Evaluation question 1 - In what way does your media product use does, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
The
main areas that help challenge form of conventions and real media texts are areas
such as the settings and props used as well as what the characters are wearing.
These areas are the main focal features that you would expect to have some sort
of relevance to the genre of the music video. Some examples that would reflect
the ‘alternative rock genre’ would be bright clothing with either a type of 80’s
theme, and things such as ripped clothing for the characters and quite rustic
settings, These would be considered quite cool forms of clothing in the 80’s
and 90’s are mostly associated with this genre, Props such as guitars could
also be associated with this genre as this type of music features a lot of
guitar playing. When choosing our genre we were initially unable to decide
which genre to pick, as we were thinking about what settings we could use and
how hard to lip syncing would be for a specific genre. During our research and planning
we looked at various artists, such as James Blunt and ‘The Verve’ which then we
decided to use the song ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’. This was an effective choice
for us as the song was quite slow pace and therefore it would be easier for our
character to lip sync the lyrics of the song.This linked back to our music video as we also were able to lip sync as effctive as we could sue to it bieng a slow paced song.
Camera –
While analyzing the Bitter Sweet symphony song we noticed that there was an array of
close ups used on the characters. This was also shown to be reflected in many
alternative rock music videos, therefore we tried fitting these real media conventions
into our own media products to reflect that we understood the genre. For this
we used close ups on our characters face from various different angles to
express the different emotions shown on his face. We also used some unsettled shots
by moving the camera slightly on the characters face as this is another generic
convention used in alternative rock
Clothing:
When
deciding what costumes we were going to use for our characters and how it would
fit the scenes and storyline of our music video, we were very apprehensive on
what to use, as if we used clothing that was not related to our genre then it
would be more evident to the audience as it would stand out, because they would
not expect that clothing the be associated with music video. Examples of this
is that you would not expect to see people dressed in suits in hip hop or rap
videos as you would expect them to were more urban clothing like jeans and jackets
etc. This would also reflect to the examiner we did not think about the generic
conventions associated with alternative rock which would lower our mark. Going
of from this we then used specific clothing for the different scenes in our music
video, such as him wearing a suit in scenes where the character was working
within the flashback, presenting him as more of a professional person. Alternatively
we used quite roughed up and oversized clothing in the homeless scenes, to connote
to the audience that the clothes had been given to him as a donation and get
across he can’t afford his own clothes.
Setting:
The settings of our music video were
also a crucial element of our video as this was needed to project to the audience
what was going on and fit the genre. For this we split our settings into 2 areas;
one an office and the other outdoors to connote to the audience his 2 different
lives from past to present. We used our establishing shot to show the outdoors
area and show tat the character was homeless, as the surrounding were in quite
a rough and beat down area. This was effective for our scene and character as being
homeless meant the atmosphere perfectly fit with the narrative.
