Evaluation 1.

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

For our A2 Media Studies product we were given the task to produce a music video companied by a magazine advert and digipak. From the start it was very important for these three to link so they are recognisable as a finished product. We firstly gave our company a name, this ended up being initialisms of group members which produced: LBA productions. Secondly we searched into a variety of music videos to built up initial ideas on how to produce our own video successfully. We also looked into media theorists and their approaches on music videos, Andrew Goodwins theory is one that inspired us at the start of the project, he suggested music videos are simply an extension of the lyrics I believe we stayed true to this theory throughout. Our music video is very much narrative and sticks to the theme of the lyrics throughout. Even though our video tells a clear story line we also had performance shots of the artist to compliment the narrative.

As we included narrative and performance I feel like we followed conventions for all genres in the music industry, the convention we did challenge unlike most genres was that the performance shots were performed by the artist and the narrative shots were acted by a random character. Even though this challenged conventions of some music videos, the conventions stayed the same from the original A Team song.

Typically the singer will also perform the narrative within the music video, Im glad we didnt stick to the typical conventions in this case as I feel the way we had a separate performer to actress worked very well. As we wanted to stick to Andrew Goodwins theory by acting the story to follow the lyrics we needed a girl actress; for example scenes of prostitution couldnt have been acted by a man and if we had changed this scene it wouldnt have created the same effect. We wanted to give our video more than just a narrative, so I feel by not sticking to the typical conventions in this case it was the right decision.

Typically within Indie genre music videos, the artists performance shots would consist of a mid shot playing a guitar. To the left we see professional videos and to the right we compare our shots with original music videos.

We also wanted to concentrate on shot types as we wanted these to relate to the genre of our music video, in the end we came to the conclusion that the shot types in music videos did vary and there was no particular rule. When experimenting with the camera we did like close up shots of her face, this was purely because the song is very emotional and the close ups showed expressions on her face clearly which created a climax for the audience. With the performance shots we wanted this to be very simple as all attention was mainly on the story line of the video, we used mid shots and a variety of different angles.

Close-ups.

Mid-shots.

Even though we tried to challenge the conventions in our video when discussing shot types, one thing that was recognisable and that we wanted to keep same, was the establishing/location shots which a large handful of videos use, I believe this is to set the scene of the whole video. Below are some establishing shots from professional music videos, this helped us acknowledge what shots we wanted:

In the next slide you will see how we used an establishing shot very much like the original video , here you can see a clear comparison to a professional music video.

These are the shot types that we included after researching into the convention of other music videos: Comparison:
Establishing shot- When watching the Ed Sheerans original A team video we liked the first shot, not only is it an establishing shot but the costume also showed clearly that she was homeless with no money. As some of the props werent available to us (park bench) we challenged the conventions by using a similar shot but using a wall instead of a bench.

Close up- Using a lot of close ups is very conventional is very conventional of an Indie music video, so we used a variety of these throughout.

Ancillary texts.
When producing our project, I believe the whole group had a clear image of the conventions of the genre of our song, this was achieved by the amount of research undertaken from the preproduction, production and post-production stages. We had a clear idea of how we were gong to develop and challenge forms within our product. Within our ancillary task we challenged the normal conventions of current media texts, instead of featuring our artist on the front cover like most artists we used an establishing shot. We did this to relate to the nature theme we chose within the pre-production process.

Establishing shot green colour scheme. Artists name here we followed conventions of original media texts. The majority of artists do include their name on the front cover. Album name every album we researched included the name of the album on the front. We needed this to be clear to the audience as this is what they will be looking for if buying the album from a store.

I do feel even though we challenged the conventions when producing the front cover, we also followed certain conventions. The inserts are typical to what you would find in current digipaks. For example: Images of the artist, lyrics, thank you page and back cover explaining what is featured on the album. Overall, I feel we challenged the conventions when it comes to the front cover but followed them throughout the whole digipak.

Magazine advert.

Our magazine advert related very well to the rest of our ancillary texts, we have stuck with the theme of nature/outdoors which also associated with our final music video. Every professional artist makes sure there is a prominent link with everything to do with their album. As we have kept the same text colour scheme and theme I feel that we followed real media products.