Media Studies Coursework Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real
media products
Jessica Gordon

3. We used the narrative style video… the conventions included were the following:
 Camera shots tend to include the typical long shots, close ups and mid shots; mainly to
emphasise emotions [USED- whenever either the female or male character was upset/ happy,
we filmed close ups.]

4.  Camera movements we used to follow a character [USED- pan when Alex walks to door
and on letter when panning across page as if character is reading and when Dan drives
away]

5.  Mise-en-scene- arrangements of props/performers in the scene. This puts importance
on the representation of something. [USED- had to remove items in room and
purposeful placed some items around such as the books on the set on draws to show the
couple are educated.]
 The sound was challenged as I used the soundtrack with no ambient sound in the
background from the official music video.
 Editing- jump cuts is the most common form of editing used in music videos. To add,
transitions such as fade and dissolve are conveyed as they create different effects to
the audience. [USED- cross dissolve to represent a new day, fade to black to foreshadow
and fade to white at the end scene.]

6.  Within the 4 representation categories, I believe my music video represents
gender, specifically as my music video falls under the indie pop genre. As a
whole, indie music is now less misogynistic than hip hop and rap music as it
allows women to be represented in an equal status to men. Both characters
show equal emotion, however, the female is seen/shown to be the weaker as
she is more emotional, a stereotypical trait of females.

7.  The music we have chosen to create our music video is a song called
‘Photograph’ by Ed Sheeran; who is a musical artist known for typical writing
music within the genre of pop. When I researched into the song lyrics, I did in
fact find out that this song in particular is also classed as a pop song;
however, I do not agree. The original music video itself, along with the
song, does not follow the stereotypical conventions in which a pop music
video possesses, for example- Katy Perry’s music video ‘TGIF’ presents the
audience with a lot of bright colours, and the music itself is upbeat and
features a lot of dancing. Within a stereotypical pop music video, the women
would normally be seen wearing ‘skimpy’ clothing; this is featuring within
Katy Perry’s music video along with the camera angles which tend to zoom in
on the women’s buttocks. In addition, the video has a ‘party scene’ theme
running throughout which involves young people drinking alcohol.

8.  The song we have chosen, ‘Photograph’, does not lyrically sound as if it conforms
to this stereotype of the pop genre, therefore when filming and editing our own
music video, we ensured that we actually challenge the forms and conventions of
real media products by going against the stereotype. We wanted ours to be
completely different, therefore our video does not include revealing clothes,
bright colours and people dancing and ‘performing’. We decided to create a
narrative music video which shows a sense of journey that the couple within it
experience together, both the highs and lows of a relationship.
 I believe that our music video does use the forms and conventions of other music
videos, specifically through representation. There are many representations in all
music videos, however, the one we are most conscious about is gender. From
personal experience I have heard some people describe Ed Sheeran’s music to be
from the ‘indie’ genre. I have researched an example of this previously,
throughout the Artic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know?” music video, the animated
females are scantily clad and appear to be wearing rather revealing clothing,
women could be offended by this representation as they could be seen as only
being worth looking at as they are seen as ‘desirable’ beings rather than humans
with equal rights. Equally men could also be offended by this particular video as
they are shown to be mesmerised by the female characters and as if all they like
about a girl is their appearances, men are therefore illustrated as being extremely
shallow.

9.  During our music video, the storyline shows the female as being upset and
angry as her husband goes on duty, meaning he has to work away because he
is a member of the army. Unfortunately some women may get offended by
what they are presented with because it shows the woman in much more
emotional mental states through the duration of the video, compared to the
male figure; some could take this as women being conveyed as the weaker
sex. To add to this, we don’t see the woman go to work during the video, the
male character is very much represented as the ‘bread-bearer’ as he goes
away to work and is bringing in the sole income for the two of them; in this
case, women watching the video could be offended by this too, as sexism
could be used to describe the situation, as this was what life was like many
years ago before women had equal rights. Men could also be annoyed by what
is demonstrated in the video as they are shown to be the emotionless gender
who doesn’t necessarily get upset about leaving their wife to work away,
which is not necessarily the case. On the contrary, I believe we used the
forms and conventions of real media products through representation of
gender on our own music video project.

10.  When analysing Taylor Swift’s music video- ‘You Belong To Me’, I was able to
analyse the different camera angles and shots in which a music video should
include. For example it opens with an establishing shot…
 Therefore, the start of our music video starts with an establishing shot of
where the music video takes places the most- in the bedroom. There is
establishing shot which shows both the male and female characters lay in bed
together, just before they start to wake up, this shows the audience the
closeness of the relationship as well as where the music video is set, location
wise.

11.  I believe we have developed the forms and convention of Taylor Swift’s music
video as we have expanded on what was featured by taking the specific shots
and using it for relevant purposes but also by then improving it with our
editing skills by making the short, ‘choppy’ cuts on the beat and continuity
editing which helps speed up the narrative. That was something in particular I
did not like about her music video, the cuts were too long and the narrative
seemed to drag of long periods of time, this is definitely something which I
have improved on in my own music video to ensure I, as an audience member,
would not get bored whilst watching it.

12.  My music video is strictly narrative, a common concept for a pop music video.
It demonstrates a sense of journey throughout the video which tells a story. I
am confident that is concept works out a lot better in unison with the song I
have chosen rather than the performance concept because that is something
which can get quite tedious and boring when watching; whereas in a narrative
music video various things happened, specifically when following Todorov’s
theory which demonstrates normality, a problem arising, the problem
occurring, a resolution and then the return to normality. When producing a
narrative music video, the song itself accompanies the story. After analysing
the lyrics of the song and then creating a storyline afterwards, the two work
great and truly complement each other.

13. Digipak

14.  A digipak is used to promote an album, emphasise the artist and brand image and increase the popularity
of the artist as a whole.
 Through analysing other digipaks, I noticed how the artist must have an iconic fashion sense and
therefore immediately associated the colour green with the indie-pop genre and therefore Duncan’s
costume was decided around this. This helped to add to the choice of location- green trees etc but
somewhere ‘edgy’ looking.
 The target audience is aimed at anyone between the age of 16-25 that likes indie pop and the artist
himself.
 The artist was the focus of my digipak and therefore I made him the main image of every section.
 I ensured the name on the CD was displayed. [USED]
 The title ‘Infinite’ is written in a handwriting font, possibly relating to the artist writing his own lyrics, I
have seen this rarely [DEVELOPED]
 Most digipaks rarely have a track list [DEVELOPED], I put one in to ensure the audience knew exactly
what they are purchasing etc.
 Barcode [USED]
 I haven’t put a record label down [CHALLENGED]
 There is no extra information on the digipak as I wanted to keep it simple.

15. Poster

16.  The purpose of a music poster is to boost recognition of the album and the
artist.
 It needs to relate to the digipak for association [USED]
 Colour theme- green with black and white.
 The main image is of Duncan which is centralised to emphasise the
importance [DEVELOPED], however, there is no direct eye contact used.
 “Debut album of the year” is catchy and will certainly help to boost sale as it
is now seen as a must-have item [USED]
 ‘Infinite’ is not written in bold but ‘Duncan’ is, this connotes that he is of
importance.
 Quotes from magazines were added to further promote [USED]
 Date [USED] to inform audience of when the item is available.