Note to Examiner

Mystery Examiner, 

Below is the blog for our A2 year project, a 3/4 minute experimental music video titled 'Wild Things'. The blog charts our progress over the course of the project - from the earliest preproduction to analysis and breakdown of our piece. 

To navigate the blog start from the oldest post and move upwards. Alternatively click this link to take you to the first post. From there move through the blog by clicking 'newer post'.

Below we've included links to the finalized music video, and the two ancillary tasks: 

Wild Things - Music Video
Wild Things Ancillary Task 1 - Digipak
Wild Things Ancillary Task 2 - Magazine Spread

We hope you enjoy our work as much as we have enjoyed working on it.

Sincerely,

Jake Denton and Harry Hough

Wild Things: Director's Commentary

CLICK THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE 'DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY' VIDEO

Wild Things: Blog Features

We received replies from some of the blogs we emailed, and they have since made posts about the video and the project. This exposure helped promote Low Res as an artist, as well as promoting our music video. Below are some examples of where we were posted:

'Wild Things' featured on www.hillydilly.com - a prominent alternative music blog.

The single uploaded to sound cloud by the third part 'Rain City Sounds' 
- an example of sharing of the song across the web. 

Low Res featured on www.eargasmusic.com - Top Left.

"The world can always use more feel-good instrumentals, and thankfully, Low Res is here to pay the world a service by providing a beat that feels great the moment it hits the ears. You may be asking yourself who the artist is, and we’re asking ourselves the exact same thing, truthfully, but his sound is as good an introduction as any to the artist behind the scenes. Inspired by N.E.R.D. and Flying Lotus, Low Res is a mystery to us, but we know for a fact that he’s got some real talent."
 - Via www.hillydilly.com

"Other than saying that he’s an artist from London, we don’t know enough about Low Res to offer any insights into his person. But since music is our main focus, we find it easier to let his sounds do the talking. His new 5-track “OUTSIDE” EP is now out on Bandcamp, and it certainly fits the profile of this self-described experimental producer."
- Via www.thefrontliner.com

Evaluation Question 4: Forms and Conventions

We answered 3 of the 4 evaluation questions on our coursework, here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0btxIVcX6M&feature=youtu.be

we thought we'd break down the final question in a text post in order to go into more details about forms and conventions.

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

Our coursework 'Wild Things' challenged conventions of the music video. Instead of using conventional cutaways of the artist playing the music, we cast the artist as the mysterious protagonist of the piece. We made this choice to compliment the genre of the music. Since the artist predominantly uses drum kits, and samplers, it would be extremely difficult to stage any 'live performance' true to the song in the video.

An image of Low Res as the protagonist of the piece.

Equally, we also used conventions of music videos, in that we used the video as a promotional tool for the artist, this, perhaps the greatest staple of the music video. We 
included images of the EP's cover art at the end and included the description of the release date and download link. Furthermore, the use of Low Res as a protagonist can be seen as a promotional tool.

Details of the EP's release at the end of the video

Further, it could be seen that we used a conventional narrative structure for our music video. Our piece is supported by Craig Davis' narrative theory, whereby he states "Music video narrative involves either illustration, amplification or disjuncture.' Simply, Davis refers to images within a music video either resembling the literal meaning of the lyrics, involving creative interpretation of these lyrics, or being completely abstract and even juxtaposing the lyrics. The piece's woodland setting could be seen as a form of 'amplification'; whilst not indicative of the songs lyrics it involved our creative interpretation of the music. As our piece was befitting of one of Davis' three categories, it could be seen as conventional. 

Wild Things: Coursework Evaluation

CLICK THE IMAGE TO WATCH OUR 'COURSEWORK EVALUATION' VIDEO

Here we answered 3 of the four evaluation questions on our coursework.

1. How effective is the combination of your main project and ancillary task?

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

- (Supplementary) What individual strengths do you feel you brought to the coursework?

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Evaluation: Representations in Wild Things

The nature of 'Wild Things' as a promotional music video, saw the need to promote Low Res as an artist. We achieved this mainly through representations. 

Representations of Low Res as a teenage experimental music artist. 

We represented Low Res as a young, up-and-coming talent through the use of vibrant imagery and the fairly 'experimental' narrative style.

Examples of the varied imagery
in 'Wild Things'.

It has been argued that conventional 3 structure 
narratives are less appealing to a new generation of viewers, so used to viewing quick and engaging content on sites like YouTube. We designed our music video with this in mind, using a mix of continuity and montage editing to show Low Res' appeal to a teenage demographic. 

Furthermore, we presented the experimental nature of Low Res' music through the video's narrative. The presence of strange costumed characters - themselves influences from the 1960s TV show 'The Banana Splits' - and the fairly ambiguous story create a unique final product that mirrors Low Res' production, showing him an artist with a distinct style and image. 

Wild Things: Storyboard/Final Product Comparison

We believe that our pre-production, notably our storyboards, were instrumental in creating our piece. Below we compiled a short video demonstrating some of our proposed storyboards next to the final product:

CLICK THE IMAGE TO VIEW THE 'STORYBOARD/FINAL PRODUCT' VIDEO COMPARISON.

'Wild Things' - Screening and Feedback

As part of the evaluation process for our music video we staged a screening in front of a live audience. We then conducted some interviews, using them to receive feedback from audience members.

CLICK THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO OF THE SCREENING

Wild Things Evaluation - Shot Comparison

For this post, we wanted to demonstrate the influence of Spike Jonze's 2009 adaption of Maurice Sendak's timeless children's book 'Where the Wild Things Are' upon our piece. We loved the aesthetic style of Jonze's adaptation and took inspiration from the film in the setting and some of the narrative.

An extreme close up of one the furry creatures
in 'Where the Wild Things Are'. 

A similar close up of our characters
in 'Wild Things'.

A sweeping pan from Jonze's
 'Where the Wild Things Are'.

A similar long shot of a woodland setting
from 'Wild Things'.

Wild Things: Post-Production

In the post-production stages we used Apple's Final Cut editing software to edit our film. Despite being veterans of Final Cut Express 4.0, we decided to use Final Cut X - Apple's newest incarnation of the software for the project. 

A view of our project in Final Cut X

Colour grading using the inbuilt correction software in Final Cut X

Despite our previous familiarity with Final Cut Express 4.0, using Final Cut X was in many ways a rewarding experience. The Software has many useful features like the magnet timeline, but at the same time is somewhat more linear and rigid than Express 4.0. Overall, it was beneficial to learn the ins-and-outs of a new software. 

Low Res - Wild Things: The Promotion

Our music video was also coinciding with the release of the artist's debut EP. The music video largely serves as a promotional tool for the artist (as is conventional of music releases). For this reason, we carried out extensive promotion for the video, in collaboration with the promotion carried out for the EP release. 

Screenshot of video promotion via Facebook

Peer-to-peer sharing via social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter seemed an obvious reach. We posted links to the project via the sites, encouraging others to view and share the link.

Others then shared, retweeted or favorited the link

We first tweeted out the link to followers and friends

After sharing the video via social media, we decided to send the video out to music blogs (in addition to the full EP) and also embedded the link on the artist's Bandcamp. We wanted the music video to complement the full project and work as an extension to the EP.

My email outbox - we sent the video out to independent music blogs across the internet

Low Res - Wild Things [Music Video]

The finalised video for Low Res' 'Wild Things'. Click the image to watch the video. Enjoy.

CLICK THE IMAGE TO WATCH THE VIDEO

The Banana Splits - Inspiration and Innovation

Following a discussion regarding the two animal costumes we planed to use for the video, we learnt that the suits were based on designs from the 1960/70s television program 'The Banana Splits Adventure Hour'.

Source A1

As seen below, similar characters to those in Source A1 - a screenshot from 'Wild Things' - appear in Source A2 - an image from 'The Banana Splits Adventure Hour'. 

We conducted further research on the show, and learnt the show's premise was deep routed in music, with the four main protagonists performing in the fictitious rock band of the show's namesake. 

Source A2

After scouring YouTube in search of clips of the 60s kids show, we came across this short segment from the show. From 1:57 onwards the characters appear dancing over a white background. The white background provided a clean, uncluttered canvas for us to play around with in Final Cut. We downloaded a copy of the video and began distorting the footage using various video filters.

After cutting up and testing various filters on the footage, we decided the clips could be interspersed between our footage as a homage to the original show. 

A .gif of some of the chopped and screwed footage

In regards to the question of copyright terms, our music video is strictly non-profit and gives a creative interpretation of another piece, using short 1 - 2 second samples; the piece would stand free of copyright unless requested otherwise by Time Warner, the conglomerate with ownership of the rights to the show.