Question 1 for my A2 Media Studies Evaluation

1. Question 1
Alfie Bradbury

3.  As a whole I have chosen to conform to the
popular form of music videos within the House
Music genre by having the overall style as a
narrative video focusing on ‘one day’ in the life
of an individual through both the use of Point of
View shots and 3rd person; wide shots and
close-ups.
 The reason as to why I chose to have this as the
form of the video was to allow the audience the
chance to bond with the protagonist and to also
allow the audience to have a visual
representation of the song to remember as well
as the physical song itself.

4.  As mentioned, the video is made using a mixture of Point
of View (POV) shots, which is designed to help the
audience relate to the protagonist as they can see things
from his perspective, and 3rd person shots as if someone
is with him. The use of both the styles allows the audience
and viewer to gain multiple different viewpoints on what
he is doing throughout the and allowing them to ‘put
themselves in someone else's shoes’.
 However, although narrative style music videos are very
popular in my chosen genre, performance based videos
are also often used and filmed when the particular artist is
performing to an audience. As these were the two distinct
styles of music video within this genre I had to decided
which one I was able to successfully create and which one
would be the most effective which turned out to be the
narrative style as I was largely restricted by both timings
and funding.

5.  Within the genre there were many different conventions
which I both complied to and used and challenged or
developed within my video, one of which being that the
visual aspect of the video matched and related to the
message of the song itself and the lyrics which the song
contains. The overlying message of the song is about
reflecting on the future and what is going to happen in the
future and this is supported by the lyric ‘one day baby,
we’ll be old’. I have represented this message in quite a
personal way through the use of the cathedral in Lincoln
as that is where my University graduation would be and I
used the idea of that ‘one day’ I, personally, will be there
graduating at the ending theme of the video and although
a large portion of the video doesn’t necessarily relate to
that theme it is the underlying goal of the video and the
remainder is designed to represent the journey to that
goal.

6.  Another popular convention which I conformed to
was the video being focused around one individual,
who may be in a group of people or by him/herself
but the focus is always upon that one individual
through the song. The way I conformed to this was by
simple having one protagonist who was alone and
following him in a ‘day in the life of’ style
documentary.
 The music videos for House music tend to have
messages about dancing, love, sexuality and/or
drugs which are all underpinned with repetitive
arrangements and a steady bass drum beat. I, very
strongly, challenged this convention as I decided to
go for a more relaxed and ‘family friendly’ video
which allowed for a larger audience of viewers to be
able to relate to the video and understand the
message behind it due to the fact that the song itself
was quite slow, yet cheerful in relation to other songs
of its genre