Evaluation 1:

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

In order to even begin and create our media products, we needed to familiarise ourselves with the conventions of real music videos. We researched different videos that appear on the

television, mostly being popular songs that have reached the charts. After analysing two music videos that would be familiar to most people of the target group we were focusing on, I was able to get a more in depth understanding to the different aspects.

General Theory of Conventions:

Lyrics: establish the genre and mood of the song rather than the a meaning.

Music: the tempo of the song helps to drive the editing.

Editing: most important part to the creation of the music video. The editing consists of adjusting the cuts, lighting, sound so that it all fits in well with the pace of the music.

Genre: the genre is mainly reflected through the mise-en-scene, camera movements, editing, and the music itself.

Camerawork: the movement, angle and distance of the shots all play a part in the representation of the artist/band

Reading the different conventions, our music video had to do all of these things in order to achieve success and pass as a realistic video that would appear in the charts.

Andrew Goodwin has identified some key features of a music video:-There should be a relationship between the musics and the visuals. The visuals should illustrate, amplify or contradict the music.
-A relationship between the lyrics and visuals. What we hear should illustrate what we see.
-Genres have there own iconography and style.
-Voyeurism is present in many music videos, especially in relation to females.
Music videos are often constructed by the links from the lyrics and the visuals. The relationship that is built between them gives them representation in the music video. Many of these features are present in almost all music videos, however they an vary depending on the genre of the song.

John Stewart being another theorist says:

-The music video has lots of aesthetics of a TV commercial, with lots of close ups and lighting.

-Visual reference in a music video should come from a few sources, cinema, art photography and fashion.

-The mise-en-scene can be used to emphasise an aspirational lifestyle.

-The essence of intertextuality, using something with which the audience may be familiar, to generate nostalgic assossications and new meanings.

Taking the genre of our song 'Halfway Gone' as Rock/Pop, different genres have different conventions.

-Some special features are used-Usually calm setting, but changes when the beat kicks in
-May be black and white

-Close up of characters in the video

-Appeals to a younger target audience

-Video usually has a narrative

-Desaturated shots

-Many different camera angles are used

How did we use conventions in our music video?

Before beginning the process of actually filming the product, we needed to plan what conventions we would use to make our video fit into the genre of the song efficiently. Our initial plan was to sit down as a group and analyse the lyrics so we could enhance the convention: a relationship between the lyrics and visuals; what we hear should illustrate what we see.

The main lyric that emphasises this is 'If you want me out then I'm on my way.. I'm halfway gone'. As we hear this, one of the main scenes in our video can be seen. It is important that the lyrics actually fitted with the image in our video at some points of it because our sequence was very narrative, as it told a story which could still be understood without the music and lyrics. After finding out from some theorists that there should be some sort of relationship between the lyrics and visuals, gave us a sense of achievement that we was able to

do that.

Conventions of our music video:

Transition

Ancillary Tasks:

Looking at our finished magazine advertisement and digipak work next to real media products, allows me to see that we have used the conventions of the real products. By researching real media products enabled us to get ideas and create our own.