Evaluation 1

1In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Within the construction and planning process of my coursework I made sure that I kept in mind some of the key codes and conventions of a media product which helped me create visuals that would be both entertaining and professional. I created 3 pieces of coursework which were a Magazine, a music video and a digipack and to keep track of my progress it was suggested that I made a blog as I can easily update it to show my progress and keep my files in a safe place.
Within my music video I had to stick with certain codes and conventions which would help my music video be easily identified and target the right audience. The use of Mis en scene, Camera angles, Editing, Representation and Narrative all work together to create music videos that we see every day and put them into their genres. Music videos usually represent styles in various ways depending on its genre. The genre dubstep usually contains diversion themes to it, which tends to start off with a primary subject and ends up changing dramatically when the ‘drop’ in the song is. This ‘drop’ is when people in the club tend to start to dance and this is parallel with the music video as people want to see a physical change in the song as well as hear it. Blinded By The Lights is an eclectic and tensional brew cooked from urban trance loops, slow drum beats and fragile backing vocals. This song itself has no conventions as she sings one line over a trancey beat which is unusual but worked. The video is however is urban and is based around young people which could sprout the idea that it is more of a dubstep song rather than a Pop soundtrack. There is no real high or low profile character in this genre; the characters are usually a representation of the audience which is ‘YAKS’ which is essentially young party goers. My performers in my video are very naturalistic which helps my audience relate to their mood before and after the party.
I followed the codes and conventions of similar music videos such as “The Streets – Blinded by the lights (Original soundtrack)” and “The streets – Dry your eyes mate.” These songs both had a similar feel to mine and were mainly based around relationships. Slow motion shots were used very frequently in “Blinded by the Lights” and this was used to really highlight their characters emotion as seeing things in slow motion makes the audience notice the smaller things. There is also two opposing moods to the music video which are “party happy” and “depressed.” The main characters similarly have facial expressions which are at times dull and depressed then later on in the song denote happiness through partying. The relationship between the characters sets the theme of video as the main character is seen hugging and drinking with his friends representing a ‘lads night out.’ My actors actions had to be very naturalistic as I didn’t want my characters to seem superior to my audience at any time. My intentions were to relate to the audience so I re-created movement which is typical of friends to have such as hugging and lots of conversation.
As music and visuals are important conventions in music videos according to Goodwin’s theory I edited my video and added certain effects to highlight the importance of the timing. As I wanted my video to be upbeat but still have a shallow mood to it I cut the clips in time with the beat keeping the visuals and the song very closely linked. I did this to emphasise the upbeat tempo and to help signify that my music video is in the dubstep genre. The genre dubstep is significant for its signature ‘drop’ in the song. The ‘drop’ is known by listeners of the genre to be the point where everybody dances and creates a hedonistic mood. To emphasise the relationship between the dubstep visuals and the dubstep song I used the build up to the drop by letting one clip flow and put it in 200% speed to give it a kind of build up effect. Then when the song dropped I completely slowed the clip down which was on my main character celebrating. This actually went against the normal conventions of dubstep videos as usually there are lots of small clips used in build up to the drop, instead I did the opposite but used it to create the same effect.