question 1 evaluation

1. Q1.

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

3. Lip syncing…

4. …
• There are many forms and conventions that are used in music videos, this being
the media I am basing my work on. Lip syncing is almost always used in a music
video. It is when the singer or singers mine the words of the song of matches
their lip movement with voice, so it looks as though to the audience that they
are singing, this is the most popular and effective within the music industry. As I
was using the codes and conventions of music videos, it was vital that I used this
within my music video. I particularly found good moments within the song
where it would be most appropriate to incorporate the lip singing. As our music
video wasn’t based on a storyline concept, we had to make sure that the singing
was in perfect sync with the lip movement. Overall I feel like the timings of the
signing was in perfect sync, this made a huge impact, as the audience gets a real
sense of the emotion portrayed by the artist. This was particularly important
because our artist is a young female, who has a huge amount of emotion and
this was key in our target audience feeling as though they had a connection or
felt as though they were able to put themselves in the position of the artist.

5. Mise en scene

6. These are a few screenshots from our music video. From these images you can get a feel of what our
mise en scene is like, as its not a storyline based music video, we wanted to capture the emotion and the
sadness of the artist, to reflect the song.
To use the filming technique was the most important thing because this is how our audience would
engage.
We used a minimal amount of props in order to keep the audience focused on the main element of the
video. This is different to certain music videos, for example, Katy Perry’s song featuring Snoop Dogg,
‘California Gurls’. The majority of this music video is animation with a lot of props.
We took a risk by using this concept because it could’ve been very boring and not worked well but I
think due to the high key lighting and the colour backdrops and lighting it gives the video a burst of
excitement.

7. Our whole music video is based on the concept of the artist being in an environment
that she knows best, this being the stage, performing. Our music video doesn’t show
a detailed storyline but it expresses the growth and talent of a young, female artist in
a big world. We developed conventions of music videos, such as Bat For Lashes’,
‘Laura.’ This music video gave us inspiration as it consists of a young female who is on
a big stage and wants to perform to an audience.
This idea is consistent throughout our other platforms, such as the digipak, this
contains an image of our artist on the stage, performing.
We wanted to challenge the conventions
of music videos by using contrasting
colours in comparison to emotions. For
example, blue connotes sadness, whilst
yellow, pink and purple connote
happiness, our key idea was to make sure
that the filming was up to a professional
level and this gives our music video a
unique feel.

8. Throughout the process of planning, filming and editing my production my skills
have improved massively and I feel personally I have developed my skills to a higher
quality than I have before. I used the forms and conventions of a music production
in my own way. This meant that I was able to apply and enhance my skills that I had
previously learnt during AS. I used various techniques that I had seen whilst
researching other music videos which are similar to this genre of music, for
example, the overlapping of shots, creates a story and an image of transition.
The editing also had to be to a
very high standard, in particular
because it wasn’t storyline
based which challenged some
conventions of real media
products. This really challenged
my skills as I had not looked at
music videos in this way before.

9. The artists that I looked at were in particular, Ellie Goulding, Katy Perry, Lana Del Ray and Florence and
The Machine. This was mainly because they are all young females who are particularly interested in the
indie music genre. This gave us ideas of how to plan and structure our music video based on this
knowledge that we had learnt.
There wasn’t a specific relationship between the visuals and the lyrics, as we wanted to challenge this
idea. We didn’t use many props because we wanted the audience to be mainly focused on the lyrics and
the artist. We used shot glasses, we used these as visuals for a number of reasons, firstly because the
colours contrasted well within the scene. This wasn’t a planned decision to use them, but we thought
that they looked good in the scene. Another reason why we incorporated these into our visuals was
because we wanted to show the audience the age of the artist and this was a good way of doing so.
The demands of the record label mean that this will include lots of close ups of the artist, we have
definitely achieved this by creating a style of artist and creating a great visual look.
Our pace of cutting rhythm was influenced by certain music videos that I had researched, I found that
this genre of music tended to have a slow pace as it was about connecting with the audience. We used a
slow cutting rhythm at the beginning and then towards the end, we started to pick up the pace slightly,
creating a quicker rhythm.
We wanted to use a range of different shots so we could make it more interesting and exciting. We
mainly used medium close-ups but we also used long shots, and extreme long shots, also other shots
such as; low angle, high angle, extreme close ups etc. This gave the idea to the audience that our artist
was very diverse and lets our audience get to know our artist.