evaluation question 1 (draft 1)

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

In this evaluation I will explain how we have used, developed and challenged the conventions of an already existing media product. I will give analyst of how we compare our video to others both in our genre and other genres that we have taken inspiration from.

In our video we have used typical music video conventions, we have tried to stick to typical conventions within our genre, which is indie. For our planning we have watched lots of music videos in preparation for making our own, we have taken some key elements that we have found that most of the videos include in their own. One of the things we got from the research was that most music videos within the indie genre are performance videos; therefore it was important for us to have a performance video as this would stick in with our genre of choice. This is why throughout the song we have our artists singing throughout, even though we don't have any instruments in the video it doesn't matter because there are many performance videos in the indie genre where they don't have any instruments in their playing either. One of the performance videos that we originally took inspiration from was rat boy sign on, these used blow up instruments which we thought could look quite good at first, however with the video we have done I don't think that it would have it in with it. Another convention that we have taken from watching other videos within the genre is that we found pretty much all of them used a free hand camera, however not all of the music videos used free hand for the whole song as they included a few shots where they would have sued a tripod. We also picked up on the fact that a lot of indie genre music videos are based in more of an urban setting, so because of this we thought that we would do most of our filming in the more run down bits of Leicester because the backdrop would fit in more. We also visited some abandoned buildings/ areas as these featured a lot of graffiti, which helped to portray the urban aesthetic that went wanted to represent in our video. We had also seen that other music videos that have included rooftop scenes, one of the music videos that we have taken inspiration from for this was King Krules Easy Easy, we thought that this would be a good way to show the city which would help give the video an urban feeling to it. The next bit of inspiration that we have taken form many videos were the train station shots, we took inspiration from the original sticks and stones video and King Krules Easy Easy again for this. We thought that the train station fitted within the genre conventions and made therefore we decided to have some shots of the trains. The way we have kept our video conventional throughout is by using our actual artist for the video; pretty much every conventional performance music video has their artists performing in it. according to Sven carillons theory we have kept to conventions because we have singing for most of the video, this would portray a conventional performance video in which ours is. There are a few unconventional ones that would have different people performing the video instead of the actual artists.

Our music video also challenges a lot of the traditional music convention. The genre Indie, which we have chosen is a genre known for being different and individual from all the other genres and conventions, it is known for indie to use ideas from other genres however they have their own twist on their products. Lots of indie artists are low budget and isn’t afraid to show this as a lot of vintage clothing is featured within the genre, which is different to all other conventions. We have used tried to use vintage clothing, which helps to portray the genre better. The backdrop that we have used for a large part of our video includes walls that have graffiti over them, especially in the choruses when fin is performing this is visible. This challenges typical music video conventions, as there aren’t really nay indie music videos that use backdrops like these. We though that the backdrop on these walls looked good with the lighting it also supported the colours that our performers were wearing and made them stick out, allowing the audience to appreciate the aesthetics of the shots more. One of the biggest challenges we have done is used two singers even though in the actual song it is a single artist this goes against pretty much all conventions, however the way we have done it is that our performers are singing different parts of the song. We have got Alfie singing the verse and then Fin singing the chorus as we thought that the voices sounded different enough to have both performers. One band that we had taken inspiration from for this is the cribs as we think that they sound very similar however they are two separate singers. There are some videos that have many people singing even though it’s only the one artist however they would usually use people that are quite obviously not the artist, however we have used two performers to make it look more like a band. We also found when we came to performing that our band members looked a lot better together therefore we decided we would have the both of them. The digger bucket scene is also unconditional especially for our genre, as we haven’t seen any other videos where they use one. 

It is important that we develop conventions as our genre is mainly related around the young and the new, therefore it is often that conventions are made. In our music video we have tried to develop these conventions and put our own twist soon them. One example of how we developed a convention was with the fire scene, we took inspiration from the Ratboy video Laid-back they used the fire scene as well however we develop the idea by using the light of the fire in different shots where we had our performs facing the fire and the fire gave off good lighting for our filming. We used a digger bucket for me of the shots near the fire as the lighting was good and when it was raised it care an air of messing around kind of thing which we wanted to bring across to our viewers. 

In conclusion I think that we have use developed and challenged typical music video conventions. I think this is important as with challenging the conventions it shows a new and modern twist on the average music video. It's important to use the conventions so it proves that we can make a good typical music video, and shows that we know what we actually need to do. However it is also important to develop the music video as it shows creativity that we can come up with our own ideas instead of just copying other videos on the whole.