Evaluation Qs1

In what ways does your media product Use, Develop or Challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video uses challenges and develops the forms and conventions in many different ways throughout the video. 

The main aspect of our video is the use of narrative, all the way through the video there are constant remarks of the narrative. We have decided to expand upon the idea of having the narrative as the main aspect of the video; the reason for this was because we wanted to challenge the main forms   and conventions of typical Alternative dance/Indie Pop music videos; this is a sub-genre of Pop however we used a remix to the song which allowed the song to be pushed into a subgenre of Alternative dance/Indie Pop.

The way in which our video challenges the forms and of this genre is as follows; the generic codes for these types of videos are usually based on the performance of the artists this is shown as an example in the (Two Door Cinema Club – Undercover Martyn) where the whole video is based on the three artists the whole time. Also the order of the video is linear which is also a generic code for these types of videos; we also challenged this code as our music video uses disjunctive narrative. This creates a sense of chaos until the end of the video; this technique draws the audience in wanting then to find out what the video is about and therefore watch the video and tend to like it after. The second way in which these forms and conventions are broken are that our song does not use performance and instead we use narrative, using narrative creates a story within the music video which almost invites the audience to be a part of that story.

Throughout the music video we have used different effects to create moods and to emphasise the artist’s feelings. Here we challenge the forms and conventions again as these particular videos do not use special effects; the reason being is because they want to create the sense of realness in their music videos however we decided to go completely in the other direction where we used quiet allot of different special effects.  One of the most use effects in our video is the slow motion effect, this effect specifically creates enigma as well as brings out the sympathy for the particular moment; the reason for the enigma In this effect is that the video slows down therefore it’s not proceeding forward which makes the audience confused as they do not know what’s going on, it also brings out sympathy as we are able to take more notice of the expressions the actors are creating as oppose to the standard quick shots where it’s hard to understand what the artists are feeling. We use this effect in many different places in our video however the most iconic part of this effect is when the camera focuses on the female artist smiling after being surprised, this creates a feeling to make the audience feel sympathetic and say “awwww”. A real life example of a music video that uses this effect is (Black Eyed Peas – I got a feeling), in this video we see female character in a slow motion shot which brings out all the emotions in her face and allow the audience to be a part of her by watching the video.

The use of camera angles in our video correlates to the generic codes of this genre based music videos. The most commonly used shots are the mid shots as well as the long shots, these shots allow the audience to take in allot of the mise en scene together with what’s going on in the scene.  This is demonstrated in the (Scattered treed – Four days straight), this video represents the idea of this generic code very well as most of the video shots are the long as well as the medium shots. These shots also allow the audience to get in touch with the character as it allows the audience to view the artist’s style of clothing as well as his sense of fashion. The forms and conventions on the styles and the types of clothing for these type of music videos are usually seen as skinny jeans, shoes as well as tight tops or shirts. Our video portrays this in many ways, such as the use of the long and medium shots throughout the video; this allows the audience to see our artist in more depth. However challenges the sense of fashion as the artist dresses more trendy and modern, the purpose for this is to make the artist unique and allow him to create his own style into the music industry.

Goodwins theory suggests that the music video lyrics match with the visuals. Our music video interprets this idea several different parts of the video, this creates a sense of realism within the music video. For example this is demonstrated when our main character sings “when I saw my best friend yesterday” on the screen there is a remark of the artist being with another male friend which could suggest that they are friends.  This could represent the character as being happy in the past and then depressed in the present. Another section where this is used is when the artist sings “and the she walked away” we then are able to see the female artist walking away from the camera; this could suggest that one day there was a bond and now there are only memories to think about.