In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Still 1

This is a still from our stuido set up, which consists of our artist ‘Effy’ – played by Carlotta in the forefront of the shot, with Gen and Leila dancing in the background. We really wanted to create something that would catch the audiences attention, and we feel that by adding the neon paint and bright, shifting lights in the background, we were able to draw the audience into the music video and make it a lot more interesting for the viewer. I feel that in this shot we followed a convention which is common in most music videos in that we tried to make the main stars of the video stand out and be seen by the audience as the lead roles. The music video to ‘Go” by Grimes, did something fairly similar;

Still 2

Here is another still from our studio set. I feel that this still in particular conforms to the conventions that I would associate more specifically with the genre of our music video. I feel the silhouettes, combined with the lighting in the back, helps to create the edgy feel that we were trying to achieve. I feel that this still is particularly

effective in reinforcing the atmosphere that we wanted to create, and again, It is very similar to ‘Go’.

Still 3

Here is an example of another convention that our music video conforms to – the close-up. Music videos do this to give the audience a clear idea of who the star is in the video and what they look like. The audience like to see close ups of the artist or lead singer of a band to see if they can identify or relate with them, the close up is not specific to any type or genre of music video, as shown by another close-up from ‘Motivation’ by Sum 41, a Canadian punk rock band.

Still 4

In this still, we can see the main stars of the video (lead singer and dancers) all performing in front of the London bus location. This wide shot of all the main performers is a convention in a lot of music videos, but however I do feel that the outfits that the main performers are wearing can give a much clearer indication of the genre of the music video, as well as adding to the star image of the performers and helping to appeal to specific audiences, for example, the red outfit enables Carlotta to stand out from the other performers as the main star, but they are all wearing similar black clothing which gives off grungy/pop-like feel. There are many similarities with the video ‘Fatlip’ by Sum 41, which is again a wide shot of 4 performers with extras in the background, the only obvious and major difference is the outfits being a lot more specific to appeal to a punk-rock audience.

Still 5

Yet another convention that our music video conforms to is that it falls between the average length of 2:00 – 4:00 minutes for a music video. It is beneficial for the music video to be very short and efficient in getting its message across to the audience so that it maintains the interest of the viewer and ensures that they watch as much of the video as possible, again the length of a music video does

not really vary depending on genre.

Still 6

In this still we see the full cast – including extras performing. The idea of this shot is to give the audience a clearer idea of the theme of the video. For example, we can see that all but one of the performers is female, which infers that the video as a whole is based on female dominance, with the only male performer appearing to be trapped in a cage. This scene is very similar to, and was in fact inspired by

Beyonce – ‘Run the world (girls)’