Media Evaluation In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Forever Young Fire in Your Eyes D.B Records

When choosing our song, we wanted to do something different than the other groups, we didn’t want to be safe with our choice of song- that is why we chose Fire in Your Eyes by Chase and Status Feat. Maverick Sabre. Doing this song has allowed us to be creative in our work and really go that extra mile in trying something out of our comfort zone. Once we chose the song we had to think of bands/artists that represent the genre of music that we had chosen. Bands such as Swedish House Mafia and Chase and Status really appealed to us because they have a great image, that we were looking for, and also they represent what we were looking for- which was; fun, nights out and generally just people having a good time.

After we did this, we started looking at different videos to give us ideas and explore better into the Drum and Bass genre. We wanted our video to be fun and energetic.

When doing our research, we found that the majority of Drum and Bass videos are mainly concept and about ‘a night out on the town’, however some did have a narrative or performance to it. For our video we decided to combine all three, however we wanted the concept style to dominate over them. These conventions are what we followed.

When annotating our lyric sheet, this gave us a chance to write down all our ideas and too see which ones worked and which ones didn’t. It also gave us a chance to use example of Intertextual references; such as when he sings fire in your eyes, we have combined the eye and the fire with the ‘ghost’ effect this makes it seem like the fire is in the eye. This is used a lot in Drum and Bass video’s as it has a lot of meaning behind it, but it is shown in an abstract way. I think that we were successful in showing this, as the feedback we got back from our targeted audience was very positive and someone said that it “looked really good”

Intertextual Reference-“Fire in your Eyes..”

We chose to show the band singing and performing as we thought that it would add more to our video and make it more current and varied for our audience. We didn’t just want to just show our ‘warrior’ girl on a night out- it wouldn’t do the song any justice and also we would find it hard trying to fill the whole of the song and it may become boring for the audience. Looking at other drum and bass video’s they also use this convention. It was good for our group as each of us took part in filming different bits and we enjoyed filming different scenes and making it look more effective- it was difficult but we did it in the end. Following this convention of showing a host of different things in our video really emphasises the fact that our video is mainly based on the style of concept- this did make our job a little easier as we were able to film anything and put it in. Personally, I enjoyed the band filming as it allowed us to be creative in setting the stage, the lighting and using different camera angles and shots to create a good performance piece.

Our video Pendulum- Witchcraft

Our band scene’s- following the conventions of drum and bass and showing the bands in action

Our band scene’s

Pendulum’s band scenes

We chose to put in more personal shots, such as; our warrior girl walking however focusing on a few of her aspect- this then would keep the video general to anyone as we are basically talking about a girl on night out. This convention is used in my many videos when we researched them. This conventions helps keep a sense of mystery behind the warrior girl and makes us think; who is she? What is she doing? It keeps the audience guessing therefore keeping them engaged. It also adds the effect that she is on a night out and the two-shot effect may give a hint that she is having a good night out and that she may be drunk. This is what we wanted to show in our video, we wanted to show her having a good time, however we wanted to keep a sense of mystery behind her so that everyone can relate to her- this drum and bass convention help us develop this purpose successfully as the our targeted audience understood this when we did our audience feedback.

At first we decided to have two different girls- one to represent our drummer and the other to symbolise our warrior girl and looking at lots of drum and bass videos they all have used this convention. However due to snow and days off school we had to use the same warrior girl as our drummer girl- this is when we decided to challenge the conventions of drum and bass. However, for us this worked as it allowed us to use actors that were in our group making it more easier to arrange filming schedules etc.

It also worked because as a group we knew what we wanted to achieve, meaning that we didn’t have to tell another person how to act or behave. This helped us a lot as majority of our filming of the warrior girl got completed that same day. Even though we decided to challenge this convention, we think that our video looks good and that it was successful in drawing in our targeted audience. If we had to do it the other way, I think that our group would have had a lot of problems having to rely on someone else.

Drum and bass videos normally follow the concept of partying and having fun. This is a convention that we used in our music video. Without these party scenes I don’t think that our video would have been very effective as it successfully made our video fun and energetic. As we have a lot of party scenes in a club, we thought that alcohol would be a good prop to have. Before we decided to go through with this concept we had a look at different drum and bass video’s and the majority of them do have alcohol or the club scene linked to it- so we decided to put that into our video, not realising how hard it will be to film this. But thankfully one of our friends was having a party and this was a great opportunity to film this- and the footage came out great. This convention has helped us develop our theme of a night out effectively as we see her going to all these different clubs having a drink. This convention also helped us achieve the purpose of making our video general for everyone, as well as being fun and creative with it.

Our music video Prodigy- Smack my B***ch Up

The conventions of using a party scene really helped us as we were able to again show fun and energy, which is what we wanted the purpose of our music video to be.

Party scene from Pendulum- Witchcraft

Party scene from our Music Video