1. Holly Taylor
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
For my music video, I was influenced by already real media products in particular with the theme of the
narrative I created for my music video as well as with the overall style and characters in my video. For
preparation for my music video, I analysed already existing music videos in order to understand the
already existing conventions of music videos I intended to take inspiration from. Aspects in my music
video such as camerawork and characters are typical conventions of music videos and so therefore
conforms to typical forms, however, there are aspects of my music video that challenge forms and
conventions of music videos such as editing techniques and narrative style which differs from the
narrative I took inspiration from. I decided upon conforming to typical conventions of previous media
products by including an introduction to my music video. This is similar to The Smiths' music videos, such
as for This Charming Man where the title appears at the beginning in a bold white font and fades through
the editing where they include the title of the song as the introduction this is to establish the name of the
song straight away so it is easily recognisable for audiences and can attract an already established target
audience of fans of The Smiths.
However, I challenged forms and conventions by using an editing technique in order to make my
introduction title dissolve, this was in order to link the title towards the underlying theme of a relationship
breakdown and how easily relationships can be dissolved and so conventional forms of media products
have been challenged.
2. Holly Taylor
For the setting of my music video, I analysed three other music videos before deciding upon settings to
include in my music video. In previous music videos that I analysed, I established
that multiple settings are often used in music videos in order to maintain a visually
enticing appeal to the music video. However, in some of the music videos I
analysed, a constant setting is used, such as in the music video for Take That's
Said it All. In this music video, the only setting featured throughout is the setting of
a performance stage and backstage of this setting, yet the
video is still engaging for the audience. And so, throughout
my music video, I decided upon using the main two settings
of a park and also a house intended to be the character of
Alex's home. I decided upon just using two main settings
which challenge yet conform to typical conventions of music videos. As although I
have featured more than one location, I have limited my choice of settings to just
two, this is in order to still appear visually engaging for the audience yet more
realistic which is how I intended my music video to appear. I chose to use the
setting of an empty isolated park when the character of Alex was alone to make the
feeling of isolation become evident as well as a cold looking colour palette with a frosted look to the
setting. On the other hand, I chose the locations of a warm colour palette home in order to establish the
happy emotions the characters felt when they were together in their relationship.
For the narrative of my music video, I broke typical conventions but also conformed
to their conventions. My narrative took inspiration from the narrative of Fight Club,
as I decided upon using the theme of events rewinding to reveal the fact that the
whole events that were previously depicted at the first half of
the music video were imagined by the male protagonist, this
challenges typical conventions as this style of narrative isn't
typically used in indie music videos. Through the special
effects of my music video I changed the colour effect over
the whole clips, to a blue colour, this was in order to
establish the colour conventions of power and create a
dreamlike effect for the music video. I used the colour effect of
black and white effectively to challenge conventions of music
videos by using the black and white filter as a symbol of a moment of clarity for the
main protagonist before the events are rewound to reveal how the events were a
figment of his imagination. I chose the rewind transition to challenge typical
conventions of music videos as this transition is not typically featured in music videos
and therefore makes my video appear unique.
The two characters that feature in my music video are typical of the indie genre, as
the two main characters are female and male teenagers as shown through the establishing opening shot
of Alex at the beginning of the music video this therefore conforms to the typical conventions of the indie
genre. Throughout the scenes featured in my music video, the couple are shown to be doing typical
things teenage couples usually do such as watching films together
and taking a selfie together.
