This document compares the conventions used in the student's music video to those used in Florence and the Machine's music video for "Dog Days Are Over." Both videos used close-ups of the artist to create intimacy with the audience. However, the student's video used a more mysterious backdrop rather than a plain white one. The costumes in both videos complemented the backgrounds and fit with the alternative genre's focus on style. While Florence and the Machine used special effects, the student opted for a more realistic portrayal of the artist and music. Makeup and direct audience address were also conventions employed to draw the viewer's attention.

1. EVALUATION TASK 1
Conventions
A convention is something that is a stereotypical sign of
representation shown by camera work, editing, mise-en-scene
and lighting
•Technological-a technological convention is for example the
way that an artist would use technologies to create a
representation for themselves. E.g. lighting on stage at a
concert.
•Symbolic-a symbolic convention is for example the way a artist
portrays themselves using styling and colour conventions. E.g.
The style of their clothes.

2. I am going to compare the conventions of our music video :
With Florence and the Machine’s music video for ‘Dog Days Are Over’ which
falls into the same music genre as our artist :

3. Camera Work
We used similar conventions to this music video as we decided for the camera work that
we wanted a lot of close ups so the focus was mainly on the artist. This makes the
audience have more of a connection to the artist as you can familiarise her face with the
audience. A difference however is that in Florence and the Machines music video, they
used a white background and focus solely on focused close-ups without distractions to
her face, we decided against this convention as we wanted our artist to have more of a
mysterious appeal so that her audience feels slightly disconnected. We had Dyer’s Star
Theory in mind when making this decision as we want the audience to feel a close
connection through the close ups but feel slightly that she is not the same, and more of a
star that is not easy to be like, so more of an aspiration.

4. Costume
In Florence and the Machine’s music video, the costume of the main artist linked well with
the set as it was similarly coloured and worked well with the aesthetic. This is what we were
going for with our costume, that is fitted well with the background to create an interesting
aesthetic. This fits in with the conventions of the alternative genre as it is focused more on
style and artistic taste. We wanted the dress of our artist to be flowy, which is similar to the
dress of the other music video as it adds again to the interesting visual aspect and to o with
the sounds of the music.

5. Editing
In Florence and the Machine’s music video, they used special effects, this added an extra
element to their music video as it fitted more with the specific sounds of their song, of
an explosive feel. We decided not to use special effects as we wanted to keep it realistic
like the artist so that it showed the more honest personality of the artist and her music. I
feel that when adding special effects to a music video it makes the mood of the whole
thing that it is synthetic music, but our music we wanted more of a pure image. We
decided on using cross fading transitions towards the end of the video to fit with the
slow dreamy sound of our track.

6. Makeup
Both our music video and the real product used interesting makeup ideas. This
convention is used in alternative music videos to show again the artistic style for the
music. Both our music video and the real product focused the interesting makeup
around the eyes. This is a frequently used convention in this genre as it makes the artist
connect with the audience by them focusing on the eyes which draws the attention in.
By drawing attention to the eyes it enhances the effect of the direct address to the
audience.

7. Performance
For the performance element, we decided to go with the conventions of the genre of
direct camera address to give a closeness between the artist and her audience. It
creates an intimacy by connecting her gaze towards the line of the audience. We
decided to use this element from the conventions of the indie music genre. It goes
with Dyers star theory as it is creating a synthetic artist that is connecting directly to
the audience and is recognising that they are there.

8. Set Design
The set design for the real prodct was kept basic but used extra characters into the set
which added a sort of set by the position of chracters. We decided against this
convention as we wanted to focus on only the artist. We were originally going to have
anothera ctor for the male back up singing but we decided against it as this was our
artist first music video we thought it waas more fitting to only focus on her to
famililarse the audience with her