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

Music Video’s• All music videos are created for a similar reason, to promote

the artist and their music. To successfully market the product, certain conventions are followed or purposely ignored to create the best campaign possible for a particular music genre. Though as a general rule of thumb, the key conventions of a music video are these:

• To ensure that the song is memorable for viewers• To positively represent the artist and their music• To clearly define the genre of the music• To show the personality of the artist

Genres• Forms and conventions are usually dependent on the genre of the

music. For example, a video for a pop song will contain many close-ups of the artist, a typical teenage story line (boy meets girl etc) and bright/bold colours to ease the mood of the film. A great example of this is Katy Perry’s song, teenage dream. This is also a great example

Of Laura Mulvey’s theory of ‘The Male Gaze’.

• However, these conventions are Obviously inappropriate for a song of say, the rock genre.

• These conventions are all taken from Stephen Goodwin’s seven key conventions to a good music video.

Genre• As my music video is to a song in an alternative/acoustic genre,

there are of course typical conventions that would be used in this scenario. These conventions have been observed in similarly characteristic music videos, such as Oasis’s ‘Wonderwall’ and Passenger’s ‘Wrong Direction’ video. These conventions would be:

• A metaphorical match between the lyrics and visuals• A match between the music and visuals• Dull colours between scenes• Moments of bright colour and contrast • Elements of voyeurism (looking through CCTV/camcorder) through

others perspectives• Mostly natural lighting• No particularly clear narrative – video doesn’t directly link to the

song• Lack of artist within the video (puts more focus on the music)

Goodwin’s Seven• To evaluate my music video and how we accepted and rejected the

forms and conventions of real media products, I looked at how theorists such as Goodwin defined a good music video. This is how he did it:

• 1 - music videos demonstrate genre characteristics• 2 – there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals• 3 – there is a relationship between music and visuals• 4 – The demands of the record labels include the need for close ups

of the artist• 5 – The artist may develop iconography that recurs across their

work• 6 – There is frequent reference to the notion of ‘looking’.• 7 – there is often intertextual references

1 - music videos demonstrate genre characteristics• A convention of this genre is that the narrative is quite

obscure and confusing, therefore making the video feel quite abstract. I achieved this by making a concept video based around an unknown character, played by an unassuming young lead role who appears to be wandering aimlessly around a location whilst is assumingly being watched.

1 - music videos demonstrate genre characteristics• Also, I ensured that the editing of the film was in time to the

beat of the music. I found this especially hard as the song has a slight rubato feel (not in time) – Though it does create an effect that is widely used across alternative and acoustic music and is aesthetically pleasing.

• Throughout the video there is a lot of slow motion effect. I chose to use this as it is a convention widely used across this genre, but also it creates a lethargic and uneasy tension throughout the video, which adheres with the conceptual feel I was going for when plotting the videos narrative.

1 - music videos demonstrate genre characteristics• Lots of dull colours were used throughout the editing stage of

the video. This is to keep the continuity between shots, but also it creates an atmosphere that is typical of ‘moody’ acoustic music.

2 – there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals• This is an example of an instance in which I chose to challenge the

conventions of a typical music video (in Goodwin’s eyes).

• As a result of audience research, I decided to plan a conceptual narrative in which the the songs lyrics and meanings are completely seemingly unrelated from the music video.

• However, the idea of the child being isolated and alone in my video has reference to the lyric’s “I left my mothers arms, I left my fathers arms”.

• So although unapparent, there is a slight metaphorical meaning to the video in the sense that it is related to the songs lyrics.

3 – there is a relationship between music and visuals• As I have mentioned as part of the ‘genre’ section, I have

ensured that the editing of the visuals is in time to the music. This is typical of almost every music video and helps emphasize the progression of the narrative and is aesthetically pleasing, especially after putting in a great deal of work to make sure that this convention is included.

• However, due to the fact that I am choosing to stick to genre conventions, there are minor instances within the video where I have chosen not to use this technique. These are due to the fact that I am using a slow-motion effect to create the feel of flexible time and therefore the un-synchronizing of the visuals and audio help create this effect.

4 – The demands of the record labels include the need for close ups of the artist• This is another instance in which I chose to stray from the

existing forms and conventions of a music video. This is largely due to the fact that the artist does not appear in the music video or in any of the accompanying products such as the poster or the digi-pak.

• Though there are close ups of the young leading role in the video, these are just to emphasize the emotion of the character and do not in anyway show a close up of the artist, which is unusual for a music promotional video, yet is characteristic of a conceptual film.

5 – The artist may develop iconography that recurs across their work• Though this is a technique that is explored across my media

products, the iconography does not link directly to the artist, but more to the music video and its contents.

• I aimed to create a kind of synergy by merging the iconic attributes of the music video with the rest of my media products. For example, the main images for both ancillary tasks are screenshots from the music video:

5 – The artist may develop iconography that recurs across their work• The second way in which I did this was to ensure that the

typography used on all of the products was the same and that it was a large factor of the composed images.

6 – There is frequent reference to the notion of ‘looking’.• As I decided to create a conceptual music video, I was

fascinated by this theory of the notion of ‘looking’ and explored it in some detail. This began by studying the way Hard-Fi used a CCTV/camcorder effect in their video ‘Stars of CCTV’. I became interested in how it creates a sense of ‘watching’ and decided to add this element to my own video.

7 – there is often intertextual references• I chose to ignore this convention of Goodwin’s. As I composed

this video with the image of a conceptual and slightly abstract video in mind, I decided that by influencing the video in some way by connecting it with a previous text would make the video appear less separated from reality.

• I think that the fact that there are no connections with reality or previous texts make the video seem less like reality, which is exactly how I wanted the video feel.