Media evaluation question 1 final.

1. Relative theorist: Throughout my work I tried to follow the 7 conventions that should
be included in a music video. These conventions were as followed:
1. Links between lyrics and visuals
2. Links between music and visuals (complimentary, contradicting or
amplification)
3. Genre characteristics
4. Intertexual reference
5. Notions of looking (objectification of women)
6. voyeurism (direct gaze, other people looking at artist, insight into artist life)
7. Demands of record label.
However, we didn’t manage to achieve all the conventions but it was important that
we included some. For example, for number 1 in our draft music video we made the
link between the lyrics “turning my milk sour”, by using a visual prop of us pouring
milk over one of the artist. Number 2, we tried to link the genre of the music which is
Indie/rock with visuals that match this. For example, the type of song and genre that
we chose is very energetic, therefore, we decided to make the visuals of our music
video verry energetic to challenge this convention. Number 2 links with number 3 as
we decide to make our music video very energetic, but also, throughout my media
products I used fonts that are commonly used throughout the indie/rock genre, as I
wanted to make sure that I was challenging Andrew Goodwins theory. Also, I used
colour pallets such as pink and black, which is commonly used throughout our chosen
genre. The 7th
convention that Andrew Goodwin stated is that it is a must that I follow
the demands of the record label. It was important to me that I followed this
convention because I wanted to make my products as realistic as they could possible
be. For example, one of the demands is that the record name/ logo is on the digipak
somewhere, therefore I challenged this and added the record label logo at the bottom
of my digipak.
Before we started filming any part of our music video it was very important that we
carried out research from previous media products, to help us come up with ideas for
our own project.
When planning for our music video it was very important that we all chose which
genre we wanted to base our product around. After researching and discussing the
many different genres, it was clear to our group that we wanted to choose the
Indie/rock genre. There were several reasons why we chose this genre. One of those is
that we all have a good understanding of some aspects in this genre, for example;
some of us knew about the different styling of which the artists wear in this genre,
which we felt would come to a great advantage for us when choosing what clothes to
wear in the final video. We also felt that other genres could be too challenging for us
and could cause too many problems when creating the video. For example, the
majority of our group listens to the Hip-Hop/Rap genre on a daily basis; therefore we
felt that this genre would be the best to use. However, we realised that this specific
genre would force ourselves to challenge too many of the existing conventions in the
Hip-hop/rap genre which could end up jeopardising our final grade. Due to this factor
we felt as a group we should stick to a genre that we could still challenge the
conventions but also keep it noticeable to our chosen genre.

2. From our research in looking at the three different types of music videos, which are
narrative, disjunctive and performance videos, we were able to come to the conclusion
that we should create a performance video. This decision was prompted by various
existing performance videos that other male bands, like ours, have created in the past.
For example, the band Kasabian used this type of video for the song ‘Eez-eh’ and
Oasis used it for the song ‘Wonder wall’. We decided to use this type of music video
because we felt that the conventions involved would help us create an extremely good
quality final video, as we would be able to experiment and challenge other media
products that already exist. Also, as we had limited space and props to carry out the
filming for our music video we decided that a performance video would be best for
us. This was because we only have access to guitars, drums and whatever props we
had at home or could buy for a small cost, due to our small budget. Having a small
budget wasn’t a problem, as from a lot of existing Indie/rock music videos they seem
to look like they have been filmed on a small budget as well, for example, in the
Kasabain Eez-eh video they have used one studio throughout the whole video. This
was an idea that stood out for us as this was similar to our own situation, as we were
unsure whether to use an outside back drop or to use the school studio. Also, in the
same video Kasabian used some wacky props. We took this into consideration and
decided we wanted to follow the same conventions by using some of our own crazy,
out of the blue props, such as the cars and baseball bat. We also decided to challenge
the conventions the Indie/Rock genre by having wacky outfits. We felt that if we did
this it would make our product stand out from existing products and challenge
however, this was beneficial to us because these types of props, such as guitars and
drums are used frequently throughout the Indie/Rock genre.
The research didn’t stop there; we then needed to start thinking about what we were
actually going to do during the video. Because we had already chosen to carry out a
performance video we decided to take inspiration from big name bands in the
Indie/Rock genre. For example, we looked at previous videos by Kasabian, Oasis,
Arctic Monkeys, Snow patrol and several others. We pin pointed and selected
different parts of existing media products and started to create our story board. From
what we found out, is that many previous Indie/rock music videos are very energetic,
and has the band members moving around and getting up close to the camera, such as
the ‘Eez-eh’ music video by Kasabian. As a result of this we wanted to challenge
these conventions and use some of these ideas in our own work by using a lot of
movement in our video and getting the group to get up close to the camera. A big part
of our work was that we wanted to express this through the use of facial expressions
and over the top dancing to match the up beat rhythm. For this we wanted to add in
some extreme close ups of our faces. For example we did this at minutes, (0.51-0.52)
(0.59-1.04). (giff)
In any visual media product such as a music video, the camera angles are extremely
important and we took this convention into account. We looked at what professional
bands such as Kasabian and Oasis have done in the past and tried to challenge them.
As a result of this we used a lot of hand held camera shots with different angles, and
also we used several static shots. For example we have used hand held camera shots at
minutes (0.24-0.32), (1.06-1.12), (1.16-1.22), (1.25-1.33), (1.35-1.53), (1.58-2.04),
(2.20-2.29), (2.40-2.49) and finally at (2.51-2.58). Below is some visual examples of
this. (giff) (giff)

3. The final stage of the production of our media product was the editing stage. At this
stage we traced back to our research so that we could gain some ideas for different
types of editing to help our media product stand out from existing products. During
our research we came across a performance video which had used extreme editing
shots with a lot of negative effect filters in. The use of these filters made the videos
stand out and caused us to use them in our own media product. However, to make our
media product stand out from our inspiration we chose to play around with the effect
and use a variety of different filters and colours, to help ours stand out over the rest.
An example of the use of these negative effects can be seen at minutes (0.18-0.21),
(0.26-0.29), (0.42-0.45), (1.05), (1.15) (.127-1.28), (1.34) (1.40), (1.45) (1.53-1.55),
(2.36-2.37), (2.41-2.43), (2.47-2.49) (giff) (giff)