Rough Evaluation Question 1

Q1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video shows many conventions in which it can be related to an actual music video. The genre of music we decided to use in our music video was indie pop because this specific genre opens itself up to many unique camera techniques and mise en scene such as stage props and quirky costumes for example in Passion Pit-To Kingdom Come, the artists wear eccentric clothes and fake beards, colourful backdrops are also used to add character to the video, this relates to the Andrew Goodwin theory in which he states that they should be a relation between lyrics and visuals. An indie pop music video also consists of simple relationship/friendship narratives, which can be seen in The Postal Service-The District Sleeps Tonight or a more unique David Lynch type narrative were everything’s all over and the only main purpose of the video is to sell it as art this can be seen in Sparklehorse-Someday I Will Treat You Good, in which the protagonist wears different animal heads and motorcycle glasses in order to appeal to a more non-mainstream, quirky audience and to give it a unique selling point.

In order to choose the main direction of our music video (narrative or performance) we conducted our research by watching other music videos of the band, those videos being Constellations, Radar Detector and DNA After watching these videos we came to the final verdict of choosing narrative over performance, due to the song having a very simple yet quirky narrative, that narrative being a simple love story in which the artist tries to constantly make up with his ex girlfriend, she however decides to ignore him and his requests, this type of narrative relates to a more depressing form of indie and in order for us to incorporate this into our video we created a similar narrative, however in our video we decided to have the protagonist asleep and in a dream word, this technique also relates to the Andrew Goodwin theory, due to the narrative relating to the visuals, mainly because the clouds relate to the protagonist being asleep and in a dream world.

Rick Altman states that genre offers the audience a set of pleasures, so in order to incorporate this into our video we decided to create some very fun and pleasing scenes, such as the shot when the protagonist picks up the guitar and plays the main riff, we believe that this is effective because it’s almost spontaneous and relates to every male teenager over time. Rick Altman also believes that music videos should create feeling of emotions for the audience. I believe that our video evokes an emotional response due to the narrative being quite depressing and also being a story of unrequited love as it plays in his head. Andrew Goodwin stated that record companies will demand a lot of close ups of the main artist or vocalist, we have attempted to do this by having the main focus on the artist rather than the other people in the video and by having the story being about him.

Christian Meltz thinks that genres go through a typical cycle of changes during their lifetime. Our video supports this theory because it opens up as a story of friendship and gradually evolves into a love story. This technique has the audience questioning the video as to why we’ve decided to include the sudden change in narrative. Andrew Goodwin states that thought beats are an important aspect in music videos; by following this technique we created a similar scene, which includes the protagonist playing the main riff in sync with the song in one take without the need to edit the video, I believe that this scene adds character to our video as well as gives it a unique look. We agree with Dennis Mcquail’s theory of uses of gratification because we believe that music videos should provide the audience with satisfaction as well as keeping them thoroughly entertained.

Rough Cut