Ways in which my media product uses and develops forms and conventions of real media products

 I researched and analysed many different genres of music videos to get an understanding of how these different music genres use different music videos. I gathered a variety of ideas which I could use in my music video by researching a number of different music video genres. We decided to create a music video of the ‘rock genre’ in which we wanted to both develop and challenge the usual conventions of rock genre music videos in a number of ways.

We identified that most rock genre music videos consistently have elements of band performances throughout these music videos. We decided to develop this idea with the elements of performance as it creates more realistic imagery in the music video as it would be as if you were seeing the band live in the first person point of view, and this would also help us develop our digital package consisting of a band poster.

Another convention that our music video develops through the band performance is that it portrays that the band is producing their own music with their own instruments instead of relying on music technology such as drum machines and computer made music. This is a key convention in rock genre music videos. An example of this convention which has been used in a music video is 30 Second to Mars’ music video of their song ‘Closer to the edge’ where they film their live performances throughout the world, this enforces the convention that they are self-made musicians who play their own music which they have made.

For our story line shots we decided to shoot the scenes using the hand held method which we believed enforced the conventions of the 3^rd person perspective as this made the viewer feel as if they are actually part of the scene which made it more realistic as our story line footage mainly consisted of panned location shots focusing on the characters running. The handheld footage also added a personal effect to the music video as it builds a relationship between the audience and the characters.  This does so by making it seem you are watching the music video from their perspective. A key example of a music video that uses this convention is Calvin Harris’ and Ellie Goulding’s  music video of the song ‘I need your love’ the whole music video is made up of handheld shots which are all filmed by Calvin Harris and whoever seems to pick up the camera which seems to be a smart phone. This adds to the convention of building a relationship of the characters in the music video, this gives it a very personal touch which the audience can relate to as they have filmed amateur videos and can relate.

One of the conventions that we challenged that commonly are integrated in music videos is the use of female or even male dancers to portray the band as desirable. A key example of a music video that I researched into is the music video ‘Blurred lines’ which consisted of 3 glamour models dancing throughout the music video. However we decided to challenge and avoid this aspect of music videos as we did not include this in our music video as we decided that this could cause ethical issues through the objectification of woman and it wouldn’t fit our genre of music video as this is normally a convention of male artists’ music videos. 

There are also other typical conventions of the rock genre that we did not cover in our music video as we thought it wouldn’t fit the music video. These conventions consist of the main character being portrayed as a troubled outsider or rebel (usually the singer is the main character in the music video). A key example of this ‘troubled outsider’ convention is used in the music video ‘It never ends’ by Bring me the horizon as it focuses on the main singer hovering in a disturbing way down a road. This focuses on the individual and the distress he’s going through.