Evaluation Question 1

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


I studied Andrew Goodwin's conventions of music videos before filming my project to better understand how to make my music video as professional as possible. Goodwin has six conventions of music videos:
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics, for example a dance routine in a girl or boy band.

I followed this convention as it is typical of indie or alternative songs to have a video that tells a story that holds meaning related to the lyrics. I spent many hours designing a story that would demonstrate these genre characteristics and made the video black and white to follow the theme of sad, meaningful videos that is typical of the indie/alternative rock genre.

2. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals.

Most of my pre-production planning for my media product involved coming up with ideas that would result in my video being able to tell a story, which is typical of indie music. The lyrics are about two men who used to work together and one of them received a brilliant opportunity and left to live his life and made loads of money, leaving the second behind with nothing. My video focuses on the now unemployed of the two, focusing on unemployment and desperation which is conveyed in the lyrics, "It kills to know that you have been defeated
I see the wires pulling while you're breathing
You knew you had a reasonIt killed you like diseases"

3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals.

From my research I discovered that the band whose song I chose to make a production of, tend to follow certain themes when making music videos. One way in which I followed this convention is by making the entire video black and white, as The Neighbourhood do in all of their productions, which gave the video an emotional feeling that relates to the dark and slow music throughout the song.

4. There is likely voyeurism, particularly in the treatment of women, and usually include close ups of the main artist or vocalist.

One shot type which I found to be extremely practical in following conventions of real media products is close ups. This is particularly useful when creating a music video for indie or alternative songs, as these tend to tell a story and close ups work well to convey emotion. The Neighbourhood's production 'Let it Go', another song by the same band, conforms to this convention and is a prime example of the importance of close ups. The shots in this music video focus primarily on the emotions one of the characters is experiencing and does this by giving the audience a clear, extreme close ups of either the character's face or eyes, as well as various close up shots of money to signify that the song is about materialism. I also included close ups of the character singing/miming the lyrics to indicate that he is the vocalist.

Here is the use of close ups by The Neighbourhood's "Let it Go" that I incorporated into my own production:

Here is the use of such shots in my media piece:

















Since there were no females included in my production, I subverted this convention of Goodwin's, as there was no voyeurism concerning women in my video.