Evaluation Question 1

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


There are several forms and conventions of real media products such as camera work, lighting, mise en scene camera shots and so on. Earlier during the year, we gathered research in the conventions of music videos. Some of the research found included theories from Andrew Goodwin.


Andrew Goodwin identified a number of key features which are present in music videos. Some of these features include:

1. A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
2. A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.
3. Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.
4. Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
5. Intertextual references to other media texts may be present.

Andrew Goodwin believed that the relationship both the performance and the narrative of a music video keeps the audience engaged and interested. Goodwin also felt that the amplification and the contradiction of lyrics was very important in a conventional music video. For example 'I was walking down the street' as a lyric could be accompanied by the visuals of an individual maybe walking down an alley or a narrow road therefore 'amplifying' the lyrics of the song. Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness to the audience, especially in males, whilst intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos. Another important convention that Goodwin felt strongly about was 'lip syncing'. 


Lip Syncing 

This is a technical term for matching lip movements with sung or spoken vocals. The term can refer to any of a number of different techniques and processes, in the context of live performances, recordings and music videos. Originally, our rough cut was solely narrative based because we felt that this would work well with our song choice. After the rough cut was complete, we got feedback from our classmates and our teacher. The feedback we received meant that there were a lot of substantial changes that needed to be made. One of the first changes was changing our video to become both a narrative and a performance video. The majority of Indie music video consist of the singer lip syncing to the song. Lip syncing is widely recognised and used by many Indie artists.

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Lighting


The lighting of a music video is also an important convention which should be taken into consideration when making a music video. As a group we did our research on the lighting of different music videos. A technique we used in our video, was the use of strobe lighting effects. This was repeated several times in our chorus along with the use of low key lighting to amplify the lyrics in the chorus 'State of Flux' highlighting a change in something and a also a sense of confusion. The pace of the music allowed the strobe lighting to fit in perfectly with our music video. The strobe lighting effect proved effective as some of the feedback we received mentioned the effectiveness of the strobe lights. The idea of the strobe lighting effects came after we did our research on some music videos such as "Kanye West All of the Lights Ft Rihanna"  and "Ellie Goulding - Lights". We used an effect none as 'desaturation'  for certain parts of he video where he was looking back into the past which may highlight how distant a memory the clip is.

Mis-en-scene

Another very important convention used in the creation of music videos is mis-en-scene as it tells a story. Mis-en-scene consists of various factors including, clothing, settings, props, actors etc. All these factors must be taken into consideration when making a music video. As a group we did our research and decided that the settings that we'd use would be Camden and Longfield. After our first day out of filming and editing the rough cut, we realised that the lighting for the video didn't really look as proffesional as it should have been. On our second attempt at filming and editing, the locations of our filming had then changed to Dartford, Camden and Longfield. This time round, because we filmed in the day light, the image we got had a much greater quality than that of the first.


Clothing was also very important in our music video. The clothing used in a music videos help the audience identify with the genre of music.For our actress 'Emily', we needed her to wear bright red lipstick for our extreme close up of her. This was something we'd taken from one of Ed Sheeran's videos. We were trying to convey an Indie look, with our Actor 'Jake' by making him wear a heavily knitted jumper, covered by a coat, a pair of slim fit trousers with desert boots. Naturally, we chose Jake as our actor because he himself fits into the category of an Indie. We wanted him to as though he was deep in thought most of the time, so we felt it necessary for him to have his hood up sometimes. For example, when he is standing alone in the streets of Camden with people walking around him, he looks somewhat disjointed, isolated and alone. Gestures would also prove to be important in any music video, as it is an indicator as to how a certain character is feeling. For example, someone singing and smiling in a music video can be seen as happy and cheerful and is usually connected to an upbeat and cheerful song. 


Editing
The editing of our music video would prove to be very challenging and time consuming as the fast pace and beat of the song meant that the video had to follow suit and also 'keep up' or be in sync with the music. Both Emily Fry and Vicky Gordon had to practice by 

The above image shows our clips we put into Final Cut Pro to make our music video. The process of creating the music video talk several weeks for us to identify ourselves with Final Cut Pro. There are several different transitions within the whole video. In the video, we took two different scenes and put them into a split screen which shows both Jake and Emily's lips moving in sync saying "We need to talk".  The pace of our song drove the pace of the editing. The fast pace of the song was highlighted by our actor' "Jake" becoming more and more frustrated to the point of him removing some of his clothing, his facial expressions, gestures etc and the strobe lighting.


The illusion that both overlays and transitions such as cross dissolves was that of a flashback or past memory. In our video, we tried to emulate the convention of the flashback, by making use of both overlays and transitions. "If your right hand is causing you pain, cut it off, cut it off", was one of the lyrics we decided to pick up on try and create an overlay to go with the lyrics. We used that particular lyric to highlight how our actor Jake was feeling at the time or in the past as we needed the audience to get an idea of the narrative.



This image on the right is of Pixie Lots All about tonight video. Before creating our video, we did some research into the use of overlays in music videos and stumbled across this overlay which was used perfectly in this video. The overlay was used as a transition to slowly move onto the next clip whilst still seeing the image of before.

After our research in to overlays, we had to find where it would be appropriate for us to place our own overlay. The image of Jake about to cut himself with a knife was placed just behind our actor whilst he sang "If your right hand is causing you pain, cut it off, cut it off". This overlay worked well in our video and gave the audience a chance to get to understand the narrative.