Evaluation Question 1

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

Here are 9 stills from my video that i feel hold importance in delivering a theme, message or to help the narrative.

This first still is from one of the singers parts, conventionally the live action sequence. You can see from the first still that this is just the singer, no hint of a band, instead he’s placed in front of a town scene. This is the same all the way through the video, no complete band shot all together just the singer and as you can see form the second still it’s the same for the instrumental solos. This goes against the conventions of a generic rock music video where we would see a band performing to a live audience, this is replaced in my video with the performers being shown separately as this is the general theme of the video (Being individual, on your own). The performances echoes the narrative of the video, maybe to echo the narrative more at the end when the characters come together we should have seen the whole band together as well.

This still shows many different people all together singing the chorus, again this was filmed with all of the performers singular and then I edited them together on Adobe After Effects to bring them all together and as they are singing the chorus line “Come together” it is a good example of relating the video to the lyrics. I tried to get a mix of people to get involved because having a diverse mix of people I felt would reinforce the point behind the shot.

This is a close up of my mouth saying the “Shoot me” line. The purpose of this shot is to add a little bit of diversity into the video, I felt that if the whole person was seen singing this line with it being such a small, quick line it would lose emphasis so with this framing I feel that it creates emphasis on the line. The style of this shot leans more to indie style music videos (which is the music I listen to so is probably where I got the influence from) than that of a traditional rock video; so in that sense I’ve deviated from conventions of a rock video and taken a style from a different genre of music.

This shot, is very stylized I feel and I thin isn’t something that you would see in a traditional rock music video. Obviously the instrument in shot would be in a rock video but not in this way. I think that if it was it would be as it was without the effect, but the way I have the effected the hi-hat is more conventional of a pop video. The effect really adds a lot to what I think would be quite a plain shot and I like the diversity that this style of shot brings to my video overall.

This shot is all effects based, it is something that I brought in to add that look of the retro era, and with the colours that were produced it really does give that sense of old. It was something like this that I included to add something that would cause a sort of “nostalgia” seeing as the song the music video is for isn’t from that recent a time. So I think although it has again not followed the conventions of a traditional rock video that it is important to the video because it reminds us of the time the song was originally from.

This still is taken from the beginning of the music video, where we don’t know the character, so the framing of the shot allows us to see just what he’s doing but not who he is, which creates an air of mystery about the character, makes him an enigma. With traditional rock music videos mainly consisting of a live performance having a narrative straight from the beginning of the video wouldn’t be something normally seen. Again I think I would have to say that despite having a traditional rock bands song I have deviated into modern rock and indie music videos style.

This shot is key in the narrative as it is the moment the two characters meet and “come together” like the songs title and chorus line say. The framing of this shot allows us to see both the characters coming from opposite directions and meeting in the middle . We see only them in the shot which is important as there is no other distractions and we can focus on the moment they meet. This is a turning point in the narrative which is needed to give the video that context.

This still is a split screen from near the end of the video, where it is like a montage of their moments together but this split screen is like a memory of when they were alone, but also a subconsciously towards each other. This type of effect is used a lot in modern music video’s and is quite a basic but effective tool and id say is another way I have gone against the traditional rock music video conventions.

Overall then I think I have challenged the conventions of a traditional rock video with my production and have been influenced by more modern rock and indie music videos. With the complete lack of a live performance is where I have stepped away from traditional rock videos the most and if anything have taken a step in the direction of pop music which I don’t think is necessarily a wrong thing to do because The Beatles covered many genres of music during their time and although being most commonly tagged as a traditional rock band did have other dimensions to their music. So by me dipping into other genres of music for influence it makes also gives my video that other dimension that The Beatles had in their music.