A2 Media Studies

Evaluation

In what ways does your media

product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

bethanywatsona2.blogspot.com

• Myself and my group studied and analysed numerous different music videos from different artists of the “Indie Rock” genre before we began planning our own music video. This was to gather forms and conventions together and to identify similar patterns throughout the Indie Rock genre. We would either develop or challenge these conventions by interpreting them into our three products.

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

• Andrew Goodwin, author of “Dancing in the Dark” identified five key elements of music videos in general.

– Genre characteristics

– Demands of the record label that are consistent throughout the band’s work

– Frequent reference to the notion of looking

– Voyeuristic treatment of the female body

– Intertextual references to other types of media

• We identified that usually in the wide genre of alternative rock, elements of performance were very common amongst music videos for this music genre.

GENRE CHARACTERISTICS:

• With the elements of performance in the music video it creates a more realistic image of experience the audience would experience to see the band live (further promoting future products, for example tour posters etc).

GENRE CHARACTERISTICS:

• It also contributes to the stereotype of alternative bands producing their own music and not relying on computer generated music, that bands like mainstream artists do.

• We chose to use hand-held camera shots to reference the notion of “looking”, as if the band were filming the music video themselves. The amateur footage adds to the effect of the band and creates a much more personal effect to build a relationship between the audience and the band themselves.

FREQUENT REFERENCE TO THE NOTION OF

LOOKING:

• We also found that the ‘What You Know’ video specifically uses female dancers to show the band as desirable. We, however, did notinclude this in our own music video because we found that there were theoretical issues of access to actresses willing to be shown in such a stereotypical way. This is usually a convention of male artists’ videos specifically, and so we challenged this by choosing not to include females in our music video.

VOYUERISTIC REFERENCE TO THE

FEMALE BODY:

• We started by looking at the existing video of the song we chose to do, “What You Know” by Two Door Cinema Club. We found specifically that in terms of editing, the music video was produced using fast cutting shots to go with the fast rhythm of the music video and applied this to our own music video.

MISÉ-EN-SCENE:

• With each of the band members, we decided to dress them accordingly to the “indie rock” genre after looking at existing videos such as “Shuffle” by Bombay Bicycle Club, “What You Know” and “Sleep Alone” by Two Door Cinema Club. We found that the artists wore quite dark clothes, which we decided was a convention that we would prefer to stick to as it was easier for the audience to identify them as more of an alternative genre.

• The pictures taken for our digipaks were taken in natural settings. This is like our music video, which was also filmed in a natural setting. We thought this would be more appropriate as the audience could see the band as more relatable and build more of a relationship with them if they could see them in a situation/setting in which they themselves as an audience may have been before.

MISÉ-EN-SCENE:

• There was also an issue when sharing ideas for the music video how far the extent of the idea of “showing the band members having a good time” would go. For example, we didn’t want to include shots of the band abusing the use of alcohol because we didn’t want to show them as deviants, because it may not have been suitable for the young audience that the band obtain.

• This is because it would promote the abuse of alcohol and encourage the younger generation of the target audience to do this. Instead, we decided to show them doing more suitable and recreational activities that the audience could relate to like going to fairs and going shopping, thus challenging this convention of a more alternative genre of music video.

Overall, I believe my group have provided an equal balance between using and developing forms and conventions as well as challenging them. I believe our music video suits its form well and with the hardware and software we had access to we have created a music video to the best of our ability.