Evaluation: Question 1

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

Music Video
Below is an image of the theroy behind forms and conventions of a music video with the gerneral and Andrew Goodwin's theroy.

For our media product we chose to use the song 'American Dream' by Jakatta. This song is a dance/house song and the main reason why we chose this song choice. This is because the genre for dance/house music has a variety of music videos with no particaulr trend followed as you can see from exising music videos below.

For our video we wanted to combine a range of conventions we have seen being used in existing dance videos and try to bring them across in our video. We decided that our video would tell a story. We researched existing music videos that were run in this way and we thought that our song could tell a certain story. Songs such as '9PM till i come' by ATB and 'You don't know me' by Arman Van Helden have videos that are a series of events that run in a sequence like a story. When it came to our video we didn't want our story to be too serious we wanted to add a playful twist to it. To explain how we did this, i am now going to analysis the general theory behind the forms and conventions of a music video and compare them with our music video.

Lyrics

isn't many lyrics to our song choice, only of a couple of lines, however, they are still a main part of why we choice the storyline for our music video. You cannot here them very well in the song, only the hushed voice of woman whispering in a seductive, inviting tone. However, there is one word that you can here quite clearly which is 'Overdirve' which is used to pick up the paste of the music as well. We often use this word 'Overdirve' in our video to exaggerate the existance of the main fantsy girl as she is who puts him 'into overdrive'. I believe that this introduction to the main fantasy girl this way makes it obvious to the audience that she is a sexual fantasy for him and the feeling he gets from the general vibe off her. There is a constant dream like feel to the song from the contant sighing and humming in the background which makes it work with the storyline of our music video.

Music

The music of the video definitely determines in most cases what shots are used and how the editing should be done. We have constantly tried to fit the differnt shots and scences to the right parts of the music. An example of this is shown when the main male charcter begins to follow the main fatasy girl in his dream. At this point the music quieten ands it becomes more surreal and dream like as he wonders off to find her. I feel that this works with part of the storyline line works well with this part of the song and also does with the next part of the video where the two other fatacy girls are introduced to the video. They are dancing very seducatively around trees, going from one girl to the other, with the everything seemed to be following together with the use of cross dissolves. This added to the dream-like effect as the shots of the two differnt girls seemed the follow together which is also encouraged by the tone of the music at that point in the song.

Editing

Editing is what makes the video, without it there would be no video. In the general therory, the most common form of ediditng is fast-cut montage, rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first viewing, so ensuring multiple viewing. However, we do not have any of this in our video as it wouldn't have gone with the storyline or even the song of our music video. We have usd effects such as cross disolves to make it follow together in a dream-like way. We have also used dissolves with the change of scene and location. We also used blur effects for the going into and waking up from the dream, this is so the audience cant identify that the the scene in the forest is actually in a dream. Without it, then the video may not even make sense to some people. Throughout the video we have continuity editing so everything looks like it follows together even with all the differnt shots. This is so the audeince that the music video is based on a story.

Exhibitionism

The story of the music video is that there is a attractive, fantasy-like girl who is trying to seduce that main male charcter by making him ofllow her. She is seductive and is a sexual figure of his imagination. Throughout the video there are close ups of this main fantasy girl, giving off a seductive look, drawing in the attention of the main male character and the audience. In Andrew Goodwin's theroy, it says that the female character is shown often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star. We have tried to show this throught the shots and editing of our own video.

Close up shots are also used in exisitng music videos to show expression and emotion on the actors faces. This is vital in music videos because it shows the audience wat emotions the vieo is trying to portray and how the song is meant to be percieved. Below are the differnt shots of Gerogia within our music music video.

Digipak

With our researched digipaks, we noticed that most of the digipaks had the artist on the front coverof it. This encouraged us to follow similar conventions and do something similar. We felt that by putting an image of the atrist on the front cover will make the album seem more appealing for customer to by, especially if they are a great fan of their music. Most of the images are either close ups or medium close ups of the artist, looking straight at the camera, drawing in the attention of the public. This is what we aimed to achieve.

When it came to the back of the researched digipaks, we followed similart trends by placing the record label on the back and also placing a barcode on the back alon with obviously the list of the songs that are on the album. We did this because it addded a sense of proffesionalism to our work. When looking at current albums I realised that the inside panels links with the outside of the album and there should be a good continuity. I think that this is strong point about our Digipak as there is a good visual link between each panel. This can be seen from the image of our digipak below.

Website

When it came to designing a webpage for our ancillay task we researched many existing artist webpages. Below is a link to the research that i have carried out.

I noticed from looking at existing websites that somewhere on the page there is a reasonable size image of the artist, either as a close up or medium close up. This is so the viewers are once again drawn in, just like the idea is with he images on the front cover of the digipak. We also often found that the websites had a user login in and an option to sing up for one. We immediately liked the idea of including this on our website and decided on doing it. This wasn't a problem for us to include this as we have had to create a website for our ict coursework and we have included a similar feature in that website, still using the form feature. We wanted to include this user login in our website because if our product was real to life this would encourage the audience to sign up to the artist homepage so they can view more of the things he is involved with. By doing this it might result in the artist receiving a small fee or the audience being constantly alerted with information about the artist and this would keep them interested in him.

Every website had their main navigational links on different places on the page. We decided that we liked where the links were on the artist Taio Cruz' website which are across the top of the page. Because our task was only do the homwpage of your atist's site, we didn't make a page for every naviagtional link to go to, However, we did make a seperate page for the video as there wasn't enough room to fit it on the homepage so i chnaged it to the 'Videos' navigational link goes to that page and that the 'Home' link goes to the homepage.