Evaluation Question 1

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

In the research stages of the project we decided to go with the Rock genre, we did this because we thought that it would allow us to have the most creativity as there aren’t a lot of conventions to stick to that would limit what we could or couldn’t do. This will allow us to include as many ideas as possible of our own.

So once we decided on the genre we could then go onto research previous rock music videos to look for forms and conventions that we would either use or challenge in our music video.
But first I did research into genre itself to see exactly what I should be looking for and I found out that Andrew Goodwin says that a form of something and the genre of it are totally different and that they have different conventions that should be stuck to and the conventions for forms are different to the genre of something. The form of something is the thing it is, like a music video is a form and there are certain conventions to stick to when you are making a music video and that’s just to make sure it looks like what it is supposed to be. The genre is the type of music video it is, like pop or indie is the type of music video, and then there are specific conventions to stick to that makes sure that your music video is pop/indie.

Conventions for Music Videos:

So first I thought it would be best to look into the conventions of music videos as a form and I found many things and the conventions I took from it were:

·         Camera shots: Music videos tend to include a variety of shots; long shots, close ups and mid shots. This is to create emphasis on the artist, location and emotions. Also, the close ups are used not only to show emotions but to reflect the words of the song with the movement of the lips of the artist. Large cameras that have proper microphones are normally used so that the audio as well as shots are as crisp as they can be.

·         Camera movement: The movement of the camera is used to follow the trace the artist or band. Camera movements include tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots.

·         Mise-en-scene: This refers to the arrangement of performers and props on stage or in a scene for a production of a music video or any other media text. Mise-en-scene put importance on the representation of something.

·         Editing: Jump cuts us the predominant editing technique used in music videos. This is because this allows a sudden change from one scene to another. Similarly, transitions such as fade and dissolve are very common in music videos as they create a different effect to cuts.

·         Lighting: Lighting plays a big part in the production of music videos as they can create the mood for the whole video, using black and white lighting can have a depressive/angry mood like the Neyo video ‘Mad’ black and white lighting was used to create a depressive looking mood and it matched sad, depressive mood of the song itself. Some music videos are black and white which help emphasise a particular mood and some videos have artificial lighting which put the artist(s) in an enhanced look.

·         Sound: Sound is mainly vocals or the song but in some cases like in Michael Jackson’s thriller there is a lot of different effects and sounds going on that make the video look more like a short film than a music video.

·         Props: These are a vital in aiding to add to the scene and create significance on particular objects or people

I found these conventions helpful whilst coming up with ideas as I knew what I should/shouldn’t involve in the music video, and how to make it look like the music video I want it to be.

I then went to look at conventions for rock music videos specifically to see what would be expected of my music video if it would contend with other rock music videos.

Firstly I Googled top 50 rock music videos so that it would give me some idea of what I was looking for as I have no previous knowledge of rock music as that is not my personal taste.

I went through a few of the links but I couldn’t find any proper lists so instead I searched ‘rock music video conventions’ to see what came up.

And then I could watch music videos on YouTube and see whether the conventions fit the specific music videos.

Conventions for rock music videos:

·         Camera Shots: A wide variety of shots are used to create an effective pace to match the music. Close ups are normally used to show emotion or to show how the singing in the track matches the lip synching.

·         Camera Movements: Camera movement in rock music is often used to a higher extent than in music videos that tell a story. Often in band performance videos there are a lot of different camera shots but they can lack in actual camera movement.

·         Mise-en-scene: Costumes depend on the band and how they want to be represented; they can be dressed in anything from casual (jeans and vests etc. like in the Kings of Leon video for Sex on Fire) to glam rags like in the Steel Panther video for ‘Death to all but Metal)

·         Editing: Due to the often fast paced nature of rock music, editing is mainly done in form of straight cuts in time to the rhythm. Fade in/outs are also often used at the beginning and ends of more atmospheric videos.

Conventions we stuck to

There are many conventions that we chose to stick to whilst creating our music video and this is because we wanted people to watch it and know that they are watching a music video and not a trailer to a movie or anything like that.

Camera- We used a variety of shots so that we could make it look interesting and so that the audience don’t get bored and turn it off, we decided to use shots like close ups, mid shots, long shots and then some movement shots like panning and tracking, but these ones didn’t turn out the way that we wanted them to while we were filming the performance and when we looked back at them they weren’t good enough to include in the music video, so we chose not to use them. We did however get movement shots from the GoPro camera that we used to film the narrative shots; this gave us movement shots, which meant that we didn’t really need to use the movement shots from the performance filming. It gave us the opportunity to use as many different shots as possible from the performance filming. The amount of different shots we have used will be visually appealing to the audience as it won’t be all the same, and boring, it will make them excited to see what’s coming next.

We used a large and a smaller HD video camera for the performance filming, we used the larger(image to the left) one to shoot the close ups and more in detail shots that we knew had to be of the best quality, we then used a smaller HD video camera(image to the right) to shoot the movement shots and the close up shots of the drums etc., that were perhaps less important, the cutaways that we could add in if needed, this is so that we had enough footage as we had limited time to film what we needed to. Using the smaller camera just allowed us to film twice as much footage as we would have if we just used one camera.

We also used a GoPro camera(photo to the left) to film the narrative scenes, we used this to get a stable yet effective point of view shot , the point of view of the late band member, we chose to put the GoPro on his head so that the audience didn’t see his face until the end, we thought this would be an effective way to add mystery to the video and even though people that already know the band will know who the camera is attached to, it will still add an element of excitement. We could of used a normal camera to shoot these scenes but when we tried this the shots were too wobbly and didn’t look professional enough to go in our music video, so that is why we chose to use the GoPro camera instead.

Lighting-

We chose to use the TV studio lighting(image to the right) for the performance filming to have a more studio like effect, this is to show that the band are good enough to be performing in a proper studio, they aren’t just practicing in their garage or anything like that. We used the lighting but we chose to use the lights without any colour filters on them because we didn’t want it to look childish and like a pop video, as the rock genre doesn’t really call for lots of bright colourful lights. That is the main reason we chose to stick with white lights because we wanted to stick to the genre conventions as much as possible at this point. The lighting we used for the narrative scenes was normal everyday lighting, there wasn’t any special effects of filters added to these scenes, we wanted to keep it like this because then the audience could see a prominent difference between the narrative and performance shots, and by the everyday lighting looking boring compared to the performance TV studio lighting it’s obvious that the late band member is missing out on something and by the time that he actually arrives to the studio, all the lighting is out and there is just one spotlight showing that no one is there, this is boring and shows that he missed out on the excitement.

 

Mise-en-scene-

The props and costumes used were all in line and following the conventions that we had found out about, we used big drum kits, electric guitars, amps and mics as props, so that the band would be represented in the best possible way, otherwise they would look unprofessional and like amateurs, this would not make them look good to the target audience and it would look boring and like nothing is really going on. The guitar that the main singer plays also follows the colour scheme that we wanted to stick to, red/orange/yellow, this connotes passion but also danger and uncertainty, we thought that this would follow the rock genre as

there is a sense of passion in the music but also a

hint of danger as there is shouting and gestures that
could suggest anger. The red/orange/yellow on the guitar also matches the digipak; this will show that they are part of one brand identity and that there is a theme to the band.
The dark red colour on the edge of the guitar and on the drums matches, this is good because it shows that we had thought about these things prior to the filming and that we wanted everything to match and look like they all belong to the same brand.

The costumes that the boys wore were all casual and this gave the video a laid back feeling and atmosphere, this kind of clothing made it not look too serious and this is how we thought of the idea to add some comedy into the video, as there wasn’t too much of a serious feeling so there was room to be able to add some comedy which isn’t normally seen in rock videos, but we chose to do it because we thought it would look good and now it’s been added to the video I think that we were right to add it.