This document discusses how the student's music video project was influenced by real music videos they viewed online. It summarizes how they took ideas from Shontelle's "Impossible" video for lighting and using a relationship storyline. They also drew on flashback techniques from Rihanna videos. The student aimed to follow conventions like close-ups and slow motion shots that make music videos feel professional. While not completely original, they brought their own style through the performer and tried to balance familiar elements with some new creative risks. Audience research helped shape the project to appeal to viewers expecting typical music video tropes.

1. Question 1In what ways does your media product use, product or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?CreativityGenre

2. Where have our ideas come from?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWdrO4BoCu8Shontelle- Impossible This video influenced us dramatically because it helped us with the idea of lighting, and how to use it to a good standard in a ‘relationship/breakup’ based video. This was a perfect video to look at, as it is based along the same story-line as we wanted to do ours.

3. This follows Todorov’s theory in which we wanted to show a narrative story-line throughout our video. It was important that we did this well, because otherwise the whole video wouldn’t make sense to the audience. We put Todorov’s theory into action by using his idea of having a beginning/middle and end. We started off showing our performer ‘Shelley’ in her bedroom singing, whilst having flashbacks to her and her ex-boyfriend ‘Jay’. In the middle of the song, where the music was at its highest pitch, we decided to have an argument there because we though it suited the song well, as well as keeping to Todorov’s theory of having a Disruption to the equilibrium. After this, we shot Shelley outside because we wanted to give the audience the idea of her being free and over him, which is what ends the video. We kept reflecting back to this video but built up our own ideas to make it more original.

4. This video also influenced us quite alot when researching about music videos. We knew that we wanted our music video to have alot of flashbacks back to when our couple were in their relationship. I think that this video is very outstanding and because we wanted to aim high we aimed to use similar shots that they had portrayed. I think it has also helped us with mise-en-scene and how to completely cover the camera view, by being really close up to show their proximity.

5. This is another Rihanna video that also influenced our ideas. From 0.59- 1.04, there are flashbacks that we liked the idea of having them fade to black, as we thought it gave a good effect. We used this idea at the beginning of our video where we faded each shot to black to give off the same effect, however, we used Adobe Premier Pro to ensure that ours are at a much slower pace to suit our music choice.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp4UwPZfRis

6. How different are your products to ‘real’ media products?Whilst shooting our music video, we tried our best to ensure that it looked professional and it could be seen as a ‘real’ music product within the industry. We ensured this by doing alot of filming, for example, for the flashback shots of the couple within the bedroom, we had 45minutes worth of footage. This ensured that we had plenty to work with and we could pick and choose our favourite parts.When producing our video, we also ensured that there were loads of different shots because we knew that this would be a major problem, as it would just look dull and boring.I think overall, we produced the music video well and it could be seen as professional. We did the best we could with the equipment that our college had to offer.

7. To what extend have you been ‘original’?I think that our video isn’t completely original, as its a typical love/breakup story. However, in the way that we have portrayed our ideas, I think are original. For example, Shelley has her own personal style that she has brought to the video, making her have an original persona.

8. To what extent has entropy and redundancy been used?At the beginning stage of our planning and research, we had set out to do quite an entropic video of using two extremes of persona’s within the music video and having them in love. However, Andrew Goodwin’s theory was that ‘videos all follow the same format and all include close up shots, slowed down shots etc’. Developing our idea from this theory, we decided to do more redundant ideas, we came up with having an over exposure lighting in some intense shots.We kept our ideas completely redundant because after researching ‘real’ music videos, it suited the original media product conventions.This is an example of comparing our video and a ‘real’ music video in which we researched within early stages of our production. I have print screened close-ups from both videos to show an example of us putting Andrew Goodwin’s theory into action with having a typical convention close-up shot.

9. What is the overall effect of using these on the audience?

10. How were we inspired to do what we did?How did our audience research direct our creativity?