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

QUESTION 1

Goodwin’s study of semiotics (‘Dancing in the Distraction Factory’, 1992) in mainstream music videos can be applied to both the performance and narrative of our music video.

Costume and props used in the video were fairly conventional of the genre (pop rock); youthful attire and three guitars and drums are conventional of a young band. I analysed two McFly music videos in this project, both of which portrayed the band performing with three guitarists and a drummer. From these videos, it would appear that, in terms of screen time, the lead singer has the priority, followed by the rhythm guitarist/backing vocalist, then the drummer and finally the bassist. We planned to make the breakdown very similar to our video’s mise-en-scene form.

Our Front pane and one of the inside panes

Our video’s form is illustrated here (red sections highlight the performance parts and yellow sections highlight narrative parts). We stated in the pitch that

we had planned to structure the video with two thirds performance-based footage and one third narrative-based.The video begins with a number of MCUs and CUs of the band

member playing the start of the song on the stage. Then a section of narrative is shown to underline the story that takes place out of the performance (the story connoted through the song’s lyrics). As the performance continues, a resolve is reached in the narrative which goes without dialogue from start to finish. This conforms to the linear narrative structure theory of Pam Cook. Similarly, Todorov’s equilibrium theory can be applied, in the sense that the conflict and unrest at the start of the video is resolved later, with multiple shots of the band enjoying themselves. This breaks the fourth wall and informs the audience that the situation is resolved. The visuals respond to the track in a number of ways; lip syncing and instrument syncing being the most obvious of these. There are sections that respond to the track’s lyrics and tempo through visualisation.

The music video certainly incorporates a lot of bright stage lighting, and the digipak includes an

MS image of the band together as the front pane.

I studied similar album covers; taking inspiration for the title, band image and background.

With the genre of the song/artist being pop rock, the audience expects to see bright colours, lots of images of the band and evidence of youthfulness – whether this be via costume, activities they are seen doing, or just lyrics.

Three examples of album covers I

studied: ‘Busted’, ‘Meet The Vamps’

and ‘21st Century Breakdown’

The conventions of the genre are not often challenged in the campaign, but there is very often the inclusion of an audience shown in music videos of the genre. Our video does not contain this element. From my research of music videos of the genre, I noted that My Chemical Romance’s music video for ‘Helena’ and Bon Jovi’s video for ‘It’s My Life’ both include interaction with an audience of considerable size. In evaluating our decision not to include an audience, we think it wouldn’t have been possible to include this element because casting at least thirty people would have been very hard to pull off.

The video is voyeuristic towards the lead singer as he takes up a protagonist role. The first tracking

shot here begins this. There are other examples of voyeurism in the video, such as the close ups in

the protagonist’s bedroom and the fact that, every shot, bar one (in the ‘blooper’ section of the

narrative towards the end), has the lead singer in it.

The audience would make focused viewing of our video, rather than ambient viewing, because the

priority is on the band and their performance as an artist, rather than a narrative that does not sell the brand, i.e. a priority in narrative fuzz. The video is

designed for primary consumption.

Intercutting the narrative and performance throughout was not easy, but the inclusion of a conventional meat shot of Jack singing the backing vocals split up a section of narrative here, very well. In music videos featuring performance, meat shots of the artist singing conform to Dyer’s second paradox; the audience want to see the band close to them, but in reality, they are not near. Meat shots in ‘It’s My Life’ are very similar to the ones used in our video – including mainly just the mouth of the vocalists.

A meat shot from ‘It’s My Life’

The singer breaks the fourth wall in the performance so as to introduce a para-social intimacy with the audience; he is performing

to them after all, as they are the consumer of the product. The technique of breaking the

fourth wall to construct a link with the consumer is used in our digipak, with the front

and back panes showing the band looking at the camera.

The track from left to right features a pull focus from deep to shallow and shows the empty theatre. This smooth-blended focus represents the blend between different time periods throughout the video. Binary oppositions of success and failure are encoded in the video. We see this in the emotions of the protagonist when the band is together and the way he behaves during the time they were not together. Through editing individual clips in post-production, it was possible to make the difference between these two moods even more clear, by reducing the saturation in narrative shots and increasing contrast and brightness in the performance.

The back pane of the digipak

The stage is empty in the final shot

It can be argued that a number of Barthes’ narrative codes are present in the music video. Conforming to conventions in music videos with narrative that cannot contain dialogue over the song, action codes in the form of the protagonist’s non verbal language – such as having his head in his hands – connotes distress in the band. This is something the audience will want to see resolved, so they will continue to watch. There is an incidence of an enigma code in the music video, too. The fight scene towards the start of the video encourages the audience to consider what has caused the fight. This is conventional, too – music videos are often vague in portraying reasons for band interactions in narrative sequences. It can be argued that there is a cultural code present in our digipak; the CU of the guitar EQ modifiers is something that only some people will be able to easily identify. This conforms to the target audience of the text being a fan of the band, rather than a more general consumer of mainstream bands that do not contain guitarists.

There is a postmodern style in parts of the video, with narrative fuzz in the latter stages, hyper-real

lighting in the performance and slow motion sections, too. It can be argued that this is

conventional, as it is evident in videos researched such as Justin Bieber’s ‘What Do You Mean’ music

video. Here, the artist’s narrative/performance reaches a climax towards the end where a new line

of narrative enters – similar to our video concerning the ‘bloopers’.

There is a contrast between the moods the protagonist exhibits…

The stars in our video are constructed by star qualities. According to Dyer, ‘stars’ are constructed through semi-mythological values – some are real and

some are exaggerated by portrayal in the media. There are a number of common values of stardom included in our video:

The negotiated reading in our video is that the band have regrouped to perform with greater success and talent – selling the brand is conventional because the music video is designed to publicise the artist and sell another aspect of them as a product, a subsidiary selling device.The preferred reading, or the misinterpreted reading, would be that the band is not confident after the break up and perhaps, they are trying too hard to be successful.

-Youthfulness is portrayed in the band members’ age and energetic performance on stage.

Moreover, CUs of their faces and the behaviour they exhibit in the ‘blooper’ clips, is typical of

youth. The montage here creates an ‘absence’ of the band as they are performing without intention

– the shots are only included to appeal to the audience – the consumer likes to see the band

members enjoying themselves in a natural manner. This whole concept introduces para-

social intimacy between the artist and consumer.

-Originality is portrayed equally in the video and digipak; in the video, the protagonist is seen writing lyrics in his room and on the inside pane for the CD in the digipak, lyrics from multiple songs in the album act as the background. Moreover, the digipak is not evidently an expensive venture by the artist. This is to say that there is no evidence of a large budget having been spent on it. Thus, the consumer can trust its authenticity more as the band will have personally choreographed and selected images to include, rather than someone else.

-Talent is evident throughout the video. The performance is filmed from LS distances

multiple times to portray the band as if they are performing on a bigger stage. With each member featuring in a CU somewhere in the

video, showing them playing their instrument, the audience can feel confident

that there is authenticity in the artist. The band maintains artistic integrity and

merit throughout a convincing performance.The CD pane and reflection in guitar

shot are two examples of authenticity and evidence of originality

-Aggression is a rebellious star quality of artists. In truth, we did not believe that the song warranted aggression in our video. However, the narrative required an incentive for the break-up of the band. The band experienced a fight early on in the video, illustrated by using a number of BCUs of each member shouting. Using a fast cutting rate here, as well as adjusting the HLS levels, meant that the fight was sparked with a lot of tension and power.

-Finally, it could be argued that success against the odds is also present in our

video. This is evidenced by the argument’s influence. It could be claimed that, in

relation to Todorov’s theory of a resolution appearing at the end of every linear

narrative, the video is expected to end on a positive. The band’s star image is

appealing to teenagers in particular, and I believe that, seeing the band together and

having fun, is very important for the consumer of our product.

An example of amplifying the lyrics through visuals in the

video comes after the chorus, where the audience hears the words, ‘I walk’. They then see

the protagonist walking towards a bench.

The argument sets up the narrative line of action

I believe that our video is very successful in selling the band as a product to the consumer. Other videos I have watched do not do this as well. Some videos look too much like films in some respect. Visually, other videos are more appealing to audiences than our video, due to the use of a higher-quality camera which makes the end product look more professional. In some cases, post-production effects were more readily available to others. However, I think in terms of responding to the brief, our video is very successful. There are very few shots where one of the band members performing is not present. There is a great level of authenticity surrounding our video and this is best highlighted in the performance sections – the band are not trying to impress anyone by doing anything extraordinary, they are merely performing their new single and enjoying themselves. While other videos prioritise screen time on other aspects, our video prioritises the band – the brand that the video is designed to sell in the first place. The four minute-long video sells the band as youthful, entertaining, original and talented. This is as a result of a simple narrative structure, but in my opinion, also due to the quality of performance that the entire band puts on for filming. Whilst the quality of footage could have been better, by using intelligent editing to show the band as much as possible, plus picking a superb location to accompany the powerful performance, we have produced a video that makes a great subsidiary product for the album digipak we have created.

It was important to

include the notion of

looking