In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

QUESTION 1.

This is the opening shot in our music video. It is a long shot of one of our most used locations in the music video, the warehouse. This part of the music video is where the flashing light flashes in time with the beat of the song. We used one single light and darkened background to create a simple and stylish Mise En Scene. We had a few different ideas for having lights flash in time with the songs beat but this was our most preferred way of doing it. Many music videos have big budgets for their music videos and we didn’t, of course. However, we felt that the less you show the more professional it would look. This shot gave us a clear indication of how we wanted to move forward in terms of our theme and genre for our music video which was indie/rock. I think that we pulled it off quite well and this ‘flashing lights in time with the beat’ sequence really helped us move forward with our music video, giving us ideas of what we could do next with the theme of dark rooms, spotlights and silhouettes. The simplicity of our Mise En Scene almost tells the audience what they are to expect from our music video. It is very dark and dingy and so gives a clue as to what the music video entails.

This long shot was one of my favourite shots in the whole music video. It is so simplistic yet it means so much. His stance gives a slight indication of what he is feeling (in relation to the relationship troubles he is having). As you can see it is the same shot that we used at the very beginning of our music video with the flashing lights but instead he is standing there. This gives us a silhouette of the artist which I think quite clearly conveys how he is feeling. The whole shot is very stylistic and is in keeping with the rest of our music video. It conforms to a few conventions in real music videos with the artist reminiscing over the girl he loves and the times that they spent together. This shot is very similar to the one that Professor Green used in his music video with Emile Sande to the song ‘Read All About It’. I think that we may have got some inspiration from that music video and I believe it may be the reason behind our love for silhouettes which we frequently used. The way that it was filmed is so stylish and slick and we wanted to do that with our music video. We wanted it to appear more stylish and grown up so that it would be more appealing to the audience. There isn’t much of a Mise En Scene in this shot however we did stick with the whole idea of having plain clothing throughout our music video to have audience pay more attention to our artist, actress and the locations (Mise En Scene).

This close-up shot is one of many of the shots we used of the artist singing to the song. We used a torch in a darkened room to create the spotlight to keep to the genre of our music video. We had our artist wear a plain white T-shirt to ensure that the attention is on him and not what he is wearing. This enables the audience to empathise with him. He is singing to the camera, looking directly at the audience, telling them of his love/worries for his girlfriend. This was important for our music video as we wanted the audience to feel like they are being told what is happening rather than watching them fight continuously, which I believe would become quite boring. This type of shot, with the artist singing to the camera is used very frequently in real music videos and is very effective. We tried our best to stay original and keep away from the conventions of indie/rock music videos, not doing it by the book, but we felt as though our music video needed these kinds of shots to get through to the audience and to make them feel involved, thus gaining their attention.

This is an extreme close-up of the actress which portrays how she feels. Within this shots sequence we panned from her hands up to her face to show the audience her body language and facial expressions. This made the shot more effective and gives a clearer indication of the emotional experience that she is having. The theme of dark lighting is again used here to keep to the music videos theme. In this shot we decided that we would use artificial light but we made it less bright by covering the torch with a reflector so that it wasn’t so harsh on the actresses face. We didn’t want the spotlight to bring the wrong association to the shot. We wanted it to be a dim shot and make her look glum as it is portraying her feelings about her relationship problems. The Mise En Scene really only consists of her make up in this particular shot. The make up is very simple and plain, however, in this light it appears quite dull and dark which really conformed to the mood we wanted to convey. Although the artist is the person we wanted to have most of the limelight within our music video, we felt that it was very necessary to include a few shots conveying her feelings on the situation that she has got herself into. Close-ups of a beautiful woman is very common in real music videos and so in ways our music video does conform to the conventions of real music videos of this genre.

This is one of the shots of the ballet dancer in our music video. We decided on using a ballet dancer in our video as we thought that it would be a interesting way of conveying their relationship. Ballet is a tough and brutal type of dance. It is stressful and painful and we believed that it could represent aspects of their relationship. The strain, and the fight to make it right. Throughout our music video we had the ballet dancer trying to perfect her routine for an audition however she struggles with the demands of her routine and falls over. We thought this was a powerful way of showing their relationship. In the end she succeeds, however the relationship doesn’t. This was our intention as we didn’t want to make our audience believe that if you fail at one thing then all else fails too, because that just isn’t true. We used a spotlight for the ballet scenes as it makes the whole thing more intense (just like the relationship). It also meant that it flowed nicely within the music video as using a spotlight was a theme of ours. Another thing about using the torch for a spotlight is that it created a shadow of the ballerina dancing which made the whole shot look more professional. We used quite a lot of close-ups of the ballerinas feet in our music video as we wanted to show the intensity of the moves that she does and the positions that her feet were in. Having her do such intense and difficult moves was also a way of showing the audience that this isn’t just a simple and easy audition, it is her whole future, much like the relationship is an indication of what the boy and girls futures hold for them.

Here is a medium close-up shot that we used in our music video. We used a technique on the editing tools where we could combine to scenes together, called an overlay. We felt that this would make our music video a little more interesting and it also had relevance because we wanted to show in a clearer way that our artist is singing about the girl he loves. The vague and glum expression helps illustrate our music video some more, helping the audience understand the story for the music video and explaining that he is in fact singing about her. We chose to used a plain background in these two shots as we wanted them to be the focal point. We felt that any kind of jazzed up background would distract the audience from what we want them to see and understand; the relationship between the two. We used a spotlight as lighting for these shots as we wanted it to fit in with the rest of the music video in terms of its style, whilst changing it up a little with the overlay of the two shots. I think that it really effective and from watching real music videos I do not recall any artist using this kind of effect, however I’d expect it to be used quite a lot (most likely in music videos I didn’t see). The clothing that we had our artist and actress dress in are plain and ordinary. This helped ensure that there wasn’t anything that would/could distract the audience from what we wanted them to see when watching the music video.

This shot from our music video is a long shot which appears as our end scene for our music video. We wanted to use a long shot for the final scene as we thought that it would make a bigger impact on the audience. It is a very beautiful and memorable final shot for our music video with the natural sunlight glaring into the camera. We were very pleased that the sun came out at this point as it really captures what is going on in this establishing shot and continues our theme of silhouettes in a music video to the very end. His gestures and silhouette tells us how he feels, having had the girl that he loves leave him. I think that the long shot was necessary because we hadn’t used many in our music video and it really helps tell the end of the story, showing both our artist and his lover (actress) in a single shot, ultimately splitting up. The whole relationship genre of our music video conforms to the conventions of other artists music videos out there. However, we wanted to be a bit different to those typical music videos that result in a reconciliation and instead had them go their separate ways. This makes our music video a little bit different to real ones out there, therefore making it more unique and memorable. The key thing that we felt this shot did was that it finishes off the music video nicely and relates back to the whole silhouette them that we had throughout it, and the shots that we used for our digipak and magazine advert which were not exactly silhouette shots but were similar in style to the music video.

Our digipak conforms to many conventions in the music industry. In terms of the close up shots of our artists face and the picture of the couple in relation to the most popular song on the album ‘Undisclosed Desires’ which we did our Music Video for. We wanted to make our digipak a bit more versatile to those that are used for real artists. To do this we combined 4 pictures of our artists face to make up the nose, mouth, and two eyes. The pictures were taken with different expressions and different lighting to create the front cover for our digipak. We believe that this makes the digipak more appealing. It is original and therefore immediately becomes more interesting to the eye. We chose to use a warmer light on the artists face for the photos that we took for the digipak as we wanted him to come across as a warm and lovable artist. The light that we used throughout the music video we liked but we didn’t feel as though it was right for the front cover of our digipak. The artist is an attractive person and so having his face on the digipak gets the artist more attention. Girls will remember the photos of the artist and if she sees it in a shop window it would be hard to forget, therefore bringing up sales. We wanted him to be the main focal point of the digipak but we didn’t want to be too repetitive by using the same picture. Instead we stuck with the theme but had the artist standing/posing in different positions.

This is our magazine cover that we produced for our music video and for our artist. For this we chose to take a close up photo of him to fill the whole front page of the magazine to grab the attention of those who happen to see it. We wanted to advertise him as an artist but also as someone that girls/ladies would be appealed or attracted too. I think this conforms to a lot of artists whose picture has appeared on magazines in the past or present. Our photo of the artist also relates to the music video’s style in that we used a spotlight to maintain the focus on his face, as we did in our music video for ‘Undisclosed Desires’. We didn’t really challenge any convention or real media products with our magazine cover as we found the whole idea of it being a sophisticated close up photo quite appealing. We also believed it would be the best way to go about advertising our artist and our artists work (music video’s). The mise en scene of our magazine cover is very simplistic but I also believe that it is stylish. We had him wear a plain white t-shirt to be sure that there was nothing to distracting about the photo that would be more interesting than the artist himself. The facial expression that the artist is making is actually very relevant in relation to our music video (he is distressed that the girl he loves is leaving him). I believe that we challenged forms of real media products in some ways as some artists would want to make their cover image for a magazine more extravagant or interesting to grab passers byes attentions, whereas we went for a more chilled out, simplistic style which we think paid off.