Advanced Portfolio Ideas Generation – Sally and Alex

For our A2 Advanced Portfolio piece we decided that we wanted to produce a music video that will portray to our target audience how we understand typical conventions of the pop genre and narrative theory. Our ideas for our music video has been broken down into many different key aspects such as; Type of video (Narrative), Pop Genre and the conventions of this genre, Settings, Editing/Digital Effects, Lighting, Props/Costume, Characters, Iconography and Lyrical Meaning.

We chose to make a music video to a song of pop genre as it targets a mainstream audience and has many typical conventions of which we could break in order to make our video different to those which are already made. The pop genre mainly targets people ages 15-25 of both sexes although it is mainly towards females rather than males due to most pop songs being about love and break-up. We chose to make our music video have a non-linear narrative as this would entertain the audience more whilst still telling a story. To make our video different we decided to break typical pop conventions by having most of our video in black and white rather than typical vibrant colours the audience would expect to see in a pop video. Props Theory will be used within our video by having typical characters such as the good person/bad person/helper/damsel etc.

Due to our video being for an Amy Winehouse song it would be expected to be somewhat different as Amy was classed as quite an alternate artist. We will use typical props for a break-up song within our music video such as an empty house, people looking sad/crying and people on bikes/in cars driving past the main person which would symbolise life going on for other people although it seems as though it had ended for that main character. We will also use a candle blowing out as a significant prop within our video as this will symbolise the relationship being over as the woman would have seen her partner as the ‘light in her life’ (the lit candle) and now that it is out she now sees her life as being dark. We will use high key lighting on the characters faces to show their emotion as well as the main character sat in between narrow walls to show how she feels isolated and small.

With the lyrics in our song choice (Back To Black – Amy Winehouse) being very meaningful and speaking about a couples differences and her feelings when her lover isn’t there we will use lots of long shots to show isolation, close-ups to show emotion on the characters faces and medium shots to show the relationship between the couple. We will also use lots of low angle shots on the male protagonist to show dominance and high angle shots on the female protagonist to show her vulnerability. In terms of editing we have decided to use slow pace editing such as long cuts of certain shots and dissolves as with it being a dark song we have decided to use slow editing to help reinforce the emotions in the song. Each of our characters will use facial expressions to show their emotions (e.g. female crying, male shouting and being angry) and both will be smartly dressed as due to the whole video being in black and white it would make the audience see the relationship was serious whereas if it was in colour and they were wearing everyday clothes the audience wouldn’t realise the couple were ‘in love’ as they wouldn’t seem to care.

Overall in our music video we have decided to break typical ‘pop’ conventions and go more towards typical break-up song conventions by having it in black and white and using lots of slow pace editing to demonstrate emotion to the audience which would in turn ‘suck them in’ to the video and make them want to watch it more as due to it having a narrative linear it would be telling a story and they would want to know how it ends.