Evaluation: Question One

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

My final video and it's accompanying texts were heavily influenced by the forms and conventions of real media products from the research stages of my advanced portfolio through to the completion of the final pieces.

The Video

Two key conventions of a music video are narrative and concept and my video follows a narrative and there is a concept. These conventions are spoken about by Andrew Goodwin, who also says that live performance is a convention of music videos, however for the genre of dance, the idea of a live performance in music videos scarce, according to my research. The narrative sees the main character chased down before eventually joining with the masked chasing characters. The concept is one of a slightly surreal feel, something that challenges the norm of everyday life, yet crosses over to said life. We chose to avoid the other convention of live performance as it did not reflect the genre of dance music and we felt it would be more difficult to create a genuine video with an amateur cast. Goodwin's book, 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory', explores key elements of music videos, including genre, relationships, close ups, looking and intertextuality. Tvetan Todorov talks of the idea of equilibrium (the norm), disequilibrium (breaking of the norm) and a new equilibirum (the reestablishment of a new norm). This convention is one that my video develops, where we see the equilibrium behave almost as an immediate disequilibrium with the main character alone and the masked characters appearing mysteriously. The disequilbirum occurs when the main character approaches the masked characters and there is a tense moment, before the establishment of the new equilibrium where he takes a mask and joins with them.

The camerawork demonstrated a lot of conventional shots of the genre of dance music, with establishing shots at the beginning and low angle shots of feet, much like the ones seen in 'Endorphins'. The use of close ups and extreme close ups echoed the video for 'Turn It Around', allowing the capturing of the emotions of the lead character and creating the binary opposite of the emotionless masked people and the scared lead character. The use of these close ups was interesting as we were not trying to promote the artist, as Goodwin suggests, but trying to develop the relationship between the visuals and the lyrics, which is a key point of Goodwin's work. The emotions of our lead character suggest he was in fact "holding on for some kind of miracle", as he is lost, alone and being hunted, therefore he must wait to be saved or to find a way out, which in the end turns out to be joining the masked characters.

In my video, there is the superimposition of the song title and artist name over the opening scenes, a motif that was demonstrated in the videos I analyzed, specifically Spinnin' Records videos, such as 'I Could Be The One' by Nicky Romero vs. Avicii. This editing is likely due to the influence of  record labels, trying to promote the name of the artist and song in an alternative way, as many DJs and producers do not feature prominently in their own videos, due to the fact they rarely sing their own lyrics. The use of beat matched cutting, especially at the start where the cuts are rapid and to the beat, is something that is also demonstrated in all the dance music videos I analyzed, such as at the beginning of the original 'Endorphins' video. In terms other special effects, we struggled to achieve anywhere near the level of special effects demonstrated in other videos that I analyzed, such as 'Tidal Wave', where there was impressive mirror techniques and superimpositions. There was, however, use of a black and white filter and a less advanced mirroring edit in the opening cuts of the video.

In terms of mise-en-scene, we tried to get all the cast in all black costume, as the cast are in Martin Garrix's 'Animals', but not everyone stuck to this particular memo and so the costume is definitely something that could be improved were we to do this project again. Unfortunately, health and safety would not allow for the use of fire or flares, which I wanted to use, complying with what I noted was a convention in the music videos I analyzed. 'Endorphins' and 'I Could Be The One' both used fire to great effect and I hoped we would be able to do the same but unfortunately we could not adapt this convention for our own video. The masks are an interesting prop that have seemingly become the vital convention for dance music videos, as demonstrated in 'Animals' and 'Toulouse'. We used the masks as a key piece of costume as well as a prop, much like in Nicky Romero's 'Toulouse'. The lead character's coat was big and had a fury hood, which demonstrates a certain amount of protection and the constant hands in pockets suggests a fear of the unknown, the coat also made him look smaller than he is. Interestingly we did have a female masked character but she was portrayed in no way differently to the males around her, as the animal personas the cast took seemingly wiped out any gender differences. She was not purposely there to satisfy the Male Gaze talked about by Laura Mulvey.

The location is one similar to what we see in 'Turn It Around' and develops the idea that nature allows people to be free and to dance ridiculously in public, as is demonstrated in many of the videos I analyzed. The location did in many ways reinforce the teenage audience's need for identity and choice, as the forest is individual, natural and does not conform, it is not man made and it does not follow a set structure. It is unknown and many teenagers watching may be having issues with knowing themselves, knowing what they are about, and in many ways the message the video pushes that people shouldn't be scared of the unknown. Another interpretation is that the whole episode is drugs or alcohol-fueled, which is not uncommon in dance music videos, as the glorification of such substances is prominent as Beullens, Roe and Van den Bulck speak about. This offers gratification for audience, as spoken about by Denis McQuail, as the audience can identify and feel accepted in to these different ideas about teens.

Digipak

My digipak follows the house style of my video, with the use of stills taken on the day of filming, in the same lighting and therefore they all look very much alike. The black and white filtered images and the mirrored image are demonstrative of the montage shown at the beginning of the video. The cutout photo image is extremely similar to this image from the opening montage in the 'Tidal Wave' video I analyzed.

This still influenced the digipak image. As I found from my research the digipaks, such as Calvin Harris' digipak for '18 Months' and Sub Focus' own 'Torus', are often similar to the style of the videos shot for the singles taken from the album. The back of the album features a tracklist, a barcode and credits to the record company as was evidenced in all the digipaks I looked at.

Magazine Advert

The magazine advert I produced uses the same font and colour scheme as that used on the digipak. The artist name is bigger than the album name due to the fact the artist Sub Focus is a more recognisable name than his new album's name. The use of the 5 star review is a slight development on the quotes that were shown on the Avicii advert I analyzed, the addition of the 5 stars adding the the classy look of the advert and also promoting the album in a very positive light. This review from Q Magazine is also an example of synergy and the two step flow model, as Q Magazine are opinion leaders and therefore will influence the audience. The logos to the right at the bottom are the record labels. I changed the opacity so they could remain in colour but not intrude on the house style of the advert. I did the same with the social network logos at the bottom right, which I put there to slightly develop on the Chase and Status poster which had the Chase and Status website on. Considering the younger demographic for the audience, I felt social networks were more accessible than websites to teenagers. In contrast to the Chase and Status advert, we did not include the vendors of the album on the advert, as we felt, considering the audience once again, they would know how to locate and access the album. In hindsight, we could have including a barcode for smartphone users to scan in order to be taken to download the album.