Evaluation Question One

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

In my research of the conventions of a music video I came across Andrew Goodwin’s theory.  Goodwin has identified a number of conventions that  music videos follows. They are:

     -       There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.

-       There is a relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.

-       Genres are complex and diverse in terms of music video style and iconography.

-       There are likely to be intertextual references, either to other music videos or to films and TV texts, these provide further gratification and pleasure for the viewers/fans.

My media product is specifically made for Pop genre, and is aimed at a specific target audience as our main artist is a young female. 


         My group decided to develop the conventions of a real media product rather than change them, we decided to use a lot of simular ideas from existing media products as we thought that this would be more effective.  It would be another take on a well known video.  However we did decided that the video can not be too alike an existing video because then the audience will automatically compare it.


Mise en scene

Our video starts off with an establishing shot of the sun in between the trees.  This is similar to the image taken from Adele's video 'Someone Like You'.  We decided to do some of our performance in Golders Hill Park because we wanted our video to be an open area so that we could use as much space as possible.
However in Adele's video they use no colour.

 Our video also uses a Mid Shot of the Artist on the bridge, this is also the same as in Adele's video where there is a establishing shot of the scenery.  We used black and white images to portray that the artist is having flash backs and this made it clear to see with a different use of colour.  We also decided to use Alexandra Palace, because we got an amazing view from some points and this was useful for trying to portray a flash back of our artist and her    boyfriend spending the day together.

  Our final shot that is exactly the same to her video is a Mid shot of the artist looking out over south bank, we took this image from her video because we thought it was effective for the lyrics of our song choice.  We also chose to film at south bank because it represented her letting go of the person she loves and its as though she is letting him flow away with the river.

 Costume

In the music video we then used an Long shot of our artist performing  this is just like a shot in Adele's video where she is shown in a park also performing her song.  We decided to use a casual every day costume in most of our video as we wanted to the audience to understand that our artist is simular to regular people.  The use of a big scarf and a long coat was good to portray this. as she is not dressed in big fancy clothes.

We had decided to film some of our video in Golders Hill Park because of the lay out, it is exactly the same as in Beyonce's video, we felt as though it looked good in hers and as we had the same ideas and the lyrics are telling the same sort of stories it would be good to use this, it shows both artists being confident.

 We decided to use a big dress for our artist to wear because we felt as though the lyrics were about getting over a boy and to be confident about moving on, the way that both Beyonce and our artist show off in the dress scenes portrayed that they were being confident and moving on with  their lives.






















Camera Shots

In her video she also has flash back but they show her flash backs with a distorted effect on them where as we showed ours with black and white images.  We also used the thick black frame used to show her flash backs because we felt as though it shows a "perfect" picture of a happy couple which is ironic when listening to the lyrics of the song.

We decided to use this long shot of Beyonce performing in our own music video as we think it shows off the costume really well and it conveys the artists expression in their movement and body language.

My music video uses both narrative and performance,  our story shows our artist finding out that her boyfriend has cheated on her and how upset she is, but yet how confident she is that she does not want him back, it also includes a number of flash backs to show moments in their relationship that they were happy.  We decided to use both narrative and performance because of how much we liked it in Beyonce's video "Best Thing I never had"  she goes from acting in the music video and having a wedding to singing and almost telling the story in other scenes.

 The picture above and to your right show her waiting for her boyfriend to get home, it also shows her emotions and how anxious she is for him to get home, she is also upset and angry.

These our a few screen shots from our video and it shows a flash back shown by the black and white images and the thick black frame around the images.  In the narrative this is when the artist finds out what her boyfriend has been doing behind her back.

This flashback shows a happy moment in their relationship where they are on a day out and are at a good point in their relationship.  The point of the flash backs is to show the audience how their relationship was and to either prove why their broke up or to create sympathy for the artist because they were good as a couple and it had to end because the male performer has ruined their relationship.

 We also used the performing side of a video, we thought it would be affective to use both performance and narrative to show that our artist can feel the emotion of the lyrics she's singing.  So after using flash backs throughout the video we also had performance clips through out the video this was not part of the narrative structure they just ran along side it.

 Our narrative is quite simple our artist wakes up having just broken up with her boyfriend she misses him and throughout the day we see flash backs of how they used to be, and they why they broke up, and it finishes with our artist performing and being confident and no longer caring about her ex.  Its your typical love story!

For my digipak I used four images in total, I decided not to use the same images from the video which was my original plan, I decided that because this was an album cover in real media products they don't always use the same costume for photo shoots.  These are the images I chose to use;


My group chose to edit one of our scenes just like in Beyonce's video "Best Thing I Never Had"  we chose to do this because it went straight from a flash back to her performing and this looked effective.

I chose this one for my advertisement because I wanted it to be a long shot of the artist.  I also thought that her pose was very confident and she had a similar dress on as in the video and that the audience would recoginise this and put the two together.

 I then chose this picture for my front cover of my digipak as it shows the artists face and its generally a beautiful picture of her,  its easy for the audience to know who it is as well.  It again uses the big dress, although you can't see it fully you know that its the same and then when you see the advertisement the audience will know that they are refering to this album and not another.

I used both of these images for because of the angle. I kept the picture in colour as I thought the sunset was affective and the way the artists hair falls against her top with the sun behind looked more attractive.

 I thought that as the this picture is the CD housing and the one on the left is the back panel they would look nice against each other.  I also changed the picture to black and white so that my digipak sticked to the three colour format.  Also the picture looked more sufisticated in black and white.

In my digipak I chose one font and used this the whole way through, I decided to use Bell MT I thought that it was clear yet slightly more intresting than Arial.  I also believe that it shows off our genre and the writing is quite like an indie style which was the look we were going for.  This is my final digipak and advertisement;

I would say that we took most of our ideas from Adele's "Someone Like You". Rhianna's "We Found Love" and Beyonce's "Best Thing I Never Had".  Have a watch of them.....