Phoebe Thomas Media Evaluation

1. MEDIA EVALUATION
– QUESTION 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
By PhoebeThomas

2. My product.
■ My brief this year in Media Studies was to create a music video and accompanying ancillary products for an
artist of our creation.
■ The song I chose with my group was a Dance track by Shift K3y called Beep Beep and we chose this song in
particular because it was a song that we all liked, and that also didn’t already have a music video, so we had
full creativity to do whatever we wanted with the song and make it completely original and our own.
■ We decided that for the music video we wanted to have a narrative base, however through the months
working on the product this in fact changed to mainly a performance base with small areas of narrative
throughout.

3. Theory and how it can be applied to my
product.
One main and important theorist regarding music videos is Andrew Goodwin. Goodwin’s main theory is that
music videos have certain conventions they all follow and that these are;
- That conventions vary depending on the genre of the music, for example our genre Dance, conventions are
dancing, bright colours and lots of lights, of which we included in our video in the performance element,
with our artist Osa dancing in a room with bright lighting whilst lip syncing the song.
- That star persona is important and that companies use close ups to sell the artist to the audience, this is
seen many times within our music video as there a multiple points where the performance element is shown
through close up shots and extreme close up shots.
Screen shot
example for
theory
above
Screen shot
example for
theory
below

4. Theory and how it can be applied to my
product continued…
- Another one of Goodwin’s theories is that there is a link between lyrics and visuals. This can clearly be seen
in my product as not only do we have lip syncing so the audience can see a visual of the artist singing the
song, we also have a narrative of a couple getting ready for, and going on a date, which fits in well with our
songs lyrics as they are about love and falling hard for someone.
- Another theory Goodwin has is that there is a link between the pace of the music and the visuals of the
music video.This is also evident in my product, as we have used bright lighting throughout the performance
element which is in time with the music, and one part of the video in particular where this is shown is at the
end of the video when our artist stops singing and each colour light switches off in time with the music and
our artist changes position with the beat also.
Screen shot
examples
for theory
above

5. Inspiration from other texts.
■ A video in particular that I find quite influential and inspiring for making my music
video this year is Shapeshifters - Lola'sTheme. In the music video it tells the story of a
couple who meet at a fairground and spend the day going round and playing on all the
rides.The artist also features in the music video, as being the ride operator on the
waltzer ride.The video then ends with the couple sitting by the waltzer and finally
kissing.This video is influential when creating our music video as we decided to use a
similar idea and haveWinterville as one of our locations.We decided on this as
because our song is a love song, a fairground style location would be the perfect
setting for a date.The genre of the two songs is also quite similar so the pace of the
editing and the shots used can also influence our final creation.There are also lots of
bright fairground lights featured in this music video, another feature we included in
our own music video as we liked the look of the visual of this against the audio.
Shapeshift
ers on left,
our video
on right.

6. Inspiration from other texts continued…
■ Another text that inspired us in making our product was the music video for Calvin
Harris’ ‘How Deep IsYour Love’.This was also an inspiration as the song is of the same
genre as ours, and the video has a very dance-y vibe.The main character appears in
many different locations throughout the video, but the most influential one for me
was the club location.This is significant in influencing our music video as it had many
bright club lights mainly red, blues and greens, which we used ourselves and people
dancing.This is the kind of feel we wanted to give our own music video – that our song
and the bright lights and clubby dance-y visuals would make the audience/viewer want
to have a good time and dance.
Calvin’s on the
left, our video on
the right.

7. Our video and its originality.
■ I personally think that our music video was very original.This is because throughout
doing our blog research and looking at other music videos, there wasn’t one which
combined the narrative and performance in the way we did. Most music videos of our
genre are either fully performance based (Shift K3y –Touch) or are completely
narrative based and do not feature the artist at all (Shift K3y – I Know, or Calvin Harris
– How Deep IsYour Love).We decided to incorporate the two as we wanted to have
our artist as not just that, but the heart and sole of the groups brand, and also included
the narrative as it was a fun date at a fairground, an atmosphere which we think goes
very well with the genre of our song.

8. Our product and conventions of its
genre.
■ Conventions of the Dance/EDMGenre are; fun and upbeat video concepts, sometimes
narrative, sometimes performance, usually set in clubs/parties or in exotic holiday
locations (beaches, islands etc.) bright lights, usually strobe or flashing, can include
dance routines or specific moves (eg. Shuffling). Fast paced editing is common, to sync
with the pace of the song.
■ Our product conforms to a lot of these conventions, however there are some parts
that may subvert. For example, although the conventions suggest settings of a party
or club, as we had access to neither of these settings, we decided to use an all black
room with bright lighting and props such as flashing light balloons and UV paints.
■ Ways in which our product did conform to these conventions however are the fact that
we used the commonly seen bright flashing/strobing lights, which became one of the
most recognisable features of our product.

9. Our product and conventions of its genre
continued…
■ Another way in which our video conformed to conventions of its genre was the way in
which it was edited. As the song is quite fast paced and has an upbeat tempo, each
shot only lasted a few seconds before we would cut to the next shot.We also used
layering to give a flashing/flickering effect between shots, and a transition that
matched the music at the time.
■ I think we have successfully created a music video which conforms to the genre of
Dance/EDM music as we conformed to a lot of the conventions, whilst also making a
video that is fun and fast paced which makes the audience want to dance.

10. Our ancillary products.
■ Our ancillary products are very much themed with having the artists and products to
be a brand rather than separate parts, which is why we incorporated the video into
both the cd digipak and the website. Our website and digipak share the same theme,
including mainly pictures from a photoshoot we did involving UV paint and a UV
Blacklight.We did this as we thought it reflected our genre very well and also gave us a
fun signature look for our artists throughout. On our digipak we decided to have the
three outer panel pictures as being light, and during the day, and the three inner
panels as being dark, to contrast.We thought this reflected our music video which also
had lighter and darker sections.

11. Our ancillary products continued… Our digipak, created
on Photoshop using
pictures from
photoshoots, and our
website also using
images from shoots,
created on wix.