Evaluation Question 1

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

For our media coursework, we chose to opt for constructing a promotional music video for the song ‘Young Blood’ by The Naked and Famous. To go with this, we also designed a digipak for the album that the song would be featured on, along with a magazine advertisement. By researching the forms and conventions of music videos and the genre of music which we were focusing on (indie alternative) we were able to see what we needed to include and strive for when we created our own music video. Personally I looked at videos such as ‘Stan’ by Eminem and ‘It’s Raining Men’ by Geri Halliwell as a starting point before specifically analysing videos of our target genre. The videos I also looked into were ‘Walk’ by Foo Fighters and ‘The Suburbs’ by Arcade Fire. From these, I had a better understanding of the forms and conventions of a music video along and what made a video effective as a piece of promotional material along with the ancillary tasks.

When researching existing music videos of the alternative indie rock genre, the reoccurring aspects were performance based videos or part performance and then part narrative based. As the setup of a stereotypical indie and alternative rock band is drums, guitar, bass and keyboard, there is a large emphasis on instruments in the music videos. These are focused on through a variety of shots – close ups in particular. Particular riffs or iconic parts of the song are generally shown in close ups of the instruments – e.g. a strum of a guitar. This is an example of how the focus on instruments can drive the editing of the music video. With fast paced parts of the song, cuts between the instruments and the performance/narrative can be an effective way of motivating the transitions in the music video. In our video we wanted to show this as it kept within the forms and conventions of existing products so we created a part narrative and part performance music video as seen in the Foo Fighters video 'Walk'. Initially in our rough cut we hadn’t got round to doing a performance by the deadline, but our audience feedback showed us that we definitely needed one included, as otherwise it just looked like a montage of shots with a backing track. So before the final cut, we got the performance done and then edited it in alongside the existing shots we already had of the narrative to help drive the editing as well as fit in with the forms and conventions of existing products.

 When looking at narrative styles for our music video, we looked at Calvin Harris’ video ‘Feel So Close’. Even though it is of a dance/house genre, it is predominantly narrative. Even though there was no performance and no real story line, we as a group thought that the video worked effectively - to prove that the style of the video would fit our song, we overlayed the 'Young Blood' track over the 'Feel So Close' music video. It basically showed a range of characters, mostly young, doing a variety of activities such as dancing and being social. As our song is called ‘Young Blood’ we could literally translate the meaning of ‘Young’ and convert it into the narrative of our video. By this I mean showing a group of young people enjoying being free and embracing their youth. This also gave us license to use a montage of random scenarios and experiment using visually attractive events. By conveying our narrative through a range of shots such as close ups, long shots, tracking shots etc we could be seen as inkeeping with these conventions also. So we looked at shooting a colour powder fight initially which looked aesthetically pleasing with all the colours involved. We also shot scenes involving BMX tricks for example and steel wool. By using scenes like this the audience would always be entertained. The steel wool looked very professional in my opinion as it was bright and exciting – something that you would not expect a group of sixth form students to be able to do with limited resources. We were going to use a flare which we took from this researched video, but it proved difficult to get hold of so we replaced it with an equally moving addition which was the steel wool. We selected our actors all as teenagers to fit in with the ‘Young Blood’ title and also we can relate this back to the Calvin Harris video as he uses the same aged people in general. By looking at the forms and conventions of narrative styles we could direct our video effectively and the ‘Feel So Close’ video was perfect in this respect for showing us that a selection of random scenarios worked well.

The idea for an intro we used in our video as well came from this video as we had the actor tuning into the song from a car radio and another selecting it on their iPod. In this video in particular the track was tuned into on a retro stereo which most definitely inspired us and gave us an added factor to include in our music video which could be related to other conventions we researched. Although our rough cut feedback showed us it didn’t work the way we did it without the performance, it gave us a starting point and then later on after the performance was added, it showed us we most definitely benefitted from researching it first.

The performance set up was a typical band structure seen in many rock videos in an open space. We made sure that the setting was plain so all of the attention was focused on the band. We had to make sure the lead singer was the primary focus and then the guitarist and keyboard player set back further, with finally the drummer at the rear. 

One of the most typical conventions was

this mentioned emphasis on the lead singer. This is important as they need to establish a connection with the audience. We also had a female lead singer deliberately so she already had a lot of attention as she was the only girl in the band. We shot her in a range of ways, ensuring that eye contact was maintained throughout. These shots included various close ups of her singing into the microphone, a long shot to show her at the front of the band and an extreme close up in the chorus where she is shrouded in smoke. This is then repeated where the guitarist (myself) has a solo. I was directed to keep looking into the camera at all times so that I had this ‘connection’. The camera was also focused onto my eyes so the microphone was slightly out of focus therefore the audience was purely looking at my mouth (what was being sung) and my eyes. This is also seen in videos such as ‘Sweet Nothing’ where Florence Welch is shot in a number of ways but she also has this attention still despite the fact it is a mostly narrative video with a small part of performance.

As mentioned, our lead singer was the only female so we had to enable that she had ‘star image’ as she would create an identity for herself as well as the band as she was the figurehead. We portrayed this by the way the performance was conducted as well as what she was wearing. When we looked at the conventions and form of the setting for a performance it cropped up that it was normally in an open space. When looking at Coldplay’s video of ‘Speed Of Sound’ in our research, it showed the band silhouetted out initially which as a group we felt had a very unique and inspiring effect. Acting upon this research, we lit the hall up using industrial lights as well as stage lights, but placed them all behind the band so they were silhouetted- the lead singer in particular. 

When we shot the lead singer in a close up, it had the effect that there was a spot light, therefore giving her a lot of the attention.  The setting looked so professional and fitted with the forms of an existing music video but also enabled our lead singer to be seen as an icon in a sense. In comparison with the amount of times the other members of the band were shot, the majority were of the lead singer, thus giving her this focus we desired. When you look at videos by The Stone Roses for example, the majority of the focus is on Ian Brown – the lead singer. The lead singer gains most of the attention anyway in the press and so on, therefore it is pivotal that they are highlighted as the main focus in the video anyway.

In our music video, we used the method of close ups regularly to feature the instruments played by the band. Below is a video that I made showing how our close ups of instruments are in-keeping with the forms and conventions of existing music videos. I used Green Day's video of 'Oh Love' and edited out parts of it which can be seen to inspire our video as well as relate to parts of it.

Clothing was also a central part of the planning in our video. I personally conducted some research beforehand for what we would need to dress the actors in. This research consisted of looking at band styles that fitted into our genre of music (e.g. Foals, Spector). We wanted our band members to keep to the stereotypical alternative style but for them to still look young. We wanted them to be trend setters, not trend followers. The lead singer was dressed in a western style shirt seen worn by the lead singer of The Lumineers and Levi Strauss denim shorts which can be seen worn by Taylor Swift. By looking at iconic female artist, we were able to build our lead singer an identity that fitted into our genre of music and would have also engaged our target audience.  We also needed to give our lead singer a sense of individuality and ‘iconography’. Branding was also important as we need to aim this to our audience also. Retro brands such as Fred Perry and Farah were worn by me, the drummer and keyboard player to fit into this retro/mod fashion style. At the same time we wanted our band members to be smart yet casual so we based our looks on artists such as Paul Weller, The Vaccines and Coldplay. Our drummer for example was mirrored from the drummer from The Black Keys. Each member looked different from each other but at the same time had the same style  - this was kept consistent throughout. In the narrative it was a lot more casual so most were wearing plain tshirts of the indie genre etc as we did not want them seen as specific roles in the video – but more just to blend into the general youth theme. There was one shot though in particular where we wanted their clothing to stand out and this was the shot of their feet where we showed their Adidas and Converse branded shoes to stand out and appeal to our target audience.

When looking at ancillary tasks, I created a video to explain how our digipak and magazine advert complied with these existing conventions.