Evaluation 1

EVALUATION
QUESTION 1
IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR
CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS
OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
BY VICTOR CHI-CHUNG CHAN

MUSIC VIDEOIN THE MUSIC VIDEO OF THE WHOLE PRODUCTS, THERE ARE MAINLY TWO
PARTS WHICH ARE THE BAND PERFORMANCE AND NARRATIVE(STORY).
THEY ASSOCIATE WITH EACH OTHER BY THE EDITING, AND MANY
TECHNIQUES TO MATCH AND CONNECT TOGETHER. THE MUSIC VIDEO
FOLLOWS MANY CONVENTIONS OF ROCK MUSIC VIDEOS AND THE KILLERS’
MEDIA PRODUCTS. BUT THERE ARE STILL SOME ELEMENTS WE TRIED NO
TO FOLLOW AND CREATED UNIQUENESSES TO OUR VIDEO.

MUSIC VIDEO
BAND PERFORMANCE
My music video of The Killers’ ‘For Reason Unknown’ includes
two main scenes, band performance and narrative, which
follows the conventions of rock music videos. According to the
music video conventions by Andrew Goodwin, he states there
are three key conventions of music videos, narrative,
performance and concept. Therefore we decided to follow
these conventions and include these elements in our music
video. Because there is already an original video, we did not
only follow the conventions from normal music videos, but also
the original music video of this song. In the original video, it was
made in low budget, so all the scenes and shots were produced
in a very small scale. All the shots are band performances, it
does not include any narrative. We then considered the band
performance essential in our video. Because this is a band, all
the members and their duty should be praised. The audiences
should see the band members in the video so they can have a
clear idea about this band, not just the song. This is the main
reason for featuring band performance in the video because we
want to introduce the band.

MUSIC VIDEO
NARRATIVE
The narrative should be the part where the most
unconventional elements in. We follow the conventions in
the band performance, but there is no narrative in the
original video, so we used more techniques in the narrative
part. There are many music videos using narrative to address
the messages and ideas. Because narrative is images to
visualise the lyrics which band performance does not have
this function. So we follow this convention of music videos.
But we did not only make a story which presents the lyrics.
We tried to make it unconventional in the narrative structure.
In the main scene in York train station, the shots are edited
non-chronologically. We decided to break the structure, the
audience do not follow the story and timeline anymore.
Because we are not just telling a story, we mainly use the
narrative to express the concept of the song. Also, the lyrics
do not address a complete story. Therefore, we collaborated
the shots to express the messages as the top priority, instead
of telling a complete story. Although the structure is broken
down, the concept of the song is still successfully addressed.

MUSIC VIDEO
Music videos can be categorised in different genres, so it can specify to a
certain target audience. As media theorist Sonia Livingston stated,
”Different genres specify different 'contracts‘ to be negotiated between
the text and the reader... which set up expectations on each side for the
form of the communication…” The importance of music video genre is the
same as ﬁlm genre because it attracts target audience to look at your
videos. The genre of the music video can be recognised with many
aspects, especially the theme and messages, or even the camerawork and
mise en scene.
GENRE

MUSIC VIDEO
THEME
In my music video, it can be deﬁned
into romance because the theme of it
is about love and relationships. The
narrative centres the relationship of a
couple and one of them is gone. It
depicts the main male and his love to
his loss. He attempts to escape from
this pain but he thinks of her and sees
her phantom in the way to train
station. Themes about relationships
and lost love are quite common
within the music videos from rock
bands.

MUSIC VIDEO
THEME
In According to the research, we discovered the
target audience of The Killers are teenagers and
young adults, among 16-25. The audiences at this
age are usually obsessed with relationships and
they hold faiths on it. Most of the music videos
from The Killers circle the theme of romance, so
does this song. Although the inspiration of the
song is actually from the singer’s grandmother,
the theme of it changed to be the love to couple
instead of family. Therefore, this theme is indeed
important to the target audience.
Therefore, we followed the conventions of
adopting this as our theme of the narrative. And
we went more speciﬁc. We observed that if we
spice up the music video with a depressing tone,
it can be more emotional to the audience. We
followed this convention that we want to trigger
the teenagers’ inner emotion. So in our video, the
story is about loss and pain.
The Killers - When You Were Young

MUSIC VIDEO
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LYRICS AND VISUALS
According to the theories by Andrew
Goodwin, he stated there is a relationship
between lyrics and visuals. In our video, we
depict the lyrics by images as long as the
lyrics are descriptive so they can be
recreated by images. For example, the
beginning scene is in a toilet, where the main
male packing in a close-up of a bag and he
checks his face in the mirror, with the lyrics “I
pack my case, I check my face.” The action
and shots match the lyrics. Also in the scene
in York train station, there is a shot of an
open chair with main male and female sitting
at there in the ﬂashback. It syncs with he
lyrics “There was an open chair. We sat down
there, the open chair.” We want to recreate
the situation and scenario in the song.
“I pack my case,
I check my face.”

MUSIC VIDEO
But there are still some lyrics we cannot
recreate because of the limited resource
we can provide. Some lyrics are descriptive
but it is hard to recreate. Because they
original video is created in a Western
genre background, so we could not follow
everything to the lyrics. There are lyrics “I
caught my stride, I ﬂew and ﬂied”. It
depicts a cowboy rides on a horse and
leaves. But due to our production scale, it
is impossible to hire a real horse.
Therefore, we decided to use another way
but it still depicts a departure. In my video,
for this part of lyrics, the main male getting
on a bus is used for this part. It is not
exactly the same as the lyrics but it indeed
shows the departure of him.
Original video

MUSIC VIDEO
Besides that, we did not just simply visualise the
lyrics, there are some lyrics which have ambiguous
meanings and we made our own interpretation
which still matches the concepts/ideas. Especially
the chorus, the chorus is a large part of the whole
song, but it does not have a clear description for
the narrative. It only repeats “For reasons unknown”,
the images cannot describe the lyrics. Therefore,
we used many shots in the York train station. Those
footages focus on the main male and his dead
girlfriend. When the chorus begins, we see the
main male keeps thinking of her and he sees her
phantom on his way to the train. This whole part
does not follow the conventions of ﬁlmmaking and
music video since we are providing footages with
ambiguous structure. The structure of the narrative
in the train station is broken down, it is edited in the
ﬂow of the main character’s emotion. Because in
the chorus part, it enters a state of no narrative, so
we believe the shots should be collaborated in the
aspect of emotion.

MUSIC VIDEO
In the use of camerawork, we followed many conventions from other
music videos in order to make it familiar with the other music videos. In
different parts of our video (band performance and narrative), we
attempted to use different styles of camerawork and techniques.
CAMERAWORK

MUSIC VIDEO
BAND PERFORMANCE
First, in the band performance, because the whole
band performance is ﬁlmed inside studios, it can
be very boring if we do not present it in different
ways. Therefore, like other music videos, we
followed the conventions to use different angles
and camerawork to shoot their performance.
The shots are mainly close-ups because we want
to introduce the band members. It is important to
show the artists more, so audiences can easily
recognise them and the artists can become a label
of their work according to Andrew Goodwin.
Especially for the vocalist, vocalist is usually the
leader of the band. He is also he icon,
representative of the band. Therefore, in some
climax part of the song, we used close-ups on his
face to increase the expose of him.

MUSIC VIDEO
BAND PERFORMANCE
Besides the vocalist, there are two more members from
the band we would like to introduce to the audiences as
well. But they do not have much exposing time as the
vocalist does. For the other band members (guitarist and
bassist), we did not only put close-ups on them, we
would like to focus on their instruments. The importance
of grouping a band instead of showing an individual
artist is because the band can produce and play their
own music. So we want to follow the convention that
showing band performance to emphasise their ability of
playing instruments. With the use of close-ups, it strongly
presents that they can play instruments.
Other than that, there is something we attempted is
unconventional. We looked at some music videos from
The Killers, we realised there are not many different
angles are used for the band performance. Therefore, we
experimented some angles, perspectives for the artists.
For examples, we shot from the ends of the instruments
to create different impressions. The whole impression
from the band can be more dynamic, audiences can see
them from different sides.

MUSIC VIDEO
NARRATIVE
In the part of narrative, there is no
need to have close-ups as many as
the band performance. Because
the function of the narrative is to
present the concept of the song, so
the storytelling is the top priority
for the narrative. It means we are
not conﬁned by close-ups or any
type of shots, we only need to tell
story effectively.

MUSIC VIDEO
COSTUMES & PROPS
We did look at the costumes and props in rock music
videos and we followed some of the conventions. In
pop music videos, the characters and the artists
usually dress fashionable and trendy because their
clothing is part of their appearance and people do
care how they look. But in rock genre, it’s a bit
different. The rock audience are only appealed to
some certain types of clothing from the artists. They
do not care too much about clothing as much as the
pop audiences do.
According to the primary search, we discovered that
our target audience are obsessed with darker
clothing as they think it is appealing. It is also an
explanation that we always see rock and metal fans
like to wear black t-shirts of their favourite bands.
Therefore, in the part of band performance, the actors
for the band are all wearing darker costumes. For
example, the vocalist wears a black polo shirt and the
guitarist and the bassist wear black t-shirts. This is
how we followed the conventions of rock music
videos’ costumes.

MUSIC VIDEO
COSTUMES & PROPS
For the narrative part, it is a bit different.
Because the actors in the story are not part of
the band, there is no a tight speciﬁcation for
their costumes. In rock music video, they
normally only wear casual clothes. Because the
characters in the video are just ordinary
people, so we only required the characters in
casual costumes, like normal clothes and jeans,
as other music videos.
Besides the costumes there are some props we
also used following to the conventions. There is
one we intentionally include it in the video is
the amp for the instruments. Although no any
sound from the footages is adopted in the
video, we still feature an amp in the video. This
prop provides a professional image of the
band and it creates a sense of live performance
to the audiences.

MUSIC VIDEO
LOCATION
The video was mainly ﬁlmed in York train
station, most of the shots and story happens
at there. We adopted this location because it
has the best representation of departure.
Since the narrative of the music video
depicts a character’s leaving and escape
from his painful life, we found a location
which has a symbolic meaning to present this
narrative. This is quite common to see music
video shooting in transport location. One of
the videos I found it similar is Suede -
Saturday Night. The video was ﬁlmed in
London Underground, about the singer takes
the underground and he sees a very
attractive lady passing by. The rest of the
video depicts what he sees in the
underground. This is quite conventional to
have this kind of plot, and we followed this
type of narrative.

MUSIC VIDEO
LOCATION
In another location where the band
performs, we ﬁlmed it in a studio like
most rock music videos are. We
followed this convention because
studio is the best place for a band to
perform apart from stage. Due to the
limit of budget, we were not able to
hire a band to perform on stage, we
decided to ﬁlm the band footages
inside a studio. It provides a very
professional image to the audiences
that they have an exclusive place to
record and practice. Studio is
absolutely a correct location to build
up such professional impression of the
band.

MUSIC VIDEO
According to our primary research (questionnaire) and secondary
research (music video analysis), we discovered that the editing of music
video usually synchronise the beat of the song. There are some exceptions
that using long takes for the videos, but it is difﬁcult for us to ﬁnish it.
Therefore we decided to keep this convention in our video. The pace of
the song is medium, so the editing of the video is not too rapid, audiences
still can follow every shot.
EDITING

MUSIC VIDEO
ADJUSTMENTS ON VIDEOS
After effect is very important and
necessary during post-production, for
any situation which cannot be done
during filming. Especially on the
colour adjustment, we were reliant on
this process on Premiere like other
music videos. We rely on adjusting the
footages so we could reduce the
annoying setup for the lighting during
filming. In our video we adjusted the
colour tone in order to make it look
better and more cinematic. For
example in our footages, we adjusted
the brightness and contrast. Because it
was difficult to adjust the video in the
camera on set, we decided to adjust it
during editing, it saved more time.

MUSIC VIDEO
BLACK AND WHITE FOR FLASHBACKS
In filmmaking, black and white are always used
for flashbacks. This convention is also transferred
to music video. Because music video is now
getting close to films as a similar part of media.
So there are some conventions and techniques
are shared by music videos and films. In our
production, there is a flashback where the main
character thinks of his memory with his ex-
girlfriend. Because the location is the same we
use for present, we do not want to confuse
audience with the timeline. We solved this
problem by turning the flashback to black and
white.
Although we followed the convention, we did
not just simply turn the footages to black and
white, we preserved some colours in the shots
due to the reason for cinematography. We
considered the results of turning full black and
white would be dull, as a result we did not fully
follow the convention to preserve some colours.

MUSIC VIDEO
LIGHTING
We were not able to arrange ant
lights for exterior shots due to the
limited resources provided. But
we arranged some studio lights
for the band performance when
we were ﬁlming in the studio. For
the lighting, we did not follow the
conventional three-point lighting,
we tried something new instead.
We did not set any back light,
because we wanted created a
dark environment in the studio.
Therefore, only main light and ﬁll
light were used, just to brighten
the actors’ faces for close-ups.

MUSIC VIDEO
GENDER
In this music video, we challenged the gender
roles. The Killers are founded by 4 males and the
members remain the same to now. There are no
females in the band. But in our media product,
we subverted the roles of the gender of The
Killers. Apart from the vocalist, the guitarist and
the bassist are female in our band. Because we
considered the gender equality and its
representation in media products such as films
and TV. We discovered that filmmakers/
producers would like to swap the gender of
some existing characters. Even in films, some
characters’ genders are swapped. In The Killers’
“Just Another Girl” music video, the
vocalist(Brandon Flowers) of The Killers is
played by an American actress - Dianna Agron,
although with a male voice. Inspired by the fact
that producers like challenge the gender
representation, so we did not copy the original
line-up of the band.
the guitarist and the bassist are female
the vocalist played by Dianna Agron

MUSIC VIDEO
INTERTEXTUALITY
Music video is a media that always
connected to other forms of media, it is
a derivative of social culture. According
to Andrew Goodwin, music videos are
often intertextually referenced, such as
films and tv programmes. In our music
video, we referenced to other music
within a similar genre. In the first shot
of the music video, the main male is
closing the zip of the bag. We
intentionally inserted a Beatles t-shirt
inside the bag. Because The Beatles is
such an influential band to other
musicians, we wanted to show The
Beatles as a tribute to praise their
contribution.

DIGIPAK & POSTER
IN OUR PRODUCTS, DIGIPAK AND
POSTER, WE FOLLOWED SOME OF THE
CONVENTIONS BUT WE ALSO
CHALLENGED THEM AS WELL.

DIGIPAK & POSTER
LOGO & ALBUM TITLE
Because it is a new album from The Killers, we decided to
follow the cover styles from his previous albums. One thing
we must preserve is their logo. They have built up this image
for more than ten years with the same logo. The logo is their
label and conﬁrmation of their music, by placing the band
logo at an obvious place, audience can quickly recognise
their work.
As other media product, especially for bands, the logo is the
most important element among the visuals. Looking at other
bands’ media products, they place their logo at the most
obvious place on the CD front cover in order to let audience
recognise as soon as possible. In our digipak, we placed the
logo at the top of the front cover. So audience can see the
logo easily.
The album title is important as well after the band logo. Like
other media products, the album title is placed under the
band logo in a smaller font. The size of the font depends on
its importance for promoting the package.
band logo on our front cover
The Killers - Day and Age

DIGIPAK & POSTER
VISUALS
The album art can be very variable among different
bands and styles. Therefore, we only compare our
work with The Killers’ previous album arts. We wanted
to follow their styles of album art so all of their studio
albums can be coherent.
We followed the conventions of The Killers’ album arts
in the compositions, images and visual styles. As
mentioned before, the band logo and album title are
placed near the centre. But we placed a bit higher this
time. For the background, there is one main image as
the background ﬁlling the whole frame. Like the other
albums, the main image has to be simple so it does
not steal audience’s attention from the band logo to
the background. For the main image, we used a city
landscape I took in Hong Kong. Like most of the studio
albums of The Killers, they only have a landscape for
the front cover. And the cover art represents the
theme of the album. In our album art, we adopted this
image because it represents the sense of being lost in
a big city. Like other The Killers’ songs, they also
emphasise the feeling of living in a city.
our front cover
The Killers - Hot Fuss
The Killers - Battle Born

DIGIPAK & POSTER
LOGOS FOR THE RECORDS COMPANY, BARCODE
It is very conventional to place the
label records’ logos and barcode at
the back cover. Before they are not
important for promoting the
products, but they are indeed
necessary to show on the digipak.
We n e e d t o s h o w w h o a r e
responsible for the products
because of the legal purpose. But we
placed them comparatively small
since they are not very important to
the audiences. our back cover

DIGIPAK & POSTER
COLOUR TONE
The cover represents the theme of the album, then
the colour expresses the tone. Because the visual
impression is important and it directly addresses
the audience the idea of the album. Therefore, the
colour is carefully used for the album. For example,
The Killers’ debut album - Hot Fuss uses a
photograph of a sky and architectures with a layer
of mist on the top. It spices up mystery, loneliness
on the cover. Another good example is Coldplay’s A
Rush of Blood to the Head. The cover is purely
white with a sculpture. The whole image is so
empty that it strongly expresses loneliness as the
whole album is very sad.
For our media product, we targeted the tone of it
should be about depression and lost. In order to
address such tone/impression to the audience, the
photographs we used are covered by a dark layer.
The whole album does not seem to be bright or
energetic, as if the world is going to end or enter a
dark age.
mystery, loneliness
emptiness, loneliness
depression, lost

DIGIPAK & POSTER
BAND MEMBERS INSIDE THE DIGIPAK
Music video creates an exposure
time for the artists, because we
need to introduce the crews
behind the music. Therefore, we
also include the band members
in the digipak. There are
medium close-ups of all of the
three members on the digipak’s
inner page. It is a convention
that the band members being
introduced in the digipak by
s h o w i n g t h e i r g r o u p
photographs. For example, In
The Killers’ Direct Hits, there are
some of their daily photos
shown in the digipak.
inner page of digipak
digipak of The Killers’ Direct Hits

DIGIPAK & POSTER
DETAILS ON THE POSTER
Poster is an effective tool to promote a
product, not just for CDs, it can also be
concerts. The purpose of a poster is to
inform the audience all the information
about the media products, such as the
release day and price. In our poster, we
took poster as the same tool, we
transferred all the information to the
audience. Because the release day is very
important as some audience might be
looking forward, so emphasised it with a
larger font. Apart from the release date,
we intentionally added that the song of
our video is featured in the album. So
whoever is interested in the song after
watching our music video, they might be
interested in this album.
informative, detailed poster

Evaluation 1

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Evaluation 1

Similar to Evaluation 1 (20)

More from Victor Chan

More from Victor Chan (12)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Evaluation 1