Evaluation on the conventions within my music product.

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

2.  My music video uses natural lighting to portray a sense of
realism, allowing the video to create a bigger impact the target
audience; an element frequently featured in many narrative
music videos. However, it challenges the norms of lighting’s
purpose within videos as the bright light contrasts to the solemn
events happening, meaning that whilst bad things occur to
people, the world goes on with and without them. I took
inspiration for this idea from the music video ‘Not the Only One’
by Sam Smith as the binary opposites of happiness and sadness
(portrayed through the lighting from the sun and distraught girl)
makes the music video seem crueller; life doesn’t care about
your problems or achievements.

3.  My music video also takes hints from multiple music videos like
‘Love The Way You Lie’, which uses elements of Barthes’ codes, such
as symbolism (fire used to represent destruction of love). I decided
to use the outdoors/indoors to represent a facade. Whilst outdoors,
the couple seem happy and content but indoors, it is anything but.
 Although, my music video does conform to the conventions that men
are stronger than women, due to the girl being portrayed as
mentally weaker- particularly at the beginning where she takes her
own life- and the man trying to correct the issue. By doing this, it
follows the dominant ideology of society and takes on a similar
pattern to Eminem’s ‘Love the Way You Lie’; the gender differences
are subtle whilst love is the foreground of the music video.

4.  It also develops on the conventions within other music videos as it
uses the artist as both the singer and a character in the video, an
element used by the minority of music videos. Although, it has
become a recurring theme lately. An artist who portrays the role of
both the singer and character associates the feelings of the lyrics
with them personally and, therefore, having more of an impact on
the audience as it feels more personal. This is a feature I decided to
use in my music video as the audience can identify the lyrics with
the artist, encouraging them to continue watching as they start to
become connected with the artist; becoming curious and concerned
for what happens to them. Other successful artists like Rihanna and
Ed Sheeran tend to do this (‘Drunk’,’Stay’,’What’s My Name’)

5.  As I created my Narrative music video, I kept to the norms of
illustrative music videos by including both a plot, an instrument
and lip syncing. I felt that by the use of instruments and
continues lip syncing, I would be able to take breaks in-between
the plot as I began to struggle in what else to include. However,
because I conformed to the conventions, the video looks more
professional and more like an actual music video as it follows a
similar pattern to most narrative videos before it.