Evaluation Question 1

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

Which Videos were you influenced by and why?

Andrew Gooodwin gathered that music videos do not follow the traditional structure of TV/film. Some of his ideas are illustrated in this Calvin Harris video for his song Feel So Close.  Therefore some of the features of our video are unconventional and we drew inspiration from this video.

We used similar camera edits to show the nature of the characters backgrounds e.g. focusing on key elements of the costume like the shoes of the characters, as seen in the gif you can see that the editing is focusing of the characters clothes and we felt it important to so something similar in our video as this helps show the backgrounds of the characters regional identity. In our music video we made sure that specific items of clothing were relatable to the characters surroundings, for example of the the characters, similar to the boy in this gif, is wearing Doc Martens and a denim jacket. Doc Martens are associated with punk/ urban/ city culture, which is the theme of our music and the video whilst the supporting character in our video was wearing a pladue shirt wrapped around her waste, making reference to the youthful urban 90's trend and Converse trainers which are also recognised with teenagers and casual informal apparel. 

               

We used text to overlay the motion of the music video similar to that of this Calvin Harris video. By doing so we broke the conventions of a normal music video as this a replicating the use of title cares which is common in TV/Film but not music videos. We felt that because this is used in many Rap/Hip-Hop genre music videos that in this case it worked and made our video interesting.

(Examples of title card used in TV Series the O.C. and Film American Hustle)

(Example of title cards used in Music Videos- Beyonce- Drunk In Love and Justin Timberlake- TKO)

(Use of title card in our video)

We were also influenced by the use of mis en scene and interaction withe the camera in the rapper Kanye West's video for his song All Of The Lights. We thought the use of sunglasses in the video added a sense of curiosity to the protagonist so we gave both our artists in our group XO a pair of personalised sunglasses, also keeping them cool and fresh as sunglasses have been associated with celebrities in pop culture more specifically rappers so in that's sense our artist would be relateable with this trend.

Also the still camera shots of the estates captures the rural life of the characters in the video so we also showed still shots of Brick Lane where we filmed some of the video as there was a lot of graffiti art, as well as embankment as London is the hometown of our group and in this area we were able to show iconic landmarks such as the London Eye and London Bridge to make it obvious to a global as well as local audience where our group come from and what city they are representing.

The use of base tracks in this video are very effective and add emphasis to the fast pace of the video, this was effective and good to use in our video as it was also quite fast paced and matched the energy of the song. 

(Screenshots of location stills)

 (This was also evident in the Feel so Close Video which used a form of synergy incorporating the title of the song with the graffiti art in the video also keeping intact with theme of youth as the characters are teenagers in this part of the video)

(Example of rapper Kanye West's interaction with the camera linking to Andrew Goodwin's theory of the Star Image-A lot of the time the artist will be very interactive with the camera looking straight down the lens this helps the audience identify with the artist. We felt it important for both the rapper and the singer in our group to do this as its more entertaining for the viewer and adds personality to the artists. )

Did you decide to challenge the conventions of the genre for some reason?

We were also influenced by the use of effects in the video. Throughout the video there is a use of a flicker effect, we incorporated this effect into out video as we felt it made it more interesting and gave the video more dimension diversity. This illustrates Carol Vernallis's theory of music videos having specific editing which differentiates from TV and Films conventional editing styles. Whilst we took inspiration from Kanye Wests video we also felt it important to look at the videos of the artist song we chose in out case it was singer Jessie J and we found the same effect used in her video for her debut song Do It Like A Dude. as seen in  the video bellow it is used several times but we specifically liked the parts which cut to her lips and decided to interpret it in our video.  

(Use of effect in Jessie J video)

     

How We Did It:

(Final edit in our video)

Digipacks&Advertisements which influenced images and style of final Digipack&Advert:

I looked at Rihanna's Digipack for her album Loud

The image and the album is carried out in all aspects of the Digipack. The inside is a stretched image of the artist laying in roses staying true to the red/flower like theme whilst the CD has an image of a rose incorporated into it.

I liked the idea of the Digipack outside and inside not straying to far from each other. My these was graffiti and street style. The front has a clear image of the artist like that of the Loud cover and a continued pattern of a brick wall on the front and back with graffiti style art illustrating the title and spine. My inside is slightly different but the repeating pattern of the album name resembles graffiti whilst the inside image features graffiti art in the background. I liked that Rihanna's CD had a rose inside of it so I incorporated and X into mine so that the CD would appear as an X and an O symbolising the name of the duo.

Like that of the 'Loud' advert mine has the album cover followed by reviews and where to buy the album.