Media Evaluation In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Forever Young Fire in Your Eyes D.B Records

The conventions of lighting that we researched in a drum and bass video is quite dark, however there are usually bright flashing lights- this is to represent any party scene happening or a spot light to focus solely on the band members. We used a lot of these conventions in our music video as it helped develop our purpose and also it made the video more effective and made certain scenes stand out more and look more important. For our band performance filming we used a lot of lighting on each band member, highlighting their instruments or if they were singing- we wanted our band members to have fun whilst they were acting and this came through in our filming and the lighting that we used enhanced this. It made the band shoot a lot more professional and giving the effect that they are preforming to an audience. The other lighting that helped us a lot in our video was the lighting in our party scenes, this effect made the party look more energetic and fun. It also gave the effect that they were at a party and that they were having a good night out. Without these lighting conventions our video would be very boring and wouldn’t have been able to fulfil the purpose that we wanted.

The spotlight on our lead singer and the flashing lights at the party

When we researched costumes in Drum and Bass video’s we found that they would normally wear quite rocky sort of outfits e.g. skinny jeans, leather jackets etc. We wanted to show this convention in our music video because the style really fitted the music well and we know that those kind of outfits would suit the band members more. With our warrior girl, we wanted her to look fierce and independent- like a warrior. So through her outfits we achieved this by her wearing high heels, leggings ,a top and a leather jacket; this impression gives a really outgoing and extrovert look which is what we wanted. For the banc, we wanted to look funky and stylish. I think we achieved this well as we had all them in individual outfits but they connected in a way; representing the same thing. We wanted to stick with the rocky theme for the band members, the lead singer wore skinny jeans and our guitarist wore boots and a jacket. This helped us reach our aim of making them look stylish and contemporary. Looking in other drum and bass videos; they too keep this costume theme and we found that this helped us a lot in achieving a good Music Video. I think without these costume conventions we would have had a very tedious and uninteresting video.

Our warrior girls outfit

Jack, our guitarists outfit.

Rhys, our lead singer- looking very contemporary and stylish in his hat.

One of the most important scenes that we decided to do during our planning and researching was the constant appearance of the eye. We wanted to make it look as though she’s watching. We got this clever concept from Swedish House Mafia’s video. This convention really suited our song as it’s called Fire in Your Eyes. This really helped develop our video as it made it very concept- which is the style that we wanted to dominate. We have also used a variety of different visuals to match the lyrics. This convention helped us develop our music video as it made it more effective by seeing the words as well as hearing them. One of our audience feedback was that “it was really clever”. Using this line help us distinguish really important phrases and concepts with our video, making it more abstract and more of a hidden meaning behind it. This convention is used in many drum and bass video’s as they want to have a message to it and we wanted to achieve this as well.

Visuals to match the lyrics

Eye

As our video was based around the events surrounding a night out, we wanted to show her journey there and back from the clubs- at first we didn’t know how to achieve this, but then we looked at drum and bass videos and we came across a lot of ideas. The convention of fast driving around looking at all the clubs really caught our attention and we really wanted to use that in our video. This convention really helped develop and show her night out, getting to places and having a good night out, which is what we wanted to achieve. I personally really like the driving scenes as it really helps speeds up the video and makes us interested in her night out, it makes the video look very effective.

In our video we wanted to do something really creative and artistic within our music video but we didn’t know what to do. So again we went back to looking at videos and we came across a really interesting concept. This convention helped to show our artistic flare within our video. We decided on a graffiti scene- this would help emphasis our warrior/independent concept and our audience did understand this. This convention is used however it is not used as often in Drum and bass videos- this gave us an advantage as it allowed us to play around with ideas and settings- creating a more varied video. The graffiti scene within our video, I really enjoyed filming as I was able to film in different camera angles making the image and our video look effective.

Our graffiti scene

When researching drum and bass videos we saw that a big convention of them is lots of different locations. This keeps the video moving and fits the speed which is constantly fast paced. This convention was really good for our video as it helped develop her journey and her night out. Using all these different locations and settings help develop and show that she was constantly moving from one place to another, fitting the speed of the music. If we had few locations the video wouldn’t be filled efficiently and we would have to have quite a few repeat of scenes. We wanted a quick pace video, jumping from one location/setting to another.

Thank you!

From Parishti, Jade and Gemma