Evaluation Question 1: George Barrow

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

What is the Genre and Conventions of your product?:

The Genre of our music video is Indie. We chose this genre because we felt that with our limited budget and time, it would be the easiest genre to film for as it is a very liberal genre that allowed our director free reign in the artistic and design choices that we would normally be limited had we chosen another more standard genre, such as Pop or Country. This then allowed us more time then to edit and finish the last cut while still maintaining a large amount of marks within its own section, helping us develop our print products that were allotted a similar amount of marks.

There are also a large amount of conventions for the indie genre, that while lenient, had to be included so that we could still claim that it is in fact indie. The first of these is the setting, Indie music videos are normally in Parks, Studios or Solo performances, this is due to them also being low budget enterprises on the whole. Secondly, Mise-en-Scene also has a number of conventions, namely the ‘retro’ feel to their music videos, there is also a large focus on the lead instrument in the band, namely to reinforce the wholly musical experience of the song. For performance, there are a number of live shots at gigs, trying to showcase the passion for the art, as well as trying to include a narrative running alongside it.

What conventions do music videos have in general?

Andrew Goodwin writing in ‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’ stated:

• Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band).
• There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
• There is a relationship between music and visuals.
• The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).
• There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
• There is often inter textual reference (to films, TV shows, other music videos etc)

We have used a number of these conventions in our own music video.

Which conventions have we used in our media product and why?

We have used a number of conventions in our Music video. One of the main aspects of our music video was our narrative running throughout. The main intention of this was to focus

on her exploring the forest that she wakes up in, as well as all the animals she interacts with. This ties into the first point that Goodwin makes in his conventions of the music genre, due to the setting, as it helped demonstrate the genre characteristics that are aligned with the indie genre. We cross-cut these scenes with those of our actress miming along with our song so as to adhere with a number of musical conventions within the indie genre. This range of shots allowed us to be more creative in our style, and also helped portray our linear narrative in a practical way. This also ties into the second point that Goodwin makes, as well as his third because there is a distinct relationship between both the lyrics and the visuals, and the actual melody and the visuals.

We include a number of close-ups of our actress, most prominently within the beginning scenes of our video. By doing this, we link our song entirely with the face of our actress,

because the first impression they will get would be associated with that image. However, we also broke convention in our video as we didn't include the artist in our product, and instead chose a different actress. This has become a popular trend among indie artists, and mainly ties in with the low-budget aspect because reusing the artist would be more cost-effective than getting and paying another actress.This also ties into the fourth point made by Goodwin in his distinctions about music videos, because we felt we needed to include more close-ups of our actor to try and conform to the industry standards that we have been influenced by.

Examples of our use of SFX:

We used very little in the terms of special effects in our music video. This is for a number of reasons, however mainly it was due to one of the conventions of the Indie Genre, in that it has a very ‘natural’ feel to it. Because we also tried to go for a natural feel in the shots that we took and the setting we chose, we thought that including this in post-production would break the immersion the viewers would have in our story.

However, we did also break convention on this by including one shot that is very obviously special effects. This was a kaleidoscope effect, and while we saw it as almost cliched, we kept it in as it was commented to us that it does tie in with our nature theme, mainly because the colour scheme and visual effects made it look like a flower, and it helped relate it back to the rest of the video. Other post-production edits we did were on the beat of the music, as during the video, around a third of the way through, we substituted a long shot of our actress for this special effect