Evaluation question 1

Evaluation Question 1: In what way does your
media product use, develop or challenge
conventions of real media products?
Jake Cook

My Music Video
The music video that my partner and I created is a narrative based video that was thought of by
watching numerous music videos in the dance genre. The dance genre is a very broad genre of
music in which includes many sub-categories of music like EDM, Drum and Base, House (The sub-
genre in which our chosen song falls into), Garage and Trance. From watching videos from all of
these sub-genres, my partner and I picked out aspects and themes of each sub-genre that we
found to be effective in the music videos and looked to combine all of these in our video. The plot
our music video is about the protagonist (who is a young man) going through hallucinations after
getting spiked at party that he attends. In the video the hallucinations are all relatively vague and
basic which makes them easier to distinguish from the live events of the video that are
happening with the protagonist so that the audience do not get confused as to what is a
hallucination and what is really happening in the protagonist’s life. The scene in which the
protagonist gets spiked in the video only happens half way through so that up until that point the
viewer struggles to piece together what is happening in the video but as the truth unfolds the
viewer can understand why the protagonist is hallucinating which creates attention and interest
from the viewer. These kinds of effects were found throughout many videos that my partner and I
watched which we found interest and effective so decided to use these kinds of effects to keep
the attention and interest of the viewer.

My Digipak and Advertisement Poster
The Digipak and Advertisement were both of similar themes and design along with the music
genre to help create a single strong image of the artists and music that the artist has created.
From research into the genre and digipaks and advertisements for music within the genre, my
partner and I found that love and relationships was a frequent theme is the design of both items
and it was an effective one. The theme that we created was to attempt to give the impression
that the three individuals featured in the digipak and advertisement were in love with the stereos
that they are seen with and the images used represent this theme by putting the young men and
the stereos in situations that would commonly be seen by people in a relationship or in love like
walking in a park, going out for a meal and going on walks together. This as well as the title ‘In
Love with the Music’ helps to create a clear theme and effect to our music video, digipak and
advertisement. The three young people seen in out digipak, advertisement and video represent
the same demographic of people that we aimed our productions at which are young adults aged
16-20 years old as we found that people of this age group would be able to identify themselves
and find similarities with themselves and the protagonists the most.

Typical Features of the House Music Genre (Use)
In my opinion, the music video, digipak and advertisement poster that Max and I created
corresponds and meets with many typical codes and conventions found in the House genre.
Firstly, one of the songs including in the album called ‘Love the Way’ is a very upbeat song which
makes audience associate the song with dance and music festivals which can be found with the
majority of songs within the House genre. One of the main themes of the music video and the
song ‘Love the way’ is love as it can be found frequently in the lyrics of the song and is displayed
in the video frequently through affection between characters in the video which can be seen in
many videos belonging to the same genre like ‘Never forget you’ by MNEK and ‘I need your love’
by Calvin Harris. The theme of love also appears multiple times on the digipak of the album and
the advertisement poster as my partner and I wanted to keep the theme of love throughout the
multiple aspects of our production. We did this by entitling the album ‘In love with the music’
and by using photographs of multiple scenarios in which displays of love or affection between a
young man and a stereo are the main focus point.

Typical Features of the House music genre – Ben Norman (Use)
In his article on www.dancemusic.about.com Ben Norman defines House music as simply as ‘…a
genre of electronic dance music and has been the current standard of “club music”’ and
‘compared to disco, is typically a bit darker and minimalist as house music uses many other
sounds including synths, funk, and soul.’ The song ‘Love the way’ meets both of these quotes as
it is a song that would typically associated with being played in a club with its high tempo that
makes it easy to dance to. The song also includes multiple examples of when electronic devices
such as synths which help to identify the song as a house song.

Cinematography/Camera Angles (Use)
In the music video that my partner and I produced, we used a wide range of camera angles and
shots during the filming. This was possibly the most important aspect of the video as a wide
range of camera angles and shots can make a video a lot more effective and help to emphasise
stories and messages a lot more. An example of this is when the protagonist’s drink gets spiked ,
the shot that is used during this scene is a simple silhouette shot of the glass in the protagonist’s
hand and another young man dropping some sort of pill into the drink. This creates a feeling of
wonder for the audience and keeps the audience in the un-known as to what is being put into the
drink, which matches the mindset of the protagonist as he is also un-aware of what is being put in
his drink which creates effect as it puts the audience on the same level as the protagonist in this
scene. The front cover of the didgipak features a medium shot of a young man sitting at a table
with a stereo on a date. I used this shot for the front cover so that I could make it as clear as
possible what was going on in that situation by fitting all the aspects of the scene in as much as
possible. By doing this I could set the main theme of the album, video and songs from the very
first look at the digipak as it is very clear that there is a ‘date’ going on along with the title of the
album, ‘In love with the music’, being displayed. This theme is carried on throughout the digipak
especially on the inlay pages where a single wide angle shot is displayed across both pages, which
makes sure that the audience’s focus is on the image of a young man laying by a river with a
stereo again to emphasise on the underlying theme of love and relationships throughout the
production.

Mise En Scène (Use)
In both the music video, poster and didgipak, the objects I used in each scene/shot played a really
important part although it may not seem it at first. Max and I used whatever props were available to us
which was limited at times but we used what he had to the best of our ability to help create effect and
an environment in the video, digipak and advert which was helped by research into bricolage and
learning about how to make the most of what you have to work with. In the house party scene of the
video we took inspiration from the music video for ‘Hoyle Road’ by Pedestrian where the producers of
the video did a really good job of making the most of what they had in ways of props. Using only a
handful of people and a small flat they made a small gathering with a few basic lights look like a big
house party. They also used the props they had to alter the sense of perspective that the audience has
while watching the video. From studying the video we found that the placement and use of props is a
very important factor of the video and the digipak and advert. In the video we used props to create
effect on many occasions. One example of this is when we solely used props to convey possibly one of
the most important messages of the video. The scene where the protagonist gets spiked, we simply
used the silhouettes of props to convey to the audience what was happening in the scene as the shot
just had the protagonist holding a glass and a hand dropping a pill into the drink. In the digipak, the
props played a very important factor in conveying a message as well. One of the main focus points of
the digipak is a stereo in every shot. The stereo is acting as a ‘date’ for all the boys featured in the shot
with it so the Mise en scène and the positioning of the stereo is very important. We had to position the
stereo and the angle of the shot very carefully because we had to convey to the audience that the
stereo is on a date with the young men in the situation and not just a normal stereo to them so that it
was clear to the audience what was going on in each shot. Another example of us using mise en scène is
on the front cover where the drinks are positioned on the table so that it looks like both the young man
and the stereo are having a drink to help create the effect of a date which is what we were trying to get
across to the audience.

Editing (Use)
In the music video my partner and I opted to use a simple but effective editing technique which was to
cut to a new shot on the 4th beat of a new bar. We decided to use this technique because from studying
numerous House music videos we found that this form of editing was very common in the genre and we
found it to be quite effective in the music videos as well as it made it easier to keep the video flowing
effectively and to keep the video in touch with the song. After watching our recordings for the video
multiple time we found that due to some shots being outside near a forest and some shots being in a
house there was an irregularity in the grade of colour in the shots which did not make the video look
very professional so we used Adobe premier pro to colour grade certain shots to keep them in-junction
with the each other. From watching many House music videos and examples of A2 coursework music
videos we also found that the most effective videos were the ones that had the best image quality and
most consistent frame rate. From this we researched into the qualities of professionally produced music
videos and films and found that the most common frame rate used by professionals was 24 fps (frames-
per-second) and we also found out how to export our finished video at the highest render quality. After
applying the settings to the video we found that the video looked a lot more professional and effective.
With the digipak and advertisement poster I also heavily edited the images in Photoshop to help convey
the message I wanted to the audience. The main themes of the production were love and relationships
so I decided to add a polaroid effect to all of the photos I used to help convey the feeling of love to the
audience. On the front cover I added a grainy warm effect to the image to make it appear as if the
image is quite old but has a meaning to someone which is often seen with older images that are kept by
people. By doing this I created the effect that the image may belong to someone and the photo may be
of a good memory that someone does not want to forget which is often associated with love or
relationships. On the advertisement poster I laid images with a polaroid instant frame around them with
dates over them to again create the effect that the images belong to someone and they are photos of a
good memory.

Typical Codes and Conventions of the House Genre (Develop)
In the music video, digipak and advertisement poster we developed upon codes and conventions
of the House genre such as drugs, alcohol and partying. The House genre has seemed to be very
heavily linked with partying, drugs and alcohol in the media s it is seen as a genre of music for
clubs, concerts and parties due to its high tempo. With this assumption comes another in that the
concert goers, clubbers and partyers, especially of a young age, drink a lot of alcohol at these
events to help them have a good time as well as more strongly, use drugs. We also found that a
lot of music videos of House songs include parties or some kind of event that involve alcohol,
adolescents and drugs. We developed these conventions and codes in our video by including a
house party scene in which alcohol was very present in multiple scenes as well as one stand out
scene including the protagonist getting spiked with a drug of some kind.

Equipment (Use)
In the filming of the video we used a high quality DSLR camera to record the shots (Nikon D550).
We also used a high quality DSLR camera to take the photos for the digipak and advertisement
poster (Canon EOS 400D). We wanted to use as high quality cameras as possible because of our
initial research suggesting that the higher the quality of the image the more professional the
production will look. We also used a tripod in some of the shots to keep the camera steady to
deliver a more professional look as well different forms of lighting such as a bicycle light and a
light provided with the cameras to help us get the perfect lighting for each shot.

Cinematography (Develop)
Before starting to record the music video we researched and textually analysed 5 music videos
and looked at multiple examples of album covers, digipaks and advertisements for albums. From
the initial research we had pieced together some initial ideas for the video and the digipak and
advert. We wanted to set our production apart from other peoples’ as much as possible so it was
important that we researched and discovered as many different effects and features of a
professional music video, digipak and advertisement as possible. Firstly, in the music video we
featured a scene where we used the silhouettes of characters and props to show what was going
on as the protagonist gets spiked in the house party. We had seen these shots work really
effectively in films and television shows but we hadn’t seen it in a music video so it helped our
video to stand out from other videos. With the digipak and the advertisement I wanted not to
just display the scenes and shots but to make the audience feel like they are there watching the
events take place. I wanted to do this by taking action shots of the events instead of taking still,
posed shots which I found to be very frequent in album covers and advertisements so this
created an effect of interest to the viewer to help our digipak and advertisement stand out.

Editing (Develop)
During the editing of the music video we decided to add some extra effects to the video to make
it more interesting as well as stand out from other videos. One way we added an extra effect to
the video is when the protagonist had a flash back to the house party we added a lens flare and
flash between the two scenes to help create the flash back effect but to also help our video stand
out from other videos as not many other A2 music videos that we watched had any additional
special effects. With the digipak and poster I used the polaroid effect quite often as it is a style of
photograph that is coming back into fashion with people in our target demographic with instant
polaroid cameras coming back onto the market. I used this style as a way to draw attention and
to try and appeal to our target demographic as it is a style that they can relate to.

Album Front Cover (Challenge)
After researching into front covers of House music albums we found that they were all relatively
similar in style so we decided to take a step away from the usual album covers of the genre. We
decided to focus on reaching out to our target demographic so we decided to add a comedy
factor to our cover and digipak that we knew that our target demographic would understand and
decided to use a theme that was very much in fashion with people of our target demographic.
Below you can see how our album cover compares to other albums from the house genre:
Give Me Some single by Fedde
Le Grand
Stories by Avicii My Album Cover

Evaluation question 1

More Related Content

What's hot

Viewers also liked

Similar to Evaluation question 1

Recently uploaded

Evaluation question 1