Evaluation: Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before we could use existing media conventions within our music video, it was important that we identified the genre of the music which we were using to discover the style of music video that would suit it. Therefore, the conventions which we had to look into were those of a Pop Rock

music genre. We found that these conventions were:

• The lighting was often quite dark
• There were often desaturated shots
• Many different camera angles were used
• Many of them are live performances
• The clothing is quite casual
• There are often close ups displaying emotion
• The pace of the music fits closely with the editing
• A cameo can be commonly used

Furthermore, we considered other music conventions which famous theorists believes make up a music video:

Andrew Goodwin's Theory

• A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
• A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.
• Genre-related style and iconography present.
• Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.
• Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
• Intertextual references to other media texts may be present.

He says that music videos are often constructed by the link between the visu

als and the song plus the artist. Relationships are built between these in the video, and the close-ups of the artists gives them the representation and publicity they require. Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness, particularly to males, whilst intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos.

Steve Archer's Theory

• There needs to be a strong and coherent relationship between narrative and performance in music promos
• Music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band
• A carefully choreographed dance might be part of the artist's performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualisation and the 'repeatability' factor.

John Stewart's Theory

• The music video has the aesthetics of a TV commercial, with lots of close-ups and lighting being used to focus on the star’s face.
• He sees visual reference in music video as coming from a range of sources, although the three most frequent are perhaps cinema, fashion and art photography.
• Stewart’s description of the music video as ‘incorportating, raiding and reconstructing’ is essentially the essence of Intertextuality, using something with which the audience may be familiar, to generate both nostalgic associations and new meanings.
• The video allows more access to the performer than a stage performance can. The mise-en-scene, in particular, can be used to emphasise an aspirational lifestyle.

Sigmund Freud's Theory

• Refers to the notion that erotic pleasure may be gained by looking at a sexual object (preferably when the object is unaware of being watched).

Laura Mulvey's Theory

• Because film-makers are predominantly male, the presence of women in films is often solely for the purposes or display (rather than for narrative purposes).
• The purpose of this displace is to facilitate a voyeuristic response in spectators, which presumes a 'male gaze' one that is a powerful controlling gaze at the female on display, who is effectively objectified and passive.

These theories have greatly effected the choices that we have made for o

ur music video.

Conventions of Music Video's

Camera Shots Camera Movements Mise-en-scene EditingLightingSoundPropsCostumes

Our Music Video...

Close ups...

The use of close ups in our music video is to portray the emotion of the characters. In the two shots below you can clearly see the emphasis on the two characters feelings.

Editing...

In this particular part of the music video we have desaturated the shots because the shot is meant to be an activity of the past. Therefore, by changing the shot to be in black and white it makes it seem dated. We have decided to desaturate a few shots as there are many flashbacks to the past throughout the music video to portray how the relationship used to be.

Time Passing...

The Dream...

The dream was a sequence of shots in the woods. The character is having a nightmare about her previous boyfriend and her current boyfriend. When I edited this section it was important to make the shots actually look dream like. Therefore, using a bit of initiative, we researched on the internet what common effects are used to portray this.

The dark edge effect makes the shot seem like a vision and as if it

is not real. This is the effect we were hoping for to make this piece of filming appear different to the rest of the music video. To add to this effect, during the editing of these shots I made the shot slightly brighter and distorted to again make this part of the music video seem unreal.

Correlation between lyrics and visuals...

As you can see from the slideshow below, there are a few shots that relate to the lyrics being sung at the time.

When we created our storyboard for the music video, firstly we considered what the lyrics meant as a group before deciding what the music video was even going to be about. Therefore, it was important for us to emphasise some of the lyrics in the song, for example, the phrase which is most common "Halfway Gone" which is the title of the song. When these lyrics are sung, most of the time we wanted to show one of the characters in the video leaving.

Ancillary Tasks

As you can see from our finished ancillary tasks, many conventions are similar between our product and the real media products. After looking at other real existing media products, we were able to think of features ourself which we could include. The research we did influenced us in creating the following products: