Evaluation Question 1

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

During the course of of this media project, I have referred to the forms and conventions of real music videos in order to achieve professional music video. Specifically I have used Andrew Goodwin’s theory in which he deems that there are several factors that make up a music video. By following these principals it helped me create more legitimate final product, and not just in our music video, our ancillary task too. However we were not afraid to challenge these conventions created by Goodwin or general music videos and we were determined to make our music video as original as possible.

Genre Characteristics

As the genre for our used band was acoustic/pop/rock we had a selection of ways in which we could go about conforming to those genre characteristics.

You could argue that we challenged a convention of genre characteristics in rock because of our neglect of creating a performance based music video, which is what is usually expected of a song that features instruments like guitars and drums.

Instead we went with a narrative based music video (which conformed to the pop genre within our chosen band) in response to what we thought the meaning behind the song was, a complex relationship between two people. Another way in which we conformed to the conventions of pop was the fact we heavily included and advertised the ‘Artist’ which is a common characteristic in pop music.

Relationship between lyrics and visuals

We have included a subtle relationship between lyrics and visuals in our music video, the reasons behind why we didn’t have a consistent relationship between lyrics and visuals is because we wanted to make the music video as original as possible whilst staying true to the context of the song. A relationship between can be seen between lyrics and visuals at the beginning of the music video where the lyrics “You try so hard to put on that brave smile that you ain’t got” appear, you see the female lead in the music video give a false smile.

"You try so hard to put on that brave smile that you ain't got"

Relationship between music and visuals

The relationship between music and visuals is a far more predominant feature in our music video, a reoccurrence of lip syncing features in our music video, we thought this was necessary because with our music video being in a feature film style, the inclusion of lip syncing would remind the viewer that they are still watching a music video.

We also included on beat transitions within the music video, this proved challenging to achieve as we had to work out the time between beats and crop scenes to fit between these beats but it created a professional final product.

Star Image Motif

Including a star image motif in music videos is a demand by record labels as it brands the artist music. Therefore we created a star image motif through close-ups of the ‘Artist’ our star image motif had to feature in the ancillary tasks as well in the music video, so when designing the ancillary I ensured that the ‘Artist’ himself was heavily featured on the album and the poster. Which resulted in me photo editing three images of the artist into one single photo.

Another motif that we had was the reoccurrence of the tunnel that originally featured in the music video, we then went on to take all the ancillary task photos at the same location which created the motif.

The Tunnel - Seen in our music video, poster and album heavily featuring our 'Artist'

The Use Of Intertextuality

We challenged this convention as our music video didn’t make reference to another text, we had decided that we wanted an entirely original music video that had a traditional love film style to it. We felt our idea was strong enough to not have to rely on the reference of other texts to make it interesting.

Editing effects that is typical of the genre

We used a variety of editing effects in our music, most of which were in favour of what you’d expect to see in the genre of music. The first and most important editing effect we included was the use of lip syncing, this feature is common in all music genres, let alone our own. So it was crucial we include it.

We also used a fast cut montage in our music video, which we made sure was done subtly as we felt the mood and meaning of the song didn’t match and require the use of a fast cut montage. With it done so subtly it ensured it was tasteful when featuring in our music video. Therefore if could be said we challenged a convention including a fast cut montage, but we still had the songs characteristics in mind when we added it.

Another editing effect we used was the use of black and white colourisation, this effect is a rather typical feature that is seen in music videos with the theme of love - as ours does.

Conclusion

After comparing Goodwin’s principals to our music video and looking at the ways we conformed and challenged the conventions of music videos and the genre characteristics of our song, I can conclude that we created a balance between the two. In some aspects we conformed which had the sole purpose to remind the audience what type of song they are listening to etc. And we challenged because we wanted to make a more original piece that would have been hard to typecast and predict.