In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
One way that we used conventions of a real media product, was the use of camera shots and angles. In our video we have a variety of shots, however many of the shots are close ups, and shots of our artist looking over her shoulder. This portrays the atrist as feminine and innocent. One shot in particular is of our artist looking over her shoulder, staring directly into the camera. Although this camera shot challenges the audience, our artists minimalistic and innocent makeup and clothing shows a degree of naivity and relates to our country pop genre. From our research we found that many female country pop artists are presented as very feminine and innocent. The way we decided to portray this was through camera angles and shots to emphasise our artists beauty and femininity. Our artist looks directly into the camera showing confidence- this reveals her as a credible artist, and links to the pop influence of our genre. Many existing artists music videos have very similar aspects to ours.
Another way we used media conventions in our video was by the use of location. Our whole video was filmed in forests, rivers, and generally in the countryside. We decided to use an outside location because it links with our country pop genre, and relates to the conventions of country-pop. Country pop has connotations of freedom and nature- we tried to portray this in our video by the use of outdoor location. Our artist is filmed singing to herself outside on her own, this shows country artists conventions of singing meaningful lyrics, 'in a world of their own.' We also used media conventions in our video with the use of costume choice. Our artists is wearing a floral, and floaty dress in all three texts, this portrays her as very feminine and girly. Her costume is not at all sexy or revealing, and more innocent, girly and 'cute.' This relates to the country genre. We used the rule of thirds in our location shots, and had the artist to either the left or right of the shot- we did this so that the landscape and countryside location was clear for the audience to see. In Miley Cyrus' song 'The Climb' she is filmed in a countryside location to portray similar country routes as our artist.
A way we developed forms and conventions of media products was by using split screens. We used a variety of shots and edited them in final cut express to form different versions of split screens. Whilst Lia and myself were doing our research and planning into music videos, we found that the video 'who says' by Selena Gomez, used split screens. Lia and I really liked this effect and thought it would be a clever and interesting touch to our video. We researched how to do it, by viewing tutorials on youtube, and decided it was simple enough to do. We developed the split screen, by using 4 shots, and making a 4-way split screen of our artist sitting, walking, singing, and lying down. Later on in our music video, we also used a 2-way split screen of our artist looking back smiling, and her boy crush looking towards her smiling in the other corner. We constructed this set-up to make it look as though our artist is fantasying about her 'dream man' and smiling to herself about him. This links in to our narrative of her day-dreaming about the perfect boy. This also shows inter-texuality, as in romance films you often have the girls dreaming about the perfect man.
Another way we developed forms and conventions of media products was by using extreme close ups. From our research we found that many female country pop artists include many close ups of themselves in their video. However we developed this by taking it a step further and increasing the zoom of the close up, causing our shots to be even more close up shots of our artist. Usually in female country pop songs, there are close ups of hands and feet, however in our video we have a close up shot of our artists lips whilst singing. We did this to emphasise the meaningful lyrics, and express our artists credibility as a singer songwriter. We also used the close up shot to show our artists femininity and beauty.
We challenged forms and conventions of media products in our video by not having any performance in our video. Usually in country pop songs, the artist is filmed playing a guitar and performing- showing the artist to be more credible, not only as a singer, but instrumentalist as well. However we wanted to make our video more based on a story, and we wanted to use the meaningful love lyrics and match that to a strong narrative. We modernised our video to a degree by not including instruments. We also wanted to portray the minimalistic, care-free conventions of country music, and not include any possessions or objects. Just a girl in the countryside singing to herself- we believed this would create a down to earth and natural image of our artist. Firth says that the most important part of a music video is performance- so in our video we have greatly challenged this theory to suit our genre and narrative. Many existing music videos are very staged and set-up, we wanted to create the image that there were no cameras, little makeup and effort on costume, just a girl and boy on their own in the country looking for each other.
Another way we challenged forms and conventions of media products in our video was through the narrative. From research we found that usually it is the girl that chases the boy, and the female wanting to find her dream man. However, due to our song choice, and the lyrics, we decided to swap it over, and have the boy chasing the girl, so we portrayed the girl as very desirable because of this. I believe that this gave our video a more modern touch, and showed pop influence, of independent, strong women, that are chased by men. In Taylor swifts song 'you belong with me' there is a shot of the girl looking out her window at the boy, and she is wishing he could be hers. In our artists song, we have made this the opposite.
Question 2:
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Here is our group discussion on how effective the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are. We aimed to comment on our artists roots, the country-pop genre lighting, editing, camera work, existing music artists, and digipack and advert construction.
Question 3:
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
On our final video, we added annotation on youtube to present our audience feedback. This was answers to questions we composed on a questionnaire, then handed out to sixth form students after watching our video. This was very useful as Lia and myself could gain an idea of what worked in our video and what didn't work. We also found out whether the portrayal of our artists fits the genre and whether people could gather what our narrative was by just watching the video. We learnt we needed to improve our lip syncing, and change some of our video transitions. We also realised that we needed to have a more variety of shots and that we were lacking in performance shots.
Question 4:
How did you use media technologies in the construction research and planning and evaluation stages?
