Hi Tim, thanks for the feedback - its so concise, you had to post it twice!
Couple of fair points you make, though - the framing of the newsreader was an issue, originally, and you can see this from the test footage I previously posted, Jon was framed much better, however, two things worked against me in the final cut. Firstly, I hadn't anticipated how much movement Jon had done, most of his lateral gesticulations ended up obscuring the screen, hence he ended up in a much smaller space. Also, I made the late decision to switch the aspect ratio to 16:9 - which also seems to have given the impression that he is framed lower still. I was also aware of the gaping blank space above Jon's head and immediately to his right(our left) just below the screen.
I do understand what you're saying about the second half of the video - and I guess you're correct in that I don't introduce anything radically new. My line of thinking was thus;
There are four elements to the visuals;
The band performance footage - this is the band delivering the message as they normally would on stage. In essence, its a song criticising people who hijack legitimate protest with an agenda of violent confrontation with authority.
The Stock Footage - the song is about rioting, so its footage of rioting.
The News Reader - he represents state propaganda, he's a bit 'Big Brother' - but he's disguised as a familiar and trusted character, that of someone who delivers the news and has a lot of influence on how lots of people form their opinions.
The Activist Under Interrogation - the antithesis of the News Reader - they're delivering the same lines, but the meaning is very different.
Having introduced all of those elements early I worked on the principle that the captions in the news reader segments would get more controversial as things progressed; the first verse is like its giving the headlines whereas the second verse and chorus are more like subliminal mind control messages.
Also, I prompted Jon, as both characters, to progressively get more wacky as the song went on - both start very conservative, but by the end they both go a bit insane, and I increased the speed and intensity of the cutting between scenes and the background screen for the news reader shows wavy static and the caption goes apeshit too. I figured all these elements made for a climax that hopefully kept the viewers interest as they sort of watched the characters self destruct.
We had talked about a couple of other elements but didn't get chance to film them, and to be fair, I doubt what we had in mind would have provided the missing elements you're looking for.
On the one hand, I've been comparing my video to a few other videos on various forums - in particular there is a US based forum I'm a member of and they get a lot of homemade Hip Hop and R'n'B videos posted there - by and large, nothing happens in those, they basically show off the artist doing their thing in front of a range of backdrops, but the narrative in usually non-existent, so compared to those mine is packed with ideas and themes.
However, you've really got me thinking about this - to be fair, when i shot the scenes I didn't have any real narrative planned out, I just knew I wanted those four elements so thats what I shot. Then I built the progression of the video around Jon's performances inter-weaved with the performance footage and padded it out with the stock footage. Maybe I could/should have planned some dramatic twist for a grand finale?
The whole exercise has been a massive learning experience, I think I'll approach my next project with the full narrative worked out almost every shot planned and storyboarded(I've finally learnt an easy method for doing that.)
Well, thanks again for your opinions, Tim, you've given me much to ponder.
Jim