1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
When researching I looked at many different genres of music video and studied the
different ideologies and themes. My main case studies were ‘Hearts filthy lesson’ by
David Bowie, ‘Whatcha waiting for’ by Gwen Stefani and ‘Blue orchid’ by The
White Stripes. I wanted to watch as many music videos as possible to understand the
different strategies that film-makers use to express the lyrics of the song. After
selecting the song ‘Sour Times’ by Portishead we created a mood board with things
we found in magazines and the internet which were inspiring. We thought about
different ways of supporting the genre and theme of the music through costume, mise
en scene and make up.
We analysed the lyrics of the song and decided that it would be interesting
to express the split personality visually by using two different girls in the
music video. One that represented the vulnerable side and the other the
destructive and promiscuous side. We wanted the difference between them
to be very visual so we thought carefully about costume and makeup. We used
soft colours and makeup for one girl and harsh colours and striking makeup for
the other. We took inspiration from Gwen Stefani’s video which adopted an
Alice in wonderland theme. We decided to use a maze as one of our locations to
symbolise the mind and feeling trapped which is something that the lyrics
express. We decided that we didn’t want it to contain any dancing, and we
didn’t want the whole video mimed; there would be parts where you just see acting
that expresses the lyrics and objects. For example we have shots of
preserved animals in jars and red apples on the ground. We wanted things
that would express the messages behind the lyrics. For example
throughout our music video you see the two girls playing chess against
each other and also shots of them staring at each other as if they’re
competing against each other for who she will end up as. This emphasises
on the binary oppositions. There are various different visual symbols we
have used through out the music video to communicate the themes of the

2. song. For example we painted a heart onto one of the actors back so when he put his
hands on his head to surrender it created a heart shape on his back.
In order to develop the typical conventions of music videos we experimented with
costume and makeup and props. We decided that it would be more interesting to
construct our music video as a story rather than just performance, miming and dance
routines.
In order to challenge the classic conventions of a music video, we experimented with
different camera techniques such as hand held tracking shots to help capture the
movement of the characters in the music video and establish a realistic mood. When
editing, we decided to tint some of the clips to create a hazy
atmosphere as if the girl in the music video is seeing
everything through rose tinted glasses. We used different
effects for the two different female characters to help
convey the difference in personality so the two sides could
be clearly distinguished. For example we used high contrast and darkened the lighting
on the shots with the bad girl, whereas with the good girl we used softer lighting,
colour and contrast. We used the sound of the chess pieces falling on the ground in
the video to emphasise the anger behind the action.