Creating “From Valerie to Call on me.”
Whilst planning for a Radio Show last week I stumbled across the Birmingham born artist Steve Winwood . When I listened to his back-catalogue, I heard his track “Valerie” and being born in 2000 immediately recognised this track’s chorus as number 1 dance hit “Call On Me” by Eric Prydz.
Being a real lover of niche facts behind records, I decided to do a bit of digging, finding a really interesting story into how Prydz’s track came about. As a result of this, I decided to film an explainer type video which could both accompany an article on the history of this track or as a standalone video on social media platforms as an interesting bit of musical history.
Video Purpose:
This videos primary objective was to explain how a popular music track from the 1980’s managed to be popular over 20 years later as a dance anthem and as a result it was influenced by many techniques from these areas such as political or history explainer videos. Within examples like these, they are often based at a location related to the story and whilst I did not have the magic of a big green screen , as is used in creating a virtual environment , I could position the video in a DJ Studio. This studio and its iconography act to “signify the historical and social settings” (Fulton 2006:22) that this narrative takes place in. In addition to this I utilised the technique of talking direct to camera, popularised into mainstream media by Youtubers.
In addition to the conventions of the explainer format, I also incorporated mimesis in addition to the direct speaking diegesis , in the form of displaying the songs associated video footage. This created more settings within the narrative as well as introducing temporality into the sequence by taking the viewer back to the era the videos where filmed in. Furthermore, by selecting the use of raw fan footage for one of these videos and arranging it in a 3 section way, (see image below.) it gave a more immersive experiential part of the video, something I have directly seen on social media. Therefore whilst this video sits firmly in the explainer category, I feel the borrowing of some of the other techniques from other online video types , creates a more engaging narrative.
Video Stylistic Considerations:
Whilst this was designed as an standalone explainer piece, it was also made to be perhaps an overview video to a wider article or teasing the contents of the article on socials. As a result, it was designed in a vertical video format to create the best viewing experience for mobile devices .
Other stylistic considerations were thought of when filming the video in terms of its composition, by using the rule of thirds. This is because as Peterson (2015: 68) mentions “a compelling photograph is more often than not about an effective arrangement rather than about the content.” . This same policy applies too making compelling video footage too and by using the role of thirds I feel I focused on the main component of the footage , me.
Finally , lighting in all videos is an important consideration and within this video I made sure the light was directly focused on my face , both the literal and metaphorical focal point for the speech, containing most of the story.
Narrative Structure:
Whilst this video broadly followed Cortazzi’s narrative structure as described by Fulton (2015:25) , with each of the steps effectively covered in each separated clip, it also has the added temporal shifts. This means that it is peppered with elements not following this structure more like flashbacks to the story as it unfolded.
It is also worth noting that the story is chronological in its format as this is the convention of the genre of explainer videos.
In terms of the pacing within the video, the narrative runs pretty quickly with the diegetic explaining clips being pretty short. This pace is also amplified by the short extracts of music video footage which create these extra settings moving the sequence of events forward. This pace works well for a quick overview for the story however the video could perhaps lead to a longer more in-depth discussion or documentary with more detail about the original song and the role of sampling in todays music.
Constructing the audience:
To construct the audience for this video I was mainly focusing on the generation that were young when the Eric Prydz track was released. An audience of this age the story would have relevance to them but they would also have a good grasp on social media and so a video like this would be easily found by them. Saying this it would particularly appeal to a local demographic, with the artist concerned being famous enough in the local area to be able to be recognised by name whereas perhaps more unknown in further regional areas.
Improvements:
The first improvement that immediately springs to mind is better scripting which would have made sure that all the information I wanted to get into the piece went into it as well as cutting out your nervousness. Secondly, I feel that the story could be more in depth or at least focus on perhaps a smaller area of the subject in more detail. This perhaps could be focus on what sampling is , or the conflict brought in between Eric Prydz and the labels video , with the dancers being too evocative and offensive for Prydz. This particular aspect I feel was not explained well in the video. I feel this would add to the story in specific ways and would especially work well in perhaps accompanying a bigger piece.
The two final points I wanted to make are about the audio which could be better as the recording environment the studios are located in means that other sounds can be heard which detract from the professionalism of facts needed in an explainer. Additionally, the finale of the video I feel could be stronger with the narrative almost petering out with little explanation in the video. This unfortunately makes the video ending feel a little unfinished.
Bibliography:
Fulton, H. et al. (2005) Narrative and media . Port Melbourne, Vic. ;: Cambridge University Press, pp.22–23.
Peterson, B. (2015) Learning to see creatively : design, color & composition in photography. 3rd ed. New York: Amphoto Books, pp.68.
