EVALUATION Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

QUESTION ONE.

First, let's look at the forms and conventions of music videos.  Carol Vernallis, who is the author of Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context (2004) and also a journalist, studied editing and camerawork in music videos. Her theory is that music videos have edits that are more frequent than in film or TV. The usual rules of 'continuity' editing usually found in TV are broken to bring attention to what is on the screen. Furthermore, she believes that many edits in videos stand out as disjuncture, which is a music video that has little or no link to the lyrics in the song. They also have a rhythmic basis closely connected to the beat of the song.

Our first media product, the music video, was influenced by a variety of different music videos from a wide range of genre's from pop to dubstep. We followed different conventions and forms from each video. I have made a list of all the music that has influenced us. I believe we have also challenged the conventions of the dubstep genre, as we want our artist to be the next big thing - like the Here is The first video. Please, watch from the start to 1:15, so you get an idea of which part of the video I am talking about. 

PIXIE LOTT - ALL ABOUT TONIGHT

This song is from a pop genre. We also chose the camera work and the editing techniques used  in the beginning as it helps the audience to establish the singer as an artist and someone to be admired. Pixie Lott, the singer, looks directly at the camera. This increases the emotional power of the vid due to the intensity in her stare. Also, it involves the viewer in the performance, which is what you would expect from a music video. Moreover, I think Pixie Lott represents female beauty (due to her make up and attractive features) which is something that fulfils the 'male gaze' which is Laura Mulveys theory on modern music videos. It is also a look that many females try to emulate. Furthermore it helps to promote them and get consumers to purchase her music and possibly for a tour or concert.

MS of Pixie Lotts face.

CU of Pixie Lotts face..

CU of Pixie Lott's face, along with the layering effect.

As you can see, Pixie Lott engages with the audience by looking directly at the camera as if she were looking at the viewer. This gives the viewer a personal connection with the artist. Pixie Lott has also used the layering effect, which is when you layer two clips on top of each other. This is quite an obvious edit which gives the video a nice visual texture and I think it makes a connection between the mise en scene of the bright city and Pixie Lott, which is what we tried to emulate using the beautiful architecture of the Barbican in our music video layered over my face.

MS of Zena's face.

MLS of Zena.

CU of Zena (myself!)  in our music video.

...Just like in Pixie Lott's video, our video follows the conventions of music videos as it has repeated shots of the artist, bringing her to the viewers attention and makes her someone of importance. Another thing we borrowed from the video is the dance routine, as we felt we needed performance in our video so draw the audience in. Also we wanted to express our lyrics through dance as we wanted to keep our video theme of disjuncture, but we didn't want to turn it into a literal story.

Pixie Lott and her male backing dancers.

GIF showcasing the different shots of Pixie Lott.

This is Pixie Lott and her backing male dancers. I believe this dancing is quite sexual and has more of a party mood to it - as in the focus is more on Pixie Lotts body movements. However... 

Eleni and Prince dancing in our music video in the Barbican.

GIF showcasing the shots we used in our music video.

...We used one make (Prince) and one female (Eleni) for our dancers, as we wanted to keep it simple and not so 'popish' like All About Tonight'. We also used obvious edits in out music video. In Final Cut Pro, there is an effect called 'Blur and Distort' which makes movements follow after each other. To give a clearer idea, here is a screencast of the effect in motion

 The dance moves are futuristic and unique with not much emphasis on 'sexual male gaze' moves like how Pixie Lott Dances. However, we did use the same shots such as LS shots and CU shots to add variety to the dancing, so it didnt appear static. Something we could have improved though was how much we cut into the dancing. I don't think we used enough variety of shots, we used mostly LS  and MS whilst Pixie Lott uses a a larger variety of shots which gives more interest in the video.

Moreover, this was a major influence, even though All About Tonight is a pop song and our song was Guilt by Nero (a dubstep group). This genre of dubstep has no bounds to the music video; it is usually a disjuncture, which is a music video that has little or no link to the lyrics in the song. An example of this would be our next video that influenced us...

NERO - PROMISES

Please watch the video from 0:22 to to 1:45 so you get an idea of Alana and my inspirations from her visual style e.g her actions and expressions and costume. From this video, our main influence was Alana, who is the female vocalist you see in the video. We loved aspects of the video such as the way she is kind of mysterious in the video as she only appears in its a few times, with the other people in the video taking up most of the screen time with the action. We took a bit of this mysteriousness, but we included our artist Zena more in our music video as she is the main artist, unlike Alana who is only the vocalist for Nero. Also, we loved her hand movements in the video - that was a big inspiration for how we wanted to portray our character.

MS of Alana the vocalist in the video doing hand movements.

Alana is looking quite intensely at the camera whilst moving her hands, which gives her quite a light feminine feel.

MS of Zena doing similar hand movements.

We borrowed the hand movements and also her attire of the white dress, as it connotes purity and innocence which is the exact aura we wanted for our artist, Zena. Alana's eyes are quite hypnotising as well, so we adapted this and gave our artist Zena fierce, striking silver eyemake up to wear, to really finish off the mise-en-scene. 

Another example of an obvious edit we used is the slow motion and reverse effect. Please, watch a small video I made below I made in Windows Movie Maker explaining and comparing the usage of slow motion between our music video and our influences.

In addition to this video, We also focused a lot on the pace of the video - we made sure the edits cut to the beat, especially during the build up of our songs, for example in the video Nero - Guilt...

NERO - GUILT

Please, watch this video from 1:00 to 2:05 to see how Nero have constructed the edits so that they match up to the fast paced beats of the chorus. This inspired us to do the same thing for our video. IT did prove difficult, because at times we didn't have enough footage to make it look complex and exciting enough, However I do like our finished product, it is interesting and pleasing to the eye. Here I have embed our video, Please listen to the chorus from 1:16 till the end compare how we used it in ours. Also, we loved the city dark city theme so much that we decided to add a night theme we filmed a scene from Central London at night and added it to the break. The password is student.

EMELI SANDÉ - HEAVEN

Zena singing in some weeds. 

CU of Emeli Sandé.

We put an effect to brighten the video, much like how Emeli Sandé's video is. We also took the idea of being in a field of plants/flowers as it is a nice theme and gives our video variety. Also, plants and flowers and quite a feminine feel, so it fits my artist well.

So overall, I believe that we did stick to the normal conventions and forms of media products, in terms of our music video.However, I believe we challenged it in two ways - one, making a female dubstep artist the main focus of the video which stands different to other dubstep artists. Dubstep is a genre in which there are no bounds to how you choose to represent it. It is an underground fairly new genre, but the way it has changed over the years means the mixing of genres, for example Katy B is a mix of dubstep and  and hip hop. This allows artists to represent the genre of dubstep in different ways in their music videos, unlike hip hop videos in which there are usually 'hip hop honeys' in the music video's.


Here is a screencast of me explaining the links between my digipak, advert and other dubstep artists digipaks and adverts. I will also be discussing how well they fit within the conventions and theme of dubstep and if my product includes the necessary things for an advert to have. Turn your volume up and make this full screen!!!

Until then!

Stephanie