Evaluation part 1

QUESTION 1

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

     · What did you learn about what the conventions were of real music videos? And what music video conventions you have included / not included and why

Throughout my research I discovered a variety of music videos which contained either a flowing narrative. The video that I have chosen to be influenced by is Ed Sheerans song You and I, this music video has a strong narrative of Ed and the relationship between his cat and himself, the video music video then goes back to Ed singing. In contrast to Ed Sheerans one strong narrative I have chosen to use several different narratives throughout my music video to reflect different stories folding into one. My first draft of my music video had about 9 different scenes which all reflected communication, which is my theme, from the first viewing the feedback I received was that there is a narrative running through but it would be helpful if some of the scenes swapped around, in particular the girl on the computer to show to the audience that she is the bully, I was able to create this effect by using the transition cross dissolve, in the print screen below you are able to see an image from my music video of a cross image of the bully and the victim, I found that this helped me strengthen my narrative of my music video because there is a strong image of the two characters connecting together.

· What did you learn about real music genre conventions and what genre conventions have you included / not included and why

I discovered through my research that most music videos have a strong narrative and also the main vocalist’s song it synced in with their lips. I decided to go to challenge the typical conventions of my music video and include one main narrative with two underlying ones. My main narrative is the girl on the computer sending another girl in the music video hate mail and she ends up committing suicide. My two other narratives are the couple flirting and the main musician which is on the guitar creating music. Another feature I included in my music video to challenge the typical conventions of music videos is by not having any lip sync, I decided to go against this as I wanted my music video to seem like a film. I feel that I have achieved this by playing the music over the top with matching actions to the lyrics. My music video reinforces Rick Altman’s Semantic theory, as I have chosen to shot my music video in black and white colour theme it reinforces the dark, powerfulness of my narrative of a girl committing suicide, although in contrast I chose to shot the first scene in colour to make the audience think everything was going to be okay when it wasn’t going to be. 

· What did you learn about real Digipak conventions and what Digipak conventions have you included / not included and why

From researching into various digipacks and advertisements I noticed that colour theme and images had a massive impact on the target audience as it is the first insight they have got from the music video and they need to be persuaded into buying/ watching my music video. When planning my digipack and advertisement I decided to contrast my music video my using colour and fun images, I felt that my music video as a very strong narrative and this is something I didn’t want to reflect in my digipack and advertisement as this would maybe detract the audience from buying them. The colour scheme I chose was red and black, the reason I decided on these colours was because the red reinforces the bright happy beginning of my music video and the black represents the dark ending. These colours work well together and represent my narrative of my music video without scaring my audience away. Image wise I decided to choose images that contrast my music video too, as the images are going to attract my audience in I decided to create a collage of my main actor pulling funny faces and having fun, I feel this targets my audience well as he is around the same age as my target audience and also still represents the theme of communication.

· How your use of conventions might attract or appeal to an audience

I decided to use the following to attract my audience-

• Colour
• Camera shots / angles / movements
• Editing techniques

The colour choice I decided to choose was Red and Black, the reason behind my colour choice was because I felt that the red represented the bright attraction from my digipack and reinforces the bright start to my music video and the black reinforces the dark narrative within my music video of suicide, although I feel as I contrasted the two colours together they attracted the audience in and also reflected my music video, digipack and advertisement which is something I wanted to achieve.

Throughout my music video I used a variety of different camera shots and angles to represent what is going on in my music video alongside the lyrics, for example in the scene where the girl is sinking in the bath taking her last few gasps of life I decided to angle the character to the far left, with help of the tripod I also was able to make the audience feel that they were watching in on her, which is something I deliberately did because I wanted to make the audience feel more uncertain by the scene, not only by her committing suicide but also by the fact they are looking in what she is doing, they are not meant to be there. At the end of my music video I used an extreme close up of a text the girl sent her mum before she died saying "I’m sorry, I love you x " behind the phone I also planted the hate mail the girl was sent which drove her to her death, I felt that an extreme close up was needed on the phone because it signifies that the girl has actually died, I felt that it was important to tell the audience that she had died because otherwise they will be on a cliff hanger not knowing, as I chose to create my music video as if it was a film I did think it was needed for them to know. I then zoomed out from the extreme close up which enabled the hate mail to appear, I think this would leave the audience with a question "was she right to do was she did?" "Would you do that?" as now the audience can see what drove her to suicide.

In my music video you will also notice the variety of transitions I used on the editing software I used, premier elements, I felt that I need to using a variety of different transitions in my music video purely because I had a variety of different scenes going on which need to keep the audiences attraction. When creating my first and second drafts I was very weary of the scene with the main guy on his guitar, this is a very long scene and I felt that my audience would loose concentration, I really didn't know what to do as I had tried numerous transitions whilst playing around I came up with an idea of playing two scenes over one another, at first I wasn't sure whether this was possible but after a few goes of trial and error I achieved this. It actually turned out to be very simple all I had to do was copy and paste the 2nd clip I wanted to used and then put that above the first clip, I then used the FX effect replicate so there would be four images for each clip, this then allowed me to adjust the settings on the main editing box so that there would be two images on top of the 2nd scene and 2 images on the bottom from the first scene. I feel that this works really well in the scene i chose because it is as if he is going back and forth into time

Theories :