IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE,

DEVELOP/CHALLENGE FORMS & CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA

PRODUCTS?

Andrew Goodwin

In reference to Andrew Goodwin, my music video has references to movies and production pictures designed and created by Tim Burton. During the pre-production stage, I found images from movies such as, Nightmare Before Christmas and Alice In Wonderland in order to design the characters of my video. I had decided on animation due to the easy scheduling and t he lack of problems I may have gotten if I had live-action footage.

During the pre-production stage, I sketched out various images I thought would follow the ‘style’ of the music. Allison Crowe’s song ‘Skeletons & Spirits’ fits with an Indie/Alternative/Jazz genre and, using references to Tim Burton and other similar artists, I designed characters that told a chronological story. The lyrics are about a girl’s reaction to a guy and her capability to see through his charm.

The genre of the music video can be considered as Indie/Alternative, due to the style of drawing and the kind of animation I used (stop-motion animation). Throughout the pre-production process, I considered using various images and creating a ‘flip-book’ style of animation in order to save time in moving individual pieces of the body.

However I found that the movements of individual pieces of the body, along with various cuts to the next ‘scenes’ throughout the music video appeared more affective and more fun to create.

The images, though telling the story close to the one told in the lyrics, can be seen as contradicting the song. Where it is ‘dark’ and ‘mellow’ the images are bright in contrast. However, some images I used (in consideration of the lyrics during the chorus) are darker. I also used stylistic references such as Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, in order to get the ‘quirky’ skeletons and ‘up-beat’ style that I thought suited the music.

However, unlike Andrew Goodwin’s conventions, my music video does not involve the artist. I preferred to do the entire video in animation, following a narrative involving a story rather than cutting to the artist. (Also, I chose a Jamendo track).