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

• Our music video uses forms and conventions of music videos from the same or similar genre; we have done this by using techniques and styles that are evident in videos of the genre of our track.
• The music video that we have created conforms to the conventions of the genre of our track, as the music videos which I have studied in the indie rock/alternative rock genre are narrative based, and focus on a storyline rather than the band.
• So the typical music video of an indie rock track will have a storyline which is present throughout the video, and will be the main focus of the music video
• A good example of this is the Arctic Monkeys video for their song; When The Sun Goes Down (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma9I9VBKPiw)

• This is what we have done, as our music video is based around the narrative of the main character, and his new lease of life.
• We have also incorporated some close-up performance shots, so that we can create that para-social intimacy with the audience. This shows us following the mainstream route, as music videos usually have a lot of meat-shots of the artist, and try to break the fourth wall.
• By following the mainstream for this genre, it helps the audience to identify with other artists or tracks in a similar genre, and enables them to find out which genre the track is. It can also help listeners of this genre identify and relate to the video.
• However, we have also challenged some conventions of this genres music videos, by not having any band performance shots, as music videos usually include performance shots of the band. But we only used performance shots of the lead singer, which isn’t conventional of a music video of this genre.
• We did this because we wanted to challenge conventions, so we decided not to have any performance shots of the band, and just of the lead singer. This was because we wanted to link the performance shots to the narrative, and we didn’t want to come away from the storyline of the video.
• A video which employs a similar style of performance shots is The Kooks – Naïve, which has lip-synching from the lead singer, but no performance shots with the band. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaMiaRLgvY)

• Throughout the video we used rural and woodland locations, as this was a symbol of the organic sound that the track has, which gives the song a slight autumnal feel. Due to this we tried to keep the theme of the rural locations through the course of the video, and I believe we did this successfully.
• We used sped up shots through woods and urban areas, to create the feeling of a person travelling through their life. We originally got this idea from the video of ‘La Ritournelle’ by Sebastien Tellier. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsk8QQj5Nrc)

• This is also an example of how our video is post-modern, because we have used borrowed this idea from another artist (intertextuality).
• Using Goodwin's critical framework, our video conforms to the stereotypical music video, via amplification of sound and lyrics through a visual medium such as; the sounds is amplified through the cutting rate of the video, through performance shots of the lead singer, through lip-synching in parts of the song, through first-person mode of address when the lead singer is lip-synching.
• Although I believe there is a strong link between the music and visuals, I think that there is also an element of disjuncture in the video, as the narrative of the music video, is linked in with the lyrics or music of the track.
• We can also had another one of Goodwin’s theories to our video, as we have what he calls ‘the notion of looking’, when an artist’s image is repeated in the video e.g. through reflections in a mirror. Or in our case through a picture of the artist, this means that the audience are consuming the star more often
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  Goodwin also says that artist’s identify with the audience, by looking into the camera. This is shown in our music video; in all of our performance shots, the singer is looking directly at the camera; establishing para-social intimacy with the viewer through a first person mode of address. The artist is looking at the audience as if they are speaking to the individual directly, which is conventional of all music videos.