Evaluation

We decided to put a music video together of The Beatles song ‘I Am The Walrus’ for our production. This was mainly to test and challenge the nostalgia that we feel in the modern age. It is known that fashion is cyclical; this can be proven by the massive demand for anything retro. The Beatles epitomized this in the 60’s retro scene and as a social experiment we bought one of their songs to a young, modern day audience to see their reactions.

in keeping with the ideas and pyscaldalia of the time we also, to incorporate conventions of contemporary music videos.

‘We bought a classic music video from yesteryear and put a modern spin on it by using media technology.’ For example The Beatles have the iconic album cover for Abbey Road, where they cross the zebra crossing, so we went to London and used the idea but twisted it, one shot was of Courtenay doing a cartwheel over it and another was of us in our masks doing a ‘brisk march’.

In our music video we wanted it to be unexpected and have a non-linear narrative that was constantly changing, even though it had a motive (to bring imagery to the lyrics) because it was so fast it was more to challenge the audience than for them to remain passive, it evoked them to have an opinion and take their view point of the meanings and morals of the production. Within contemporary music videos, the singers or bands usually mime the lyrics of their songs to show the audience that they have a emotional connection to their music and our not

disconnected from it, a band can record their stuff and then want nothing to do with it, personally I find this sad as you should have pride in your work and not just want the money at the end. In our music video we only have a few of the lyrics being mimed, but it gives the feel that, we, as the Walrus’, are linked to the music we have created. It also this would also allow the audience to centre their thoughts on what happens in the music video, allowing them to focus on the band members and what they are truly like. Contemporary videos usually have characters that are part of a storyline, but we use masks instead of having fully established characters. The masks each represent a different person within the band, but also allow them to accentuate their personalities as it is not them but the mask that is being shown, this. As it’s the use of animal masks, a younger audience would like us as it shows we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Andrew Goodwin a music theorist believed that there should be a relationship between lyrics and visuals on screen. We started off employing this theory but soon found that using it but twisting the ideas slightly would work just as effectively but would add to as the scenes we used we show our unusual and eccentric views and ideas, for example one of the lyrics is ‘sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun’ to which we had us, the band, sitting in a field that is covered in snow.

He also believed that there should be a relationship between the music and music video. The music itself is quite psychedelic, so to connect to a contemporary audience we have made the style of music in this way. We used shots that had different levels of contrast and some with special effects that used bright primary colours which stand out from the shots.

One of the things that i thought was very interesting about our production was that it tested modern day society against that of the 60’s. Handing out flowers in one of London’s big train stations in rush hour was one of my favourite examples of this. It struck me that a once harmless action of handing out flowers to people has been shunned as people either don’t want to be harassed are in a ‘hurry’ to get somewhere and do nothing or see us as a threat, this- for me is saddening as in our modern times it is almost as if we have forgotten how to care for people around us. Out of 15 flowers we only managed to hand out about 4. This may not come across in the production but again when shown it challenges the audience as they find the idea of it unnatural.

With an age that revolves around the perfect look, showing us as a young band full of freedom.

Goodwin also believed that there should be close ups to establish band members, and items that recur which can be related to a certain person. In our music video we have many close-ups of the different band members. This helps the audience get to know each of us as individuals. We also decided to use a hand held camera whilst filming in London and as well as shooting the necessary bits for the production we also documented the travelling and ‘off camera’ side this was used at points during our production, giving us a much more personable side. The audience feels that really we are just like them and our out to have fun and enjoy what we are doing- because we are!

We used a lot of inter-textual references that would like us back to The Beatles. The film they star in “A Hard Days Night” has shots where they are in phone boxes in the train station where they are hiding from fans; we went to the train station and filmed outside a shop dedicated to Paul McCartney, where the telephone boxes used to be. This will reminisce well with Beatles fans. In the film, The Beatles run down the road outside the station from fans, so we have band members running down the same road. In the music video for “Strawberry Fields,” Paul jumps down from the tree, and so we have a shot of me jumping out of a tree, with the shot being played backwards so it effectively looks like I am jumping up into the tree. Fans of the song will recognise the reference when watching the video. There are also iconic shots of crazy Beatles fans outside the gates of Abbey Road. This is why we have Sophie and Courtenay in a mid shot outside the gates of Abbey Road going mad, to relive the Beatles phenomenon for the fans. All these will help us to create more of a fan base, and will help us to become more recognised, because of the major influences of the Beatles. ‘We are the modern Beatles’.

Our video is bright colourful, and very psycodelic this is what we wanted to incorporate with our other ancillary texts, such as our album cover. We decided to have a photo shoot as it would give us a wide range of photos to choose from but also as this is what real bands will do. We decided to use one where we are all looking down at the camera; this shows us all being close as a band and also shows that although we are personable we are also one of the best. “Welcome to the playground” is what we decided to name our album as it is a metaphor for our nature, as our life is fun and exciting, like the way in which we our portrayed in the music video. We have an innocent but fun personality to us, which is similar to the way kids would be in playground.

The cover itself uses a clash of colours and swirling effect to give that 60’s feel to it again.

Once our piece was constructed, we gave our questionnaire out to various class members; we found that the feedback was overall positive, as it in fact managed to challenge the audience, many questions they felt we needed to answer for them at the end when in fact they were for themselves to answer, this became the beauty of our production, everyone took something different from it; in that respect- it was a success. They thought that the concept was good, and they thought that on average it was quite a professional shoot.

We filmed our entire piece with a handheld camera, and a tripod. Once we had filmed all our rushes, we used Adobe Premiere CS4 to create our film.

I believe we worked very well as a group. As we each knew what our strong points where and we stuck to them I think we worked hard, using an array of different locations that spanned all the way to London, but still managing to have fun with the piece at the same time. This is conveyed in the overall product.