Thursday 26 April 2012

Evaluation Question One

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

Listening to the track I chose gave me a lot of initial ideas for my music video. These included things such as a dying relationship theme and dark, sad feelings. Therefore, I researched different videos on YouTube to try and get some inspiration. I had a guideline of what music videos I should watch due to recognising the genre of the track I chose. After analysing the music style and comparing it to other songs, I realised that the song I chose was in the alternative rock genre. Therefore I researched different alternative rock songs and watched their videos on YouTube for inspiration.



From doing this, I was also able to recognise techniques used throughout different music videos which I was then able to apply to my own product.
Conventions such as low key lighting and lip synching are two of the things that I used in my media product. From the research I did, I noticed that these are two things that commonly appear in real alternative rock music videos. The low key lighting helps to create the ‘grungy’ feel I was trying to create in my music video and is also what is used for many alternative rock music videos as this particular lighting matches the tempo and overall representation of the majority of songs of this genre.

Lip synching is another convention in my music video that is used in real alternative rock music videos. I have incorporated lip synching into my media product as this is something I wanted to include. My character lip synchs as he travels through the narrative. I thought this was a better decision rather than having clips of performance throughout the video as I felt a wholly narrative based video fitted the track more. This is one thing that challenges the conventions of an alternative rock music video since most music videos of this genre include many band performance shots. However, I believe I made the right choice here as I could’nt imagine the character of my track appearing in a band performance due to the heavy emotions that are being created and connoted. I believe a band performance would have disturbed the narrative here and would have broken the intensity. I also trust that the music is not heavy enough for a band appearance as the instruments are very subtle through most of the song.
There is a distinct mise-en-scene that is used for alternative rock music videos such as dark clothing, bearded faces and messy hair.

I have included all of these things for my character to help create the correct appearance. The bearded face and messy hair also contribute nicely to my track specifically as it is about a man with troubles in his life. Therefore it is obvious that you would expect him to look rough and untidy opposed to clean and smart.
When researching alternative rock music videos, I was very aware of the locations used. I looked at Dido ‘Here With Me’ and Foo Fighters ‘Dear Rosemary’. Both of these music videos used locations such as streets and the home environment at night. I think it is important to recognise the night time setting in these videos as it reinforces the fact that the majority of alternative rock music videos use low key lighting. I took inspiration from the locations used in the videos I looked at and decided that a dark bedroom, a street at night and a pub with low key lighting were ideal locations for me to use in my own video. These three locations are places any person would generally visit and that therefore meant I was keeping my video realistic with no performance locations such as studios.


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