In what ways does your media product use, develop

or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

In our decision to create a music video for the ‘indie-folk’ genre, we purposely created a ‘blank canvas’ to work upon. This canvas is the result of such a huge variety of different narratives and topics that real ‘indie-folk’ music videos cover, which gave us our own space to also come up with an original, uncommon focus for our product, whilst still taking typical conventions in to account in order to create a video that uses, develops and challenges these forms.

An aspect of synaesthesia was used when first coming up with ideas for our video, but the unclear meaning of the lyrics in the song that we used, ‘Far Away by Jose Gonzalez’, meant that meaning was significantly drawn from personal interpretation, which eventually became a theme of our music video. We felt that it was necessary to convey the meaning of the words, “far away”, and the use of the minor (sad) key in the music, by manipulating the narrative of a man who is effectively leaving his normal life to go to a place far away. The minor key in all genres of music commonly demonstrates a sad, melancholy emotion, and so we used this convention by putting forward a melancholy narrative, and a well known, yet depressing reason behind the character’s journey away from his stressful life – economic inflation.

The focus on Economic Inflation, symbolism and hegemony

The background narrative, behind the main focus of a man who is journeying away from his every day life, consists of the topic of economic inflation. We chose to use this topic as a way of creating an aspect of originality in our production, therefore challenging common conventions seen in real music videos.

Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory of symbolism goes hand in hand with this topic, as we have used symbolic aspects such as the colour green, representing money, in order to convey his ideas. The contrast between the two settings in our video acts as a symbol, showing the long distance that the character has traveled.

Antonio Gramsci’s idea of hegemony also comes in to play with our use of a speech by David Cameron at the beginning of the video, which undeniably has an effect on the character’s already troubled mindset. The character is effected by the words of the Prime Minister, who explains the “debt crisis” to the lower class population.

We were inspired by artists such as ‘Muse’ and ‘Rage Against the Machine’, who have songs which often focus on public events involving politics and the wellbeing of urban societies.

The use of such theories and ideas allows for the use of conventional production techniques, but they also gave us the means to develop them in order to create the desired aspect of originality to a further extent.

Andrew Goodwin’s TheoryWe effectively applied Andrew Goodwin’s music video theory to our own production:

Thought Beats – Seeing the sound We developed the idea of ‘thought beats’ by including performance shots that we synced

in time with the music, as well as manipulating the timing of cuts to match with the rhythm of the song. However, we also challenged this idea by comprising a number of shots that don’t match up with the music, showing an element of disjuncture.

Narrative and Performance We used both narrative and performance in the production of our video. However, we

only showed our own specific interpretation of the meaning of the song, making the video more interesting for the viewer, who can come up with a more personal interpretation. This develops conventional narratives styles as although our video does have a narrative, the meaning of it and the intentions of the character are mainly down to personal interpretation

The Star image During our shots of the acting vocalist and guitarist, or the ‘stars’, we used a silhouette

technique and dark lighting to add a sense of mystery and a hidden identity to the musicians. In this sense, the common aspect of ‘the star image’ is challenged, as the personalities and facial figures of the musicians are not fully reveled.

Thought Beats

Narrative and Performance

This specific shot stands out as it shows both performance and narrative simultaneously, in a fade transition.

The Star Image

How have we used forms and conventions of real media products? Our video consists of both narrative and performance shots, which are shown both

separately and at the same time (cross fade transitions). In conventional music videos, the narrative and performance shots intertwine to keep hold of the viewers interest in the narrative, and to attract the viewer to the artist. After watching music videos from our favorite artists such as Radiohead’s ‘Just’ and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Under the Bridge’, which both use this form, we decided to do the same.

A famous production technique that we have studied and used is the ‘Power of the montage’, originally taught by Sergei Eisenstein. We used this idea to effectively create a ‘time-lapse’, so that the complete journey can be fitted into our 4 minutes and 15 seconds. Our continuous ‘montage’ of different locations created the effect that the character was traveling further and further away from his original location.

My digipak cover also uses ideas from real album covers. I took inspiration from a Joe Purdy album to use an image of a character walking with his back turned to the camera, with the titles placed at the top left corner of the front cover. The back cover provides information such as the tracklist, record label and barcode, which are all commonly used on real covers.

… Jose Gonzalez’s genre of Indie-folk, or simply folk, is often portrayed by the focus

on nature, the outdoors and a rural location, which are all focuses in our own production. Artists such as Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling and Noah and the Whale, who all belong to this genre, tend to use these themes in their music videos, and so we decided to put this convention in to action. My digipak cover and website continue the same theme, highlighting the convention to a further extent

Due to the ‘Indie’ label that our artist belongs to (PeaceFrog Records), we decided

to use lower class urban locations at the beginning of our video. This gives a more amateur effect, which contrasts with the effect of the massive budget used for major label videos. Indie artists such as Jamie T, The Streets and Foals tend to refrain from using a large budget in their videos, maintaining the ‘indie’ style, as we attempted to do in our video.

How have we developed forms and conventions of real media products? Solo singer-songwriters, such as Laura Marling and Jose Gonzalez himself, tend to

solely include performance shots in their own videos, with a focus on close up shots of the vocals and the guitar. We also used these conventions, however we effectively alternated the shots with the use of narrative, thus creating a more entertaining and interesting experience for the viewer.

After analysing the mood of our chosen song using synaesthesia, we developed the creation of this mood in our visuals/narrative by manipulating the topic of an economy in decline to set the melancholy feel. To add to this, we included the mood of relief as the man concludes his journey for recovery at the top of the hill in our final ‘wideview’ shot.

The shot shown to the right is a combination of both narrative

and performance shots, created by the use of an extended

cross fade. This can be seen as a development from real

media products, which commonly tend to show the performance

shots separately from the shots that focus on the narrative.

How have we challenged forms and conventions of real media products?

The use of a historical quote at the beginning of our video is an uncommon feature for real music videos. Though it is used by some artists, such as Arctic Monkeys in their video for ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ and in a variety of Tom Morello videos, our quote is original in the sense that it conveys no direct connection with the narrative. Instead, it’s meaning is to be conveyed by the personal interpretation of the viewer.

The identities of both performers in our video (guitarist and singer) are hidden throughout. We used a silhouette effect for our vocalist and a close up shot of the guitar in order to enforce this. We felt this was necessary as the narrative is the main aspect of our video, and revealing the identities of the musicians would perhaps steer the viewers attention away from the most significant features of our video. This challenges the conventions of real music videos that use performance shots, as the artist is often the main focus of the video.

The focus of our narrative is economic inflation. The use of the Prime Minister’s speech at the beginning, as well as the use of stock footage, put forward this focus. This topic is rarely mediated by the production of music videos, and so the focus in our video is an original one.