with just about every stage of the Digi Design process we still kept the synergy between the products.

When we looked at the original artists style, the way her Cd cover and website was laid out there was a consistent theme of doodles. Even though the recent change in style to the artists website meant the doodles were more coloured and 3-d, we wanted to keep to the old style, the scribbled doodles like on the album cover so we doodled our own images and scanned them on...changing the colour to our palet. Like the artist had used the images on both CD and website we also thought it would be a nice sort of synergy to include the doodles in both also.
For the font of the artist we thought a hand written style was most appropriate and chose the font for the CD cover. Because this font didnt exist on the software for the website and because we didnt want to change it we hand made the text of the artist name for the website to our style and scanned them in. Thinking it would be too time consuming and hard to read we did have to change the font for the rest of the site.

Another way we maintained a clear theme and interraleted the website and Cd cover was by using the same location for all our designs. Being as our whole idea revolves around natural images and colours we found this field which was just the right colour so we used it for every stage in our prduction - Inside CD, Outside CD, website and music video. I think we particularly liked this idea of the artist playing in a field or having fun in a field as the message the songs and the message the original artist gives across in her music is that you shouldnt be materielistic and dont need to be to have fun - which i think we illustrate well in our synergy.

As the target audience for our video in young teenage girls we think that by having a running theme of girly type doodles and nacy writing that probably wouldnt appeal to the male audience we have acheived our goal in targeting our right audience category.

As you can see in our video we have continued keeping to the colour palet we chose for the artist, adding a sepia effect to alot of the clips gave us the effect we needed.

Other existing artists of the genre suchas Corinne Bailey Rae have similar styled Cd Covers and videos to the one we have created, using synergy like us in the two maybe relating in location or activity however similarly to our original artist Kimya Dawson, Corinne Bailey Rae has since changed her website to choreograph her next album release. Her album Called Corinne Bailey Rae (2006) has a colour link and style link to that of her single video 'Put Your Records On'. This is like what we have done which shows we have shown proffessional initiative. By using this synergy helps sell the artist because if a passer by were to stumble across one of the three aspects they would know what style the artist was and decide their opinion on them.

Similar to our own video the consistent colours to hers are natural creams and yellows, unlike ours though the sun is a key part in this the idea of sunset being the starring role.

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation - Question Three

After everyone in our class had completed their music video, we all sat and watched each others back, filling in a feedback sheet and giving them a score we thought it was worth out of 40. As stated in a previous post when finding an average score for ours, we found it was 34/40 which is in the top band. I was really pleased with this as i'm glad that other people can see all the hard work that has gone into it.

With our class being a mixture of people, both genders and personality the feedback we got was varied.

Although a vast majority of it was postivie feedback, with things such as 'good lip syncing', sells the artist', 'fits well with the song', 'humurous' and 'professional' there were of course a minority of negative comments, for example 'bad camera angles', 'not easy to watch', 'a bit over the top' and 'rubbish song'; we knew that our song choice obviously wouldn't pleae everybody, as everyone has their own taste in music. We did also try to mix up the camera angles and use interesting heights for certain shots, but obviously this person wasn't keen on it.

There were several sections in which we deiced to keep the volume of the actual clip up, for example when Rosa answers the phone in the office so that we can still hear her say 'hello' and also when she rings the bell on the bike. However there was one clip where Rosa is standing on the bed in fairy wings for the line 'I'll show you who's the best!' at first we simply turned the volume off and lip synced it in time for the music but then we were unsure as to whether we should in fact leave it up like the others or not. Because as a group we couldn't come to a decision we decided to get people that were in the room at the time, as well as everyone in our class to watch it both ways and say which they thought. Although in the end as a group we were slightly leaning against turning it down everyone (minus a few) thought we should leave it up, so we went with the majority and left the volume up.

When we originally did our pitch to the class, I felt that they weren't too enthusiastic about our song choice or idea, but from gathering the feedback and hearing what people have to say about it now that it's compeleted I am really happy with the response.

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation - Question Two

Completed Website

Completed CD Cover



Throughout each section of our work - the website, CD cover and music video - we have tried to maintain a continuous look and feel to everything we've done. From looking into some of Kimya Dawsons own CD covers and her official website, as well as other artists within the anti-folk genre we have picked out different things we liked and wanted to do ourselves.

For instance, as artists similar to Kimya (as well as her herself) are very down to earth, simple and natural we chose to stick to browns and beiges for the majority of our work. As you can see from the above images we edited the doodle (in which Jacques and Sophie drew) so that rather than having a white background like it did previously it was beige. To do this, after scanning the drawing onto the Mac we opened the image into Photoshop where we made a new layer (which was the beige) and placed the drawings on top of the new layer, only selecting the drawings. We also had the writing on the website as a darker brown (slightly red as to add a slight colour so it didn't get too boring) and chose a font which wasn't too formal but looked more hand written, as well as having the 'Kimya Dawson' at the very top of the website written by ourselves which we too then scanned into Photoshop to select each letter seperately; when first analying Kimya Dawson's own official website she too had doodled images at the top with hand written titles for each new page (however during us making our own website based on this she updated hers, we preferred the originall version and so carried on using that as inspiration).

We kept this running through to our CD cover by having the same doodle pattern as the background for the inside cover, we also turned the opacity down on the front/back image and added a slight sepia effect. This suited the image we had chosen perfectly as the landscape behind her sat on the fence seemed more autumnal. As Kimya Dawson is always seen with her guitar we also made sure that she was sat playing the guitar in the image (where we also later filmed part of the music video) and used the sound whole of it as part of the inside cover where the CD would be placed.

To carry on the effect from this we added a slight sepia tint to the narrative sections of our music video, not only did this connect it to the CD and webpage but it also created the effect that each of these sections were events that have happened previously in which she is telling us about. We also ended our music video in the same location as the images for the CD cover and website were taken; we had Rosa sing the last few lines sat in the same place as the CD cover image was taken and she also walks off through the field behind her at the very end as if she's going home after finishing her paper round.

Throughout all of the photoshoots and filming we also tried to make sure that she was wearing the same costume, which you see on all three of our products, this makes the artist instantly recognisable for the audience. Although on one day of filming (the bike section) Rosa was unable to cycle whilst wearing the long skirt and so we had to make sure that when we went back to film that part again she was wearing the same as before so as to not create any continuity errors. It also so happened that she had forgotten to bring her boots and was instead wearing some personalized pumps - although we were worried at first, it turns out that actually these shoes also fit in with Kimya's image with the doodling on our website etc.

From looking at two of Kimya Dawson's previous album covers, 'Remember that I love you' and 'Alphabutt' we can instantly see her simple and down to earth approach to life. Both include handdrawn images with nothing too complicated, they differ in the fact that 'Remember that I love you' is mainly black and white, whereas 'Alphabutt' is very colourful and personally i prefer the colourfullness of the second album as i think that this matches her fairly outrageous personality more so than the plain black and white. Although they are slightly different to eachother, and different to our own CD cover I think that they still fit in with how we have designed ours.

Kimya's website also portrays her personality with the monsters at the top, however as I previously spoke about halfway through us designing our website she updated hers. We all agreed that we preferred her original website as it fit in more with what we had in mind, but the new version still works with what we've got. Just like ours, Kimya has videos on her website, and links to her twitter, facebook or other blogs.

I also looked at Laura Marlings CD cover for some inspiration for ours, although this is very different to ours i think we can relate to this for the fact that the image on the cover is a drawing, however it's a drawing of the artist herself. I'm not too fond of this in relation to using it fully for our own work, mind.

I then went on to look at her website; i found it was very simplistic and felt quite formal. Although obviously we didn't want our website to be too relaxed we wanted it to feel approachable and for our audience to be able to feel at ease with it.

After looking at Laura's and not being too impressed i went back to Kate Nash who we had preivously looked at, I feel like her album cover is very similar to ours, the image on the front looks almost animated and drawn rather than a proper photo (like our doodle) and the artist is on the front cover - instantly recognisable - the font at the top also looks like it has been hand written which has been something key to us in the process of making our CD cover.

Kate Nash's website is also very similar to ours, although it doesn't have a running theme of colour or exact style to her CD cover i feel it is still recogniseable as hers. The title at the top of the webpage is in the same font as on the cover which may help to add to this; the website gives off a far more femine image to her work which obviously appeals to her target audience or teenage girls. Scrolling across the top of the page is also different images with captions from Kate herself. Which is just like the live twitter feed we have on the bottom of our website.

From looking into each of these artists CD covers and webpages I am confident in thinking that our own will appeal to our target audience. Throughout the process of creating them we have kept them in mind and all the time referring back to 'does it work?', 'will it fit in with the rest of our work?' and 'will they like it?' - I feel the answer to all of these questions is now yes! they will.

In all, without the use of the internet I doubt our music video would be very successful at all; we've used numerous use of the internet to mass research into our chosen genre, artist and competitors as well. We have also uploaded our video to YouTube in which within just under a week of it being on there we've managed to reach 300 views already, we have used sites such as Twitter and Facebook to promote our video, passing on the URL for people to watch it. As well as using Blogger to keep track on all the work and progress we've been making.

A2 Advanced Portfolio: Reflective Evaluation - Question One



Our finished video; Kimya Dawson - The Competition

Regina Spektor - Us

As Kimya Dawson doesn't have any official music videos, I have chosen an artist who is the most similar to her to compare against another artist from the same genre.


Kate Nash - Foundations





Although within the genre of anti-folk in which our chosen artist falls amongst the aim of each artist is to stand out from others, not comforming to peoples expectations; this makes it difficult to identify anti-folk artists. However they each have one thing in common, they each like to be experimental and tend to mock seriousness from time to time. I personally feel that our music video does this perfectly. With anti-folk music videos aiming to be different from others we had to think about what elements of the genres conventions we would use for our own video.

From watching Regina Spektor's video of 'Us' and Kate Nash's 'Foundations' amongst others, we noticed that anti-folk music videos tend to have very strong narratives running throughout the video, with the lead singer as the main character for the narrative (which is highly evident in 'Foundations'); this was something which we really liked the idea of and wanted to do for our own video. We incorporated this for most of our video, such as when she was sat on her bed playing the guitar. But also when she's both cycling and walking down the road.

When looking at the different shot types within the videos we noticed that there was always a lot of variation, so as to keep the audience interested and watching, sometimes when watching videos they can get boring having repetitive shots and not being very inventive. In 'Us' we see interesting high angles of Regina playing the piano and looking up to the camera singing. We tried to do unusual shots like this while she was in bed playing the guitar and on the fence at the very end, swapping angles each line/when appropriate.

From also watching Kate Nash's video for 'Foundations' there were several extreme close ups of their hands doing different things (playing cards, putting the cards down etc) which we felt was a great idea for part of our introduction when Rosa was leaving the house. At the beggining of Kate Nash's video for 'Foundations' there are several different shots such as the toothbrushes, bedside table and a row of shoes, as each beat comes the shots change. This links the action in the video to the song and makes it easier and more interesting to watch and keep focus on. We had a similar idea from seeing this for the introduction to our music video where we started the first beat of the song when he foot pushed off on the pedal.

A big part of Regina Spektor's video for 'Us' is the use of stop motion, this gives the video a very unique and quirky look to it making it something you remember from the video which is obviously something you would aim for. We thought that it would be really interesting to try out doing some stop motion ourselves. We decided to do use it at two different times, the first being when she gets out of bed and looks into the mirror to see 'fat', 'ugly' and 'stupid' each appearing one after the other and the second being straight after this when the tears appear down her face. As i went to film at Rosas on my own i was quite nervous about filming these however looking back i think that they turned out quite well and really work and fit in with the rest of our video.

Looking back at our video and thinking about the conventions of an anti-folk music video i don't believe that we've challenged them at all. One of the main conventions of the anti-folk genre is that they tend to mock seriousness; although part of our video can be percieved as being quite serious as the lyrics are about problems Kimya has faced in her life, we tried to lighten it up a bit with the newspapers being thrown and  hitting the people in the faces. At first i was worried that this wouldn't work and might look out of place, however when watching our video now it's complete i feel that they fit perfectly and do make the whole video a lot funnier and less serious.