Evaluation: Question 1

For the 1st question, we were asked: In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
we decided to take the narrative approach to our music video because the song we chose had a lot of descriptive lyrics that we thought would be good for a music video. Since the song did not previously have a music video for it, this was also a bonus of creating a video to thias song as there was no video we had to compete with. Our music video followed many conventions of the rock genre, for example we worn black clothing throughout our music video to portray anger, which is the stereotypical dress code for this genre. Through our extensive research of music videos of the Rock genre, we were able to incorporate some of the features used in the music videos, for example we used a slow-motion effect similar to the one used in Korn's: Freak On A Leash, to emphasise the bully's anger. Also, we used a few fades to transition to various shots for the band performance as it was an effective way to cut from one shot to another. We decided on using this technique after viewing the video to Avenged Sevenfolds-Nightmare. Furthermore, we used the green screen to create a void effect using the chroma key in editing on final cut pro which is also stereotypical of this genre as may rock artists use the void effect to create the image of being in a separate world from the main parts of the video. It also put a lot of emphasis on the performers, so it gets the audience familiarised with the bands faces to help them recognize the band members easier. As well as this, we created a CCTV effect on the shot of the female bully after the 1st chorus to suggest she is being watched. The idea to do this came from the music video: "Know Your Enemy" by Greenday as similarly, they used the effect to suggest they are being watched by someone who they call the "enemy". The effect we used was effective for our music video since the location for this part of the video was down a dark Backstreet in Manchester, and there generally cameras in dark alleys and backstreets for safety purposes. However, there were various different effects that we used that made our music video different to original rock videos, such as the earthquake effect we used in the opening scene to emphasize the pain that the bully has. Also, we used the earthquake effect to emphasise the Bass in the song as it is quite voilent and powerful and to emphasise the anger and pain that the female bully has when she screams at the audience. By using the Goodwin's theory of the 6 major convenctions of a music video, we beleive we created an effective music video since the lyrics relate to what is going on visually, the use of effects such as earthquake, fades etc, relate the the song as they go with the tempo of the track. Also, we used various close ups in the video: for example, the video opens with a close up which instantly engages the audience with the subject matter and we used a variety of close ups of the band members effectively to display the the audience who they are, so that they will recognise them in future music videos.

If we were to improve this music video, we would probably spend more time focusing on the main Band performane of the music video since we did not get all the shots we wanted to originally have, such as a full band perfomance, due to the limited amount of time we had after encountering in technological issues, etc. because of this, we had to film all the band members seperately, which was not what we originally planned but we still made it fit in with the song.

Posted By Kieran Burke