In what ways does your media product develop of challenge forms and conventions of real

media products?

By Saskia Beatty, Will Sutton and Sholto Wilson.

Andrew Godwin’s Music Video Theory.

• Andrew Godwin stated that:1. Music videos often than not tend to include demonstration of typical genre characteristics.

I would agree with this as for example in our music video as you would expect within other UK hip-hip video a group of teenage boys, in the stereotypical tracksuits and jumpers having fun and getting up to no good. Not only this but we have put them into a location of an underpass, in many ways working with the media’s fear of teenage boys wandering the streets late at night. It would be any adult’s worst nightmare.

2. There is a sufficient relationship between music and visuals. For example within our music video there is the song title of ‘Praise The Sun.’ We then have our protagonist directly under the sunlight or surrounded by the sun in someshots.

3. There is often inter-textual references to films, TV, Programs or other music videos etc. Once again I would agree with Andrew’s theory as we have included the high focus labels brand sign on our CD cover and our other ancillary texts.

4. The record label that the artist is assigned to tends to have certain demands. Often including the need for lots of close ups of the artist. Not only this but the artist will have visual styles which recurs across their videos. We followed many of high focus’s other videos to find general trends within the music videos. Here we were able to find that the similar outfit choices between protagonists and we were also able to get an understanding of the different shots used. We went on to use many similar shots. For example we used many extreme close ups to help position our protagonist as an anti-social character.

Use:After looking through many High Focus videos, we came to find there was a lot of group culture. For example the image below, here is just one example of all the boys in a lively environment having a good time. After seeing this we came to the conclusion of incorporating a group of boys having a jokey time in the music video. This helps to portray our protagonist in a fun loving, easy going light. Therefore we filmed our protagonist walking under the underpass with a group of his friend pushing each other joking and laughing. We kept our protagonist Sholto in the middle so he stood out and so the audience were mainly focusing on him.

Develop:We worked with a pre-constructed ideas of what created an urban image. For example the different forms of art work surrounding it. We then came to see many of Fliptrix’s album covers and the imagery in his music videos tended to be cartoon like imagery we therefore followed this and tried to expand on it by putting a conventional figure in an unconventional background. This then helps to develop the image as we are changing perceptions of the artists as he is now seen a rural countryside setting. Although we adapted the image using poster edges to create a more cartoon like image, similar to Fliptrix’s other covers.

Challenge:• We decided to challenge stereotypes by portraying our protagonist in a different

light through choosing a different location. Therefore we have many shots of him with vast countryside landscapes behind him. I believe this challenges stereotypes as a typical audience would not be expecting the anti-social youth to be appreciating and enjoying nature.

• I think in many ways the song title itself of ‘praise the sun’ alongside our protagonist immediately challenges stereotypes and changes the representation of the artist already.

• We decided to contrast of both our protagonist in the stereotypical settings such as the under bypass, the burnt down factory, however then with many countryside backgrounds. The effect of this hopefully being to challenge the audience’s preconceptions of our protagonist, and also to work with the theme of praise the sun. We believed having the countryside and the sun involved was crucial in order for the music video to work with the song. We thought as we had the contrast of the two it would be more effective as the different locations would then stand out more clearly to the audience leaving it impacting them more.