New band Hollow have released their first music video featuring the song "The Look", however the music video has come under a lot of criticism due to the fact that the video looks very similar to the original piece. The director and producers have received many complaints about the video not being new/fresh in the music world. Now the director and producers have composed this letter to state why their music video is not "copying" other music videos and why.
Since the release of our first music video "The Look" by Hollow, me and my co-workers have been receiving a lot of criticism about the video stating that we have copied the original piece. Working with my co-workers and the band themselves, we wanted to create a music video that would homage the original video and that would develop and challenge it to make it modern and suit our target audience. We did extensive research and planning meaning that we had a huge amount of inspiration and ideas from the videos that appealed to us, so when producing the video we used ideas that we liked and challenged them. So for people saying we copied the original music video we have gathered ideas that we liked to make a music video that would be enjoyed by our target audience.
We were heavily influenced by the original music video by Metronomy and Vampire Weekend as they both have their music video in a white studio, we thought that the video would look best with a plain background as the viewers are able to focus on the band rather than what's going on around them. As an establishing shot we wanted to have a static long shot of the band as it gives the video a sense of style. Hollow themselves wanted this shot as it fits in with their look and how they want people to view them. We have also used other conventions from our inspiration as you can see with the position of the band members, having them spaced out gives the video a simplistic feel as if all the band members are playing their instruments separately and this is what we wanted the viewer to think when watching the video. However in the facial expressions of the band members we wanted to show no emotion, so we went for a dead pan look to archive this goal. That is where we have developed or challenged other music videos because in any other music video the band members are usually have a lot of enthusiasm and many facial expressions and in ours there is no facial expression. This gives the video a very simplistic yet stylish look. Doing a performance video is another convention we have used, inspiration came from Peace- "Lost on me" and many other band videos, however I don't feel that we copied them as we have a very minimalistic video where as they have energetic performance videos. The shots as you can see from the video are editited to fit in with the beat of the song, this is so that all edititing feels semless when watching the video . All music videos follow three narrative forms: narrative, conceptual or, performance. We are just using what has been successful for many other bands.
We as a producers of the music video felt that we wanted the video to look retro and simplistic, to do this we added black and white colouring, we felt that it fits in with the tone of the song as it is very simple. The black and white colouring adds class and professionalism to the video. Doing a good amount of research also helped us making this decision, bands such as The 1975 use this colouring in their videos and it is also used in many successful songs. Again we are not "copying" we are just using developing conventions and not the first to do so.
The digipak and magazine advert use the same conventions as most digipaks and magazine adverts. It uses the convention of having a picture, however like some digipaks the picture does not relate to the band its just a picture that we thought would go well on the digipak and advert. This is challenging the convention as many album covers relate to the band. The picture it self is in a way challenging the normal conventions as it uses a well known toy to replace people, whereas in mainstream digipaks they have people.
We were heavily influenced by the original music video by Metronomy and Vampire Weekend as they both have their music video in a white studio, we thought that the video would look best with a plain background as the viewers are able to focus on the band rather than what's going on around them. As an establishing shot we wanted to have a static long shot of the band as it gives the video a sense of style. Hollow themselves wanted this shot as it fits in with their look and how they want people to view them. We have also used other conventions from our inspiration as you can see with the position of the band members, having them spaced out gives the video a simplistic feel as if all the band members are playing their instruments separately and this is what we wanted the viewer to think when watching the video. However in the facial expressions of the band members we wanted to show no emotion, so we went for a dead pan look to archive this goal. That is where we have developed or challenged other music videos because in any other music video the band members are usually have a lot of enthusiasm and many facial expressions and in ours there is no facial expression. This gives the video a very simplistic yet stylish look. Doing a performance video is another convention we have used, inspiration came from Peace- "Lost on me" and many other band videos, however I don't feel that we copied them as we have a very minimalistic video where as they have energetic performance videos. The shots as you can see from the video are editited to fit in with the beat of the song, this is so that all edititing feels semless when watching the video . All music videos follow three narrative forms: narrative, conceptual or, performance. We are just using what has been successful for many other bands.
We as a producers of the music video felt that we wanted the video to look retro and simplistic, to do this we added black and white colouring, we felt that it fits in with the tone of the song as it is very simple. The black and white colouring adds class and professionalism to the video. Doing a good amount of research also helped us making this decision, bands such as The 1975 use this colouring in their videos and it is also used in many successful songs. Again we are not "copying" we are just using developing conventions and not the first to do so.
The digipak and magazine advert use the same conventions as most digipaks and magazine adverts. It uses the convention of having a picture, however like some digipaks the picture does not relate to the band its just a picture that we thought would go well on the digipak and advert. This is challenging the convention as many album covers relate to the band. The picture it self is in a way challenging the normal conventions as it uses a well known toy to replace people, whereas in mainstream digipaks they have people.
Tarun, you'll need a few more examples in your video section, try and talk about the framing of shots, the editing style as well as more similarities with existing products. We'll need to think about how you link to your poster and digipac as we need to make a few minor tweaks to these.
ReplyDeleteI think the letter format will work fine, but just like Shynola you'll need to fill your letter with plenty of images to support everything your say.