Question 1 of the A2 media coursework evaluation.

1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE
FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS?
Adam Burford and Robert Myers

2. The genre of our music video is house, a genre of electronic dance music that originally
appeared in the early 1980s, and is still a popular genre of mainstream music today.
Our music video features no use of performance beyond the inclusion of a single person who
is lip-syncing. There are no instruments that are seen to be performed throughout the entirety
of the music video. This isn’t entirely typical for music videos of the house genre, some videos
incorporate the use of instruments – for example, the official video for the song we have
chosen, Technologic – whilst others do not.
Our music video definitely isn’t narrative-based and, although an element of performance is
included, there isn’t a particular focus on it in our video. The style of our video is mostly
disjuncture, as it doesn’t follow a particular narrative and a lot of the actions on screen have
no relation to the lyrics, although there are times when certain actions pertain to the lyrics or
when the words are seen on-screen. The video is not really meant to be understood, but it is
simply meant to provide the viewer with a visual experience to go with the song. To
entertain, in the simplest sense.

3. As mentioned in the previous slide,
there is a relationship between the
lyrics and the visuals present in our
music video. There are multiple times
throughout the video in which Adam
and myself hold up signs with the
lyrics – currently being heard in the
song – written on them. In addition to
this, there are a couple of instances of
stop motion in our video, in which
letters in front of the camera spell out
words in correspondence to the song.
We have also incorporated thought beats into our video, as the video cuts between shots in
time with the beat – and sometimes with the lyrics. With regards to how the visuals relate to
the audio, I would say that our video goes with the typical conventions of the genre. It is
common in music videos for house songs to utilise lip-syncing and sometimes having the
lyrics appear on-screen in some form. For example; in the official music video for
Technologic both of these things occur, there is a small animatronic puppet lip-syncing to the
lyrics, whilst a screen behind it displays the lyrics.

4. Our music video included a lot of shots of Adam and myself assuming the role as the
band, for the purpose of the video. A lot of the shots included us – in costume – doing various
activities, many not pertaining to the lyrics – for example, the chess game between the cat
and I. This doesn’t really seem to go with or against typical conventions of music videos of
this genre. As it is common for music videos of house songs to include the musicians, but it is
also common for them to be completely absent. Using Daft Punk as an example; the videos
for Technologic and Robot Rock feature the duo prominently, in contrast to this, the videos for
Prime Time of Your Life and Around The World either have them as a single second cameo in
the background somewhere, or not present at all.