Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
One convention that we have followed is including an artist performance in the form of lip syncing. The shots we included were mainly made up of close-ups. we shot them from various angles to provide interest and differentiation in otherwise similar shots. To add to the shots we used some camera movement in some parts of the lip syncing, matching the pace of the music to tie them together. We included the lip syncing to help the audience connect and recognise the artist. After all, a music video is a form of advertisement so being able to recognise the artist is essential if it is to work in promoting other aspects of the artists work.
We kept the performance scenes very basic. There were no band/instruments or extra backing dancers included in the video. This was intentional, after looking at the artists existing work and similar artists in the same genre we realised that these were not often included in there products. This follows convention ans also adds towards building a star persona.
One convention we challenged was to include a narrative in the video, or to have the video playing in any form of chronological order. As many music videos do have a narrative often following the narrative in the song itself, we felt that our song worked well without. The song itself didn't have much of a narrative and we felt that by having one in the video wouldn't be an accurate representation of the song, which is what we are trying to do.
Another convention we followed was to have an actress separate to the artist as the subject/physical representation of the lyrics. We decided not to have anything connecting the actress and the artist, this way we could take a different approach to the second part of the video. Because of the lyrics of the song being about being different, we wanted to include something different in the video, we contemplated not showing the actresses face throughout the entire video. This is a method we have used before in our thriller opening sequences we created last year. It worked really well for us in that creating an element of mystery to the character and to keep the audience intrigued. We decided to use this in the music video and I'm really pleased with the result.
A convention we have developed/sort of followed but not a lot was to match the visuals to the lyrics. Obviously the lip syncing matches the lyrics but when looking at the shots on the beach with the actress not many of the shots even relate to the lyrics. One shot in particular had a reference to one another, its around the time where the line "i'm so scared" is sung that we cut to a low close up tracking shot of the actress waist down running down the beach in slow motion. We did this as if to say she was running away. Apart from this shot none of the rest of the video has any strong connections to the lyrics. However, when initially researching music videos we noticed that in many cases the video never matches the lyrics and the visuals are often very different to reality but being a music video it didn't seem to raise as many questions as if they didn't have to make sense.
Another convention we followed was to cut on the beat. Cutting on the beat provides the video with more of a flow and makes it feel less disjointed. This technique is used throughout the whole video but might be hard to notice as that is the plan, if its done well you shouldn't be able to notice it. One particular part of the video makes it easier to notice, nearer to the end of the song its the last few shots of the actress running down the beach we cut many shorter clips together in a short space of time. Clips got shorter and shorter as the musics pace picked up.
Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Q3: What have you learned form your audience feedback?
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