Evaluation question 1

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

I will be using the following nine frames to show how typical or not my music video is, comparing them to conventions of real media products in other music videos of the same genre.

First off, I will look at the use of titles in my work. I stuck to typical conventions of music videos here, as they normally display the name of the band, song title and album title at the beginning or all the way through the song. My titles are white to stand out against the background, and are a plain font to fit into any companys network such as 4music and MTV. As you can see from the above picture some TV music channels have their own font, so my titles would have to be changed to fit into these.

When looking at setting I found Bombay Bicycle Club liked to use similarly large locations as mine in one of their videos. These large open spaces are interesting and make the videos look richer, typical music video conventions of wanting to be rich and own a lot of land. In my video however the characters are seen destroying these once nice buildings, adding to the rock and roll feeling of smashing things up, but with more of a story behind it. The location in our video is key to the whole video, as is Bombay Bicycle Club's, and really establishes the whole concept of being a Fraud and destroying things, fighting back from society. Both videos have an element of mystery to them, due to location. The places could be anywhere, hidden away in the countryside, and this relates to places the viewer have found that they think are secret from everyone else.

Costumes and props in our video challenge typical conventions of music videos, throught the use of theme and use of masks. The closest example of a video similar to ours in this context is Arctic Monkeys, who film a video of clowns fighting gangsters, all in typical outfits. In our video we use masks to hide the identity of the people smashing up the housing estate, to show that this could be anyone, however other music videos use outfits to establish a certain type of person, for example clowns. We use props such as poles and a car, but cars are usually used in music videos in the indie genre to show characters travelling, instead of how rich they are.

When using camera angles and editing we kept very much within conventions of a typical indie music video. Editing was straight cuts to keep the video flowing, as are most other music videos, instead we decided to use special effects in the actual clips and not on transitions. Camerawork was also similar to other videos we studied, and we used a lot of shots such as over the shoulder and close ups. We stuck to typical conventions when using camerawork and editing as the target audience are already used to this style of filming, and the actions in the video suit the music played.

When looking at narrative/story and the opening of the video I think ourvideo has a good narrative and opening that reflects that. The opening encourages the viewer to keep looking as the characters identity is originally kept secret, and the use of him walking on a journey again encourages the viewer to keep watching. This same technique is used in Bombay Bicycle Clubs videos, and a chase keeps the viewer entertained, as does the journey in ours. The narrative and story in my video is strong I think, however this is not typical of music videos to include such a strong storyline, but I think this attracts the audience to keep watching.

The genre of our music is Indie, due to our choice of song - Frauds by Scarlet Harlots. Indie videos from other famous bands vary in content, but lots of examples in my research and planning contained elaborate masks, costumes and outfits. These bands include Arctic Monkeys and Bombay Bicycle Club, and these artists had the most successful videos. We stuck to these typical conventions and made crude masks, however one convention we didn't stick to was showing the band playing instruments. We wanted the music video to be separate from the band in the way of it being a separate story, just like in the Flourescent Adolescents by Arctic Monkeys.

As in all videos we needed a key character/characters to base the video around; so chose five masked people that could represent anyone, that would gradually enter the video and become a group before smashing up the derelict village. Typical indie videos focus on one main character, but in order for us to show that the "Frauds" concept was spreading we needed a lot more annoymous characters. The star image of our video would be the guy in the red mask on the left, the iconic roughly made mask hiding the mans true identity. This is something no other video in this genre has done so far.

 The main representation in my video is that of teenagers/youths. Our video presents young people as dangerous, violent and all as part of a gang, although we know this is all to do with feeling out of place. This loss of identity promotes the video as being aimed at teenagers, particularly as we present them as powerful using worm eye view shots. These representations are typical of the media, to display youths as dangerous, however we do this as part of our storyline to show how frustrated young people are with their boring everyday lifes.

Finally the relationship between lyrics and visuals were very important. The song Frauds is all about people looking the same, but everyone feeling different. Our video shows this rebellion and difference people feel about themselves by them coming together and letting out their anger and frustration. The costumes reflect their annoymity and unity, and certain shots and actoins reflect the exact lyrics. For example, in the third verse the shot on the left is shown whilst the words "I'm sick of all your name dropping" plays. This type of refection of lyrics is typically in indie videos, to reinforce certain bits of the song to the audience.