1. Holly Taylor
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
For my music video, I was influenced by already real media products in particular with the theme of the
narrative I created for my music video as well as with the overall style and characters in my video. For
preparation for my music video, I analysed already existing music videos in order to understand the
already existing conventions of music videos I intended to take inspiration from. Aspects in my music
video such as camerawork and characters are typical conventions of music videos and so therefore
conforms to typical forms, however, there are aspects of my music video that challenge forms and
conventions of music videos such as editing techniques and narrative style which differs from the
narrative I took inspiration from. I decided upon conforming to typical conventions of previous media
products by including an introduction to my music video. This is similar to The Smiths' music videos, such
as for This Charming Man where the title appears at the beginning in a bold white font and fades through
the editing where they include the title of the song as the introduction this is to establish the name of the
song straight away so it is easily recognisable for audiences and can attract an already established target
audience of fans of The Smiths.
However, I challenged forms and conventions by using an editing technique in order to make my
introduction title dissolve, this was in order to link the title towards the underlying theme of a relationship
breakdown and how easily relationships can be dissolved and so conventional forms of media products
have been challenged.
2. Holly Taylor
For the setting of my music video, I analysed three other music videos before
deciding upon settings to include in my music video. In previous music videos
that I analysed, I established that multiple settings are often used in music
videos in order to maintain a visually enticing appeal to the music video.
However, in some of the music videos I analysed, a constant setting is used,
such as in the music video for Take That's Said it All. In this music video, the
only setting featured throughout is the setting of a performance stage and
backstage of this setting, yet the video is still engaging for the audience. And
so, throughout my music video, I decided upon using the main two settings of a
park and also a house intended to be the character of Alex's home. I decided
upon just using two main settings which challenge yet conform to typical
conventions of music videos. As although I have featured more than one
location, I have limited my choice of settings to just two, this is in order to still
appear visually engaging for the audience yet more realistic which is how I
intended my music video to appear. I chose to use the setting of an empty
isolated park when the character of Alex was alone to make the feeling of
isolation become evident as well as a cold looking colour palette with a frosted
look to the setting. On the other hand, I chose the locations of a warm colour
palette home in order to establish the happy emotions the characters felt when
they were together in their relationship.
For the narrative of my music video, I
broke typical conventions but also
conformed to their conventions. My
narrative took inspiration from the
narrative of Fight Club, as I decided upon
using the theme of events rewinding to reveal the fact that the
whole events that were previously depicted at the first half of
the music video were imagined by the male
protagonist, this challenges typical
conventions as this
style of narrative isn't
typically used in indie music videos. Through the special effects
of my music video I changed the colour effect over the whole
clips, to a blue colour, this was in order to establish the colour
conventions of power and create a dreamlike effect for the
music video. I used the colour effect of black and white
effectively to challenge conventions of music videos by using the black and white
filter as a symbol of a moment of clarity for the main protagonist before the events
are rewound to reveal how the events were a figment of his imagination. I chose
the rewind transition to challenge typical conventions of music videos as this
transition is not typically featured in music videos and therefore makes my video appear unique.
The two characters that feature in my music video are typical of the indie genre, as the two main
characters are female and male teenagers as shown through the establishing opening shot of Alex at the
beginning of the music video this therefore conforms to the typical conventions of the indie genre.
Throughout the scenes featured in my music video, the couple are
shown to be doing typical things teenage couples usually do such as
watching films together and taking a selfie
together.
