- The document discusses the process of creating a music video for an A2 media coursework assignment. It begins by researching conventions in existing pop music videos, focusing on artists like Beyonce and Kanye West.
- After mind-mapping popular pop artists, the creators chose Ellie Goulding as their focus and her song "Your Song" as the basis for their video. They studied film theory and conducted audience research to understand expectations.
- During production, they aimed to incorporate conventions like varied shot types and camera movement while challenging conventions through close-ups to highlight emotions conveyed in the song's lyrics. Their goal was to demonstrate skills in varied media forms for the coursework evaluation.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
- Discuss how our music video follows specific conventions. We could give examples of real
media texts and debate how these then influenced ours.
- Discuss how we developed conventions. Were the conventions we used then developed even
more or adapted in any ways?
- Discuss how we challenged typical conventions of music videos within our chosen genre of
music. Did we attempt to include various other elements to make our product more visually
effective to our target audience?
- Consider including music video theory within our answer to support our conclusions about
our work.
This is our evaluation for question 1; ‘In what ways does your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?’ . We will be answering this
question as part of our A2 media coursework, along with three other questions. We have
decided to express our evaluation in the style mode of a videoed documentary to show the
audience exactly how we produced our A2 portfolio and to also show that we used varied
different forms of media, which is vital in our coursework to prove that we can do this. Our
evaluation is organized through four different questions which will allow us to explain to
our audience how we challenged forms and conventions of existing media products, how
effective the combination of our main product and ancillary texts were, what we have
learned from our audience feedback and finally how we used media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and evaluation stages. Before we started to produce
our own ideas for our music video, we firstly carried out research upon other music artist’s
in order to get inspiration. This helped us greatly in our coursework as it gave us a wide
range of ideas that we had to choose from. This also showed that we were able to look at
other products within the music industry and adapt these similar ideas within our own
work. Due to us both wanting to focus upon the pop genre at this particular starting point
in our coursework, we began to identify certain patterns and similarities which were being
incorporated into pop music videos over and over again the more we researched. One
convention that we came across that was very common, was that the artist is always the
center of attention within the video, which presents the star icon drastically to the
audience. For example, one of the videos that we used to analyze a music video, was
Beyonce – Run The World. We found that they were lots of close ups on Beyonces face,
creating her as the star image. This is expected in a Beyonce video as she is a well-known
artist. The close ups on her face reveal her strong facial expressions, which again tie in
with the song and lyrics – which is something we could concentrate upon when constructing
our music video, as it explains the feelings and emotions within the actress/actor. We also
found out that many dance routines feature in pop videos, like this one by Beyonce. Which
is highly expected from the audience. This supports Andrew Goodwins theory of star
image, where the artist often appears in their own work to create a recognizable role
model and this makes the audience aware of the artist and helps them to gain popularity ,
from starring in several of their own music videos to being placed as the main image of
their merchandise and advertisements. Another piece of research that we included within
our portfolio was upon a 9 frame analysis, in which I used the song ‘Runaway’ by Kanye
West. At 00:17 in the music video we see an ariel view of the girl laid on the floor, in which
a car crash has taken place. We then see the mighty Kanye West in a long shot carrying the
girl in his arms, which portrays him as a knight in shining armour. We see the star icon of
2. the video acting as a super hero, which shows the importance and power that the artist
has. There is many popular conventions which we come across in the pop genre frequently,
like the following I am going to discuss next. Artists are usually clothed in fashionable,
stylish and mainstream outfits, which are portrayed as happy and enjoying life. The lyrics
are normally based around love or relations and often have a target audience of teenagers.
The genre of a song is normally expressed through the costume and setting. A pop song
usually lasts for a total of five minutes, with a consistent beat. The pop genre tends to
follow current trends rather than being independent and creating something new and
different to hear. The form of a song usually follows this pattern; verse, chorus, verse
which is a common trend in the pop genre. A lot of pop music videos include a dance
routine, in which will be used throughout the song.
Firstly we began to look at inspiration music videos which belonged to the pop genre, in
order to collect ideas and focus upon a wide range of artists as at this stage we had
completely no idea what artist we wanted to focus upon and what themes we wanted to
portray within our music video. We then created a mind map on paper, which looked into
detail of the pop genre. We researched many pop artists and added this onto our mind map
until we had a wide variety of pop artists to choose from. We had included artist’s such as
Drake, Kanye West, Rihanna, Beyonce, Ellie Goulding. We then started to research each
individual artist even further, looking at their own individual styles, style of videos and a
range of their songs. We then came to the conclusion that we wanted Ellie Goulding to be
our chosen star icon to focus upon within our coursework. The reason why we chose this
specific artist to concentrate upon is due to her being an amazing singer-songwriter, multi-
instrumentalist, which shows us that she is quite talented. She is recognized to belong to
the Synthpop and Folktronica genre. We then began to research into her life, in which we
found out that her career broke out when she met producer Starsmith and Frankmusik. She
was lately recognized by Jamie Lillywhite which later became her manager, shortly after
she was signed to Polydor Records in July 2009. Her cover of Elton John’s ‘’Your Song’’
reached number two in the UK in december 2010. We then began to go into more depth,
listening to each of her songs over and over, in order to come to a decision on one that we
wanted to use within our music video. We finally decided that we wanted to use her
remake of Elton John’s ‘’Your Song’’ as we felt like the lyrics were very meaningful and
that we could recreate the feelings and emotions of the actress within a music video
through facial expressions, which are initially about love.
We studied media theorists and their individual ideas of what music videos are really
about, what a music video should contain and how we should construct one. By carrying out
this research, this enabled us to understand how the standard of a real music video could
be achieved. From our audience research, we found out what people typically expect from
a pop music video, our results enabled us to understand what common items you'd expect
to see in a pop music video, locations of the video, what you would expect a pop artist to
be doing in the music video etc. All of the feedback that we received from these questions
helped us greatly and we put these thoughts into consideration when planning our
storyboard.
During the project we didn't know the typical number of shot counts that was typical for a
pop music video, so we went on to research this, so we had a clear understanding when it
came to making our music video. We firstly looked at Ellie Goulding's music video to her
song 'Burn'. After watching the video and counting the total number of shot counts that
were used we found out that this particular video used a number of 189 shots. We then
carried out another task on shot counts using Beyonces music video 'Run The World', during
3. the full video we counted 152 different shots. All the differing shots that were used in both
music videos varied from long shots, to medium shots, close ups and much more, which
portrayed different scenarios within the videos. Due to this task we now know the typical
shot count for a pop music video, which will help us greatly when creating our music video.
Through research we also came to realise that most shots that are seen in a music video
have some form of movement in them. Whether this is pans or tilts. We thought that the
camera movement would be vital in our music video as it would make it visually more
effective and appealing to the audience. We mostly used handheld camera to record the
artist as this gave a feel of moment, whereas if we used the tripod the shot would be still
and we didn't want this.
In terms of camera angles, we tried to use the best shots that we could to keep the viewers
interested and the best way for us to do this was to use close up shots, to reveal the singers
emotions and feelings, due to our song being very gentle and delicate. Close up shots
captured the actors thoughts and presented the true meaning of the song to the audience
in the best way that it possibly could. These shots make the audience listen to the lyrics
and portray the definition of the song through the image of the artist.