I spent a lot of time researching throughout this project trying to get a flavour or different music video’s spanning genre, age, music etc. which I think helped me create a believable music video. I specifically focussed on previous music video’s of The National’s and the types of conventions they conformed to and subverted. 

I really loved the original Fake Empire music video as it was creative, conceptual and beautiful. I tried to recreate this euphoric, vastness of both the song and the video. I did this by using broad landscapes such as the beach and on top of the hills, this both helps the narrative on and sets the scene. This is also a reoccurring convention in mellow genre music. In the original video, I liked the timings which help create great contrast between the scenes, suggests a passing of time and links the video directly to the song. This is something in post- production I was keen to achieve as I thought it was very reflective of the quirky genre and elevated the intensity of the story. 

I decided to make the characters in my piece silent and merely puppets to replay the narrative I envisaged. In the original video, the characters begin silent and then begin to perform the song. I did not want any performance in my piece as it would have looked misplaced with only two characters and would have disrupted the mysterious air I created around the characters. Even though I subverted this slightly from the original video, I think it is quite common to have no performance or visual interaction in a music video. I also think that this helps the music video more timeless for example if I had the character contacting each other by phone or driving to meet each other in a car, then in a few years time both the car and phone will be outdated. 

Some of the scenes, the quality and the colour of my video are quite distinctive and possibly unusual of a video made in 2011. I decided to go with this almost retro 80’s style for my video as I thought it was appropriate for both the song and the narrative. Reoccurring scenes such as the record player instil the throughout the video, which I think also effectively opens and closes the video and makes it feel like a convincing whole piece.  

I decided to create the photographs for my ancillary tasks in a studio style setting to make it convincing and professional. This shoot was simple but I think the results were really effective. Having studied both art and photography I was able to use photographic idea’s such as the rule of thirds and rules of composition to create original, creative photographs. I think that the random nature of the playing cards on the white background reflects the ‘alternative’ nature of both the music and the target audience. I am a firm believer of less is more which I think is demonstrated in both my ancillary tasks which are simple photographs, simply edited. I think this makes the impact of the pieces great as it gives the audience confidence in the product because of the translucency of the advertising.