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

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

2. CONVENTIONS
USED

3. GENRE
The genre of our song is indie, with the conventions
followed suited to that. For instance, the convention of
using black and white shots featured heavily in the
duration of our video. Effects such as this are used to
create an old or worn look to the video. Typical of the indie
genre, the shots are cut fast and on the beat to reflect the
pace of the music.

4. ICONOGRAPHY
To create an association of the
performers to the audience, the
style of clothing was equally
important. Both the band and the
performers dressed in indie
clothing to reflect the genre. They
are pictured here wearing
converse footwear, skinny jeans
and checked shirts.
Instruments have been
important when creating
iconography for the performance
section of the video. For
example, the iconography of the
bassist would be the Aqua
Fender guitar accompanied by
the styled sweeping fringe.

5. PREDOMINANCE OF THE
CLOSE-UP
To make known the emotions of the
characters and facial expressions of the
band, close-ups were used as cut-ins through
the entire video. It was essential that close-
ups are predominant in the video because it
tends to highlight important features of a
particular time that reveals parts of the
characters or foreshadow the on-going plot
line. Close-ups are there to draw the
audience’s attention to something: in the case
of the performance element, the lead singer.
It as often been cited that the lead singer
creates an image for the band, since it is
them who the viewer or certain group of
audience will remember most. In the narrative
side of the video, the close-up creates a
feeling of empathy and intimacy between the
character and the audience. This is important
because the viewers have to understand
what the character feels in order to follow the

6. MUSIC AND VISUALS
The convention from Andrew Goodwin became particularly prominent
for our performance part of the video: we were determined to match
the timing of the music with what was happening on screen. When
putting a video together, we found that Andrew Goodwin’s theory of 3
categories of music video particularly applied to our video. It became
clear that our video comes under the ‘Amplified’ category. This
means that the director video is trying to make something louder, by
using actions on the screen. Taking on this, our substantial editing
made it so that at particular points the video, such as where the bass
riff begins in the song or a prominent drum roll would be cut in to,
from wide shots of the band or the incorporated narrative section.

7. LYRICS AND VISUALS
Also under Goodwin’s
‘amplified’ category is the
link between the lyrics of
the song and the visuals
on screen. Simply, the
lyrics are represented by
images. Examples of this
include the female
character Jess taking off
her shoes with the line “
the heels you wore” or “the
things I said” shows the
main characters Martin and
Jess in a heated argument.

8. SETTING
Typical of the indie genre is
the low-budget setting the
videos are in. The settings
are usually suburban, in
studios and cities. A good
example for a video of the
indie genre is that it may
be filmed in the local park.
These setting are usually
very accessible and are
kept simple to reflect the
audience and keep the
focus on the developing
storyline or band that are
playing.
[THE STUDIO USED FOR OUR
PERFORMANCE ELEMENT]

9. PERFORMANCE
It is common for
music videos in the
genre to include live
performance in its
duration. This is
particularly prominent
in our video with our
two individual sets of
performance video,
one of the full band
and other of the lead
singer Devon alone.

10. NARRATIVE
Within the genre, it
has become quite
popular to include a
narrative element in
the video. Usually
the narrative will link
clearly with the lyrics
but leave the viewer
to add to it with their
imagination.

11. DEVELOPMENTS

12. ENERGY
One convention previously seen in videos that we decided to develop was the appearance
of major movement and energy. In videos such as “Move Shake Hide” by Marmozets and
“Smalls” by JPNSGRLS, the bands seemed to have a lot of energy, shown by their erratic
and frequent movements. We felt that this would carry well into our video because during
the beat breaks, there is a lot of prominent riffs and drum rolls that conventionally would be
matched with perhaps more movement than usual.
We took his opportunity to allow the band to move around move by utilising a larger studio
space and ensure that there were no obstructions for safety during these high-energy
pieces.
Examples of the “movement shots” are shown below:

13. MOVE SHAKE HIDE-
MARMOZETS

14. SMALLS- JPSNGRLS

15. OUR COVER OF
“CIRCULATION”

16. STYLE
Another key convention
forwarded to our music video
was the indie style of clothing.
However, this particular style is
made up of other styles that
have fused together. Often
people in the indie genre will
take influence from rock
clothing e.g. skinny black
jeans and dark clothing to
anything from folk-inspired
clothes. We decided to take
the edgy look from punk and
fuse that with a softer look of
checked t-shirts and roughed
up hair.