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.

How we used media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages

We used a variety of different technologies throughout our music video which consisted of construction, research planning and evaluation. We started using the website youtube to look into certain music videos similar to ours and also unconventional ones just to add abit of variety to our research. We then picked out certain ideas from these videos which we thought we can corporate into our music video, this allowed us to pick out the conventions we wanted to embrace and challenge.

We then posted all our research and planning onto our blogging diaries which were on the website blog spot. We had to keep a constant diary going on in our blog to make sure we captured every detail of how we acquired our shots, costumes, props etc. We also planned our story line out for the music video by using story board templates were we listed the shots used and drew a rough version of how the shot would look like.

When it came to the actual shooting of the music video there was a large variety of technologies used. We used 2 cameras during our filming, one being the hand held sony HDV camera which we were familiar with from previously using it in our last project, we equipped it with a tripod to keep it steady for panning shots etc. our other camera that we used was my go-pro camera which was very useful for acquiring some unique shots as you could attach it to certain object such as the guitar and parts of the drum kit. Although you could not zoom in with this camera it had a very wide angle shot to it which captured a lot of the band.

My GO-PRO camera was very useful as it acquired shots that would be impossible to achieve with the standard cameras which the school issued out, shots such as the bird’s eye view shot which hovered over the drum kit from the ledge of the drama theatre, we achieved this shot by attaching the GO-PRO camera to my tripod and held it over the ledge in a secure position so it would not move around. A new technology which I had to come to terms with was my GO-PRO app which I had to come to terms with. It allows you to see everything that the camera can see and you can hit record and cut on the Iphone. This proved to be very useful as most of the shots I acquired with the GO-PRO were not hand held as the camera was attached to certain objects such as guitars, symbols and tripods.

 

 

Another technology which we used were the stage lights in the drama theatre which gave us a huge amount of choice in which how to light the stage for the band. We ended up choosing to put a spot light on each of the musicians for dramatic affect and chose not to light the back ground around them. A key example of where this is used is in the music video ‘Wake me up when September ends’ by Greenday where the lighting was very well managed as it just lit up the musicians, they also added a semi strobe light to there music video in certain break beats. We planned to replicate this however we had to cut this idea out due to time restrictions.

To acquire our backing track for the music video we had to copy the actual audio from the original music video by copying the link from youtube and used a sight which took us a long time to find that would work on a school computer, the website was called audio extractor.

When we began to start editing our music video together we used the program called Imovie in which we synced up the backing track to best fit our music video which we needed to get perfectly in time. This proved to be quite a challenge as the Imovie program would frequently misplace certain clips on its own accord making the whole music video out of time which took up copious amounts of time to correct. We also used different aspects of Imovie such as the many different effects you can use to incorporate different transitions from shot to shot such as fading them into one another. Another aspect that I found useful in Imovie was the aspect in which you can alter the image you have caught. This was very useful when we focused the camera on the lead guitarist and noticed that the lighting was noticeably different on him compared to the other musicians as the spot light had a red tint to it. We balanced this out on Imovie by altering the colour filter in that certain clip which made the light on the guitarist a normal spotlight colour. For the end of our music video where we attached the GO-PRO camera onto the symbol which gets hit and sways which gave the shot a first person feel, after this shot we faded it to black the added an animation title to the end which read out ‘Diary of Jane’ in curly gothic letters which spiralled out which we thought was a perfect ending to the music video.

After our final cut was finished we transported it to quick time so it can be viewed by the examiners. We did so by converting the file into a JPEG file so it would be easy to transport into quick time.

 

 

 

music video filming notes

We filmed our music video in 2 different locations which consisted of the school theatre where we filmed the majority of the band shots. This location was very useful to shoot in as the theatre is primarily used for school plays so we could manipulate the lighting to best suit our music video shots. we chose to stick to a typical rock music video lighting and kept the lighting fairly bright but kept it dim in places to focus on the band members, almost as if we had a spot light on each of them. The second location which made up the narrative was filmed nearby to our school which is located close to the coast line which is called the lake grounds. This location gave us a variety of shots in which we filmed a couple struggling with their relationship as they are searching for each other.

We used 2 cameras during our filming, one being the hand held sony HDV camera which we were familiar with from previously using it in our last project, we equipped it with a tripod to keep it steady for panning shots etc. our other camera that we used was my go-pro camera which was very useful for acquiring some unique shots as you could attach it to certain object such as the guitar and parts of the drum kit. Although you could not zoom in with this camera it had a very wide angle shot to it which captured a lot of the band.

Go-pro camera attached to guitar for a point of view shot.

Go-pro camera equipped to a tripod to get a birds eye view shot of the drum kit and band.

I also attached the Go-pro camera onto the high hat of the drum kit to acquire a close up shot of the drummer and for our last shot that we use is when the drummer hits the high hat resulting in the camera swaying from side to side due to the hit.

Production Schedule

Date and time	Scene	Shots used	Actors	Location	Props
10/11/13	Narrative shots	Close up Long shot Medium shot	Anna Stevens Sam hughes Olly wilkins	Lake grounds-Portishead Olly’s house	Phone
15/11/13	Band montage shots	Close up Long shot Medium shot Extreme close up	Band members: Sam Matt Alex Tim Olly	School theatre	Drums Electric guitar x2 Bass guitar microphone
20/11/13	More band montage	Close up Long shot Medium shot Extreme close up	Band members: Sam Matt Alex Tim Olly	School theatre	Drums Electric guitar x2 Bass guitar microphone