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In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
After the completion of our music video, we can compare the finished product to other music videos and their conventions. Although they are massively influenced by the genre of music, comparing the forms and conventions gives us an understanding as to whether the video would serve its purpose well, or just break the boundaries too much to be unrecognisable as a music video.
In the planning and research stage of our project we looked at other videos from Santigold, to gain an idea of the visuals that were created from the same musical genre. We found that her videos contained much political reference, with bright and colourful vivid effects. We therefore mimicked this idea by setting up the mis-en scene to be very lively and intriguing, such as the rocking horse set up in the horse lorry and the re-occuring theme of the party poppers and balloons. I believe that we developed this form through the reversing effect, which we had advanced in by ourselves through much experimenting. We also made sure at the editing stage that our piece was perfectly in time to the music, eventually flicking between shots from both locations at a fast pace as the song built up. I believe that this gave much upbeat, rhythmical character to the piece which accompanied the song, which is a normal convention of a music video of our particular genre of music.
Another feature of a music video, including Santigold’s is the tendency to focus on the artist themselves for promotional purposes, maintaining the spotlight through costume, camerawork or live performance. Since our actor was the only character throughout the piece, I believe we stuck to this convention, making her and the reversed events the centre of attention. I believe that this was emphasised by our mis-en scene, especially into our second location where our actor was contained into a very small space. Against the plain white walls of the squash court, the denim playsuit and curly hair made our character stand out. In the horse lorry however, our character’s white tights contrasted greatly against the darker metallic walls behind her which highlighted her peculiar movement to the music, giving her a kooky and individual image. I believe that it was very important to stick to this convention since one of the purposes of a music video is to promote the artist and give them an image for their audience to relate to.
Relating to the previous argument, in Santigold’s videos the artist actually sings the lyrics to the song which helps to connect significant lyrics to relevant imagery in her videos. I believe that this would have made our piece stronger seeing as there are a few noteworthy lyrics in the song that relate to the content in the video. I believe that we did not get enough time to carry this out on the set of our location, although it would have elevated our piece to be more of a performance from our artist.
In our audience feedback, some members disagreed with our choice not to include a narrative in our media product. A narrative is often contained within a music video, although it is not a solid convention especially with the examples that we looked at. Therefore, it was our decision from the start not to include a story with a beginning, middle an end but to make it more of a visual, conceptual and contemporary piece. Furthermore, I believe that our product still holds an element of progression, reflecting our character’s desire to express her in the space she is contained in, which advances throughout the piece. Backing this, a piece of positive feedback received stated that there was a flow within our piece, since we were always introducing new ideas and visuals that retained the audience’s attention. I therefore believe that not using a narrative challenges the forms and conventions of a music video, making the audience decipher their own story from the conceptual visuals.
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