Holly Taylor analyzes how her music video both uses and challenges conventions of real music videos. She took inspiration from music videos like The Smiths' "This Charming Man" for introducing the title, but challenged conventions by making the title dissolve to reflect the theme of relationship breakdown. While most music videos use multiple settings, Holly limited her video to two settings (a park and house) to appear more realistic. The narrative was inspired by "Fight Club" but challenges conventions by rewinding to reveal imagined events, using special effects. Character types conform to indie conventions but editing techniques like rewinding challenge typical music video forms.

1. Holly Taylor
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
For my music video, I was influenced by already real media products in particular with the theme of the
narrative I created for my music video as well as with the overall style and characters in my video. For
preparation for my music video, I analysed already existing music videos in order to understand the
already existing conventions of music videos I intended to take inspiration from. Aspects in my music
video such as camerawork and characters are typical conventions of music videos and so therefore
conforms to typical forms, however, there are aspects of my music video that challenge forms and
conventions of music videos such as editing techniques and narrative style which differs from the
narrative I took inspiration from. I decided upon conforming to typical conventions of previous media
products by including an introduction to my music video. This is similar to The Smiths' music videos, such
as for This Charming Man where the title appears at the beginning in a bold white font and fades through
the editing where they include the title of the song as the introduction this is to establish the name of the
song straight away so it is easily recognisable for audiences and can attract an already established target
audience of fans of The Smiths.
However, I challenged forms and conventions by using an editing technique in order to make my
introduction title dissolve, this was in order to link the title towards the underlying theme of a relationship
breakdown and how easily relationships can be dissolved and so conventional forms of media products
have been challenged.

2. Holly Taylor
For the setting of my music video, I analysed three other music videos before deciding upon settings to
include in my music video. In previous music videos that I analysed, I established that multiple settings
are often used in music videos in order to maintain a visually enticing appeal to the music video.
However, in some of the music videos I analysed, a constant setting is used, such as in the music video
for Take That's Said it All. In this music video, the only setting featured throughout is the setting of a
performance stage and backstage of this setting, yet the video is still engaging for the audience. And so,
throughout my music video, I decided upon using the main two settings of a park
and also a house intended to be the character of Alex's home. I decided upon just
using two main settings which challenge yet conform to typical conventions of
music videos. As although I have featured more than one location, I have limited
my choice of settings to just two, this is in order to still appear visually engaging for
the audience yet more realistic which is how I intended my music video to appear. I
chose to use the setting of an empty isolated park when the character of Alex was
alone to make the feeling of isolation become evident as well as a cold looking
colour palette with a frosted look to the setting. On the other hand, I chose the
locations of a warm colour palette home in order to establish the happy emotions
the characters felt when they were together in
their relationship.
For the narrative of my music video, I broke
typical conventions but also conformed to their
conventions. My
narrative took
inspiration from the
narrative of Fight Club,
as I decided upon using the theme of
events rewinding to
reveal the fact that the
whole events that were previously depicted at the first half of
the music video were imagined by the male protagonist, this
challenges typical conventions as this style of narrative isn't typically used in indie
music videos. Through the special effects of my music video I changed the colour
effect over the whole clips, to a blue colour, this was in order to establish the colour
conventions of power and create a dreamlike effect for the music video. I used the
colour effect of black and white effectively to challenge conventions of music videos
by using the black and white filter as a symbol of a moment of clarity for the main
protagonist before the events are rewound to reveal how the events were a figment of his imagination. I
chose the rewind transition to challenge typical conventions of music videos as this transition is not
typically featured in music videos and therefore makes my video appear unique.
The two characters that feature in my music video are typical of the indie genre, as the two main
characters are female and male teenagers as shown through the establishing opening shot of Alex at the
beginning of the music video this therefore conforms to the typical conventions of the indie genre.
Throughout the scenes featured in my music video, the couple are shown to be doing typical things
teenage couples usually do such as watching films together
and taking a selfie together.