Evaluation Activity 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Throughout the production of the music video, we wanted to conform to the conventions of two different genres to satisfy both audiences and create an image and video for a band that is unique and quite unconventional. Though mostly a rock song and a rock band, their appearance is more towards the mainstream and we made such adjustments in order to satisfy an audience that likes traditional pop bands while keeping to those that like independent rock bands, the following is how we made adjustments in the video to cater to both audiences.
The Relationship of Lyrics to Narrative and Visuals
At this point in the song, the line "drove my parents to despair," is said and we show him making a public post to Facebook, this closely relates the lyrics to the visuals without being too direct. This is also shown in Coldplay's video for Paradise, where the character holds the lyrics, "When she was just a girl," on display in a similar way to give the audience interaction with the video through lyrics. for our video, showing the parents would have gone against the audience expectation of keeping the cast strictly to young people, this way we were able to show the same situation while satisfying one of the requests from our target audience. As the visuals stay close to the narrative, it also conforms to one of Goodwin's rules of music videos, which is that there is always a close relationship between lyrics and visuals.
The Relationship of Music to Narrative
The instrumental itself is closely linked to the visuals, not only the performance but also the narrative, as the main character repeatedly plays imaginary instruments (air guitar) in tune to the music of the song. This appears twice again in the video as a recurring semiotic and as a symbol also shown in the ancillary tasks (front cover) were he plays guitar as a child. This relates to the theme of dreams and dreaming also shown in the ancillary tasks.
Representation of Artist
Though the focus is the main character in the video, the Record label, "Brit Isle records," is about presenting them as a close, cohesive group while making it clear who the star is. As an unconventional band, their clothing and image is supposed to be casual but unbranded, which reduces the inter-textual references that are conventional of rock bands but establishes the band better. This representation of a group instead of a main star is shown in the ancillary tasks and is very conventional of rock bands such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, who's video of Carlifornication is widely used as a representation of similarities between style but different personal traits while prioritizing the lead, though not the same theme as our own video they have a similar appearance in that video.
Setting and Location: The setting we chose was one of the few things we did not take from our audience expectations and appeals more to the pop band side than the rock, a school is not rebellious or urban and does not have the spectacle to be used for performance. However, because of this, a school is a place of order and discipline, a rebellious youth in this environment would be interesting, thus the use of full classrooms (above) and annoyed teachers and pupils. Our video took most of its inspiration from Wheatus' Teenage Dirtbag, especially the setting and how they made school a place of abuse and loneliness for the character, though we portray our character as defiant rather than weak. This defies the conventions and takes it further by making use of the setting to emphasise the character's rebelliousness.
Camerawork and Lighting
Camerawork was important in making the mise-en-scene clear and easy to understand. The majority of shots are the traditional mid-long shots as we were cutting shots in order to maintain the pace, furthermore, these shots were all filmed during the sunniest parts of the day, with the glare of the sun present in some shots. As a result, most of the shots are clear but lack interesting angles, and even the female love interest is not used as spectacle, which defies Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze and we took this further by having shots and angles were her face is not visible as the main character seeks her attention and thus has great respect for her, objectification of her would contradict this. The lighting is however, conventional of pop music though they tend to change their lighting through mise-en-scene as the song progresses.
Editing
The editing of this music video mainly compromised of quick cuts between scenes in order to create humour, and greatly increasing the speed of scenes in order to quickly move to the next scene, mainly because we would sometimes have multiple scenarios playing out at once. This would create confusion and make the audience want to re-watch the video in order to peace it together. We would alternate between a scene of him acting intolerable and immature to a more mature version of him in the performance, cutting between these two shots shows the difference in character and conforms to Levi Strauss' theory of binary opposites to create contrast. Though it is an obvious narrative feature for someone to become a better person within the 4 minutes, showing the two so direct is quite unconventional for both music genres and disrupts Todorov's theory of a beginning, middle and conclusion.
Mise-en-scene
This shot tells a lot about the music video. As mentioned earlier, the girl's face cannot be seen but we cannot see the main character's face either, yet the teacher, in the background, can be seen clearly. This separates the two groups and shows how their actions are hidden from her view. Unlike other shots, this one has a clear separation of foreground, middle and background, which further shows the separation and disconnection of the three in the shot and how the main character is actually a recluse even as he throws her the note.
