Evaluation- Part A: video analysis By charlotte perkins

Question 1 : In what ways does your media product use, develop & challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?

For my media project, I chose to produce a music video. The song me and my work partner chose to produce a music video for was The Script’s ‘If You Ever Come Back’My music video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOslz8LQwnU Before producing our music video, we had to research other music videos and artists and find out what the codes and conventions of real media products like music videos are. In order to do this, during our research stage I created a PowerPoint highlighting all of the codes and conventions via Slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/smcmediastudies/charlottes-what-is-a-music-video The main conventions of a music video are:> Plenty of varying shots of the artist performing. (long shot, close up, low angel ect..)

> Main stream music videos are often accompanied by a narrative within the music video.

>There should be a feeling of Voyeurism created in order to allow the fans to feel slightly more connected on a personal level with the artist.

>There should be relation between the lyrics and the visuals.

How my media product is similar to a real product Here is a real example of a music video that inspired us in the production of my music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMihKmoYfe8&ob=av2e (The Script- Nothing)

Things that inspired us in this music video:At 1:27 there is a medium close up of the artist with a flickering light on his face, we recreated this shot.

We also liked the shot of the band walking over a bridge in Dublin at night. We originally were using a photograph of the golden gate bridge as an attempt to recreate a similar shot, however, as our artist brand image was ‘average English indie boy’ we felt using an English landmark like Tower Bridge was more appropriate, because we could not travel to London, we used an image from Google and used green screen to make my artist look like he was in front of Tower bridge.

We also liked how the scripts music video had many different locations visible in the music video, so we tried also to use plenty of different locations by the use of green screen.

The Scripts music video My music video

How is my music video different?…Although we used ‘Nothing’ as a base idea for our music video, our is different and challenged the codes and conventions for a music video.Our music video has no shots of the artist or band members playing any instruments, whereas in ‘Nothing’ the other two members are seen playing guitar and drums

Our music video is 90% green screen and about 10% location shots, whereas the real product ‘Nothing’ is most, if not all location shots.

Also, because real mainstream media products are more likely to have a larger budget, they can afford things like underwater shots used in ‘Nothing’, we didn’t really have a budget so these kinds of special effects were out of our league.

Secondary Genre:The secondary genre of my media product id Indie (indie pop/ rock). The key features of the indie pop rock style are:Main focal point of music being either vocals, acoustic or electric guitarThe camera angles used are different, the camera often doesn’t move the same way as most general mainstream music videos doClothes will probably look something like this :

Lyrics are either long extended metaphors or about an ex. “If she sees how much im hurting, she’ll take me back for sure” – The script - Nothing

Overall style appearance shouldn't look forced or like the individual is trying too hard.

Allot of indie artists themselves don’t actually appear in their music videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd-A-iiPoLg&ob=av2e Iron and wine- Naked as we came

Real indie pop/ rock artists such as Ed Sheeran use many metaphors in his songs. For example from the song Fire Alarms. “The rain wont stop fallin’, its harder than before. This car keeps on stallin’, pedal to the floor.” this is a metaphor for a relationship he has/ or had with someone. Its not necessarily a relationship with with a girlfriend, it could have been with a family member or a close friend.

How my music video uses these conventions:The lyrics. The lyrics to the music video I produced fit the indie style as they are about an emotional guy who is not over his ex and also have hidden metaphors within. Eg:“And by leaving my door open, im risking everything I own. Threes nothing I can loose in a break in that you haven't taken.”From these lyrics above it is clear that the artist who wrote them was clearly emotionally upset, and the use of the metaphor of leaving open his door and loosing things in a break in is very clever as it actually convery his true emotions. The door refers to his heart and loosing things in a break in is in reffereance to the fact he could have no possesions but loosing her is more painful than the distress of being robbed. The style Although on the previous slide I stated what indie fashion should be like and my artist in the music video does not really look indie is due to the fact that the original person we were planning to use for our music video was not available on the day of the shoot. We had an outfit planned out for him to wear, however, this did not happen. The artist we did end up using however not looking 100% like he was an indie artist, did not took too bad as he was wearing a band T-shirt and a chunky watch. Band T’s are often a common indie trait and therefore keeps the convention slightly.

The CameraIn my music video, we kept the indie convention of having stationary camera shots. Because most music videos that make their way into the charts have camera shots that move around to create a sense of dancing with the music, the indie style of music video breaks this convention up. Either by having all stationary shots, one continuous shot ( E.g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd-A-iiPoLg&ob=av2e) or by being animated, so that the music video distracts from the artist, focusing purely on narrative.

How my music video challenges these conventions.>My music video challenges the style (clothing) of indie music videos because my artist does not dress as would be expected by an indie artist. However, as explained on the previous slide, this was not planned.

>There are no shots in my music video of anyone playing a musical instrument. This challenges the conventions of the indie genre as within indie music, more focus is places on the vocal and the musical ability of the artist rather than the appearance. In my music video I have switched this around so that there is more focus on who the artist is rather than the musical ability as the whole music video more or less is close up / medium close ups of my artist.

>The way my music video has been edited together also challenges the indie convention. Instead of having either one continuous shot, or a few different shots. I have edited it together to resemble a more mainstream pace. Using many different shots from different locations. This challenges indie music videos as many have one single coontinuous shot.E.g- OK Go! Here it goes again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA