Evaluation

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

My media product, consists of developing rather than challenging the forms and conventions of real media product. I chose a song which falls into the genre of ‘Pop’ which helped myself come up with a vast amount of ideas which are similar but also different to other ‘Pop’ videos that are currently available. ‘Pop’ music videos nowadays tend to focus on the specific artist and there story which mostly consists of a party scene, a boy and girl who tend to meet and form a relationship and having a happy ending or half naked people dancing around with a short story.  With a variety of ‘Pop’ music videos to research on and analysis, I came to the conclusion that I would follow the rules of a ‘Pop’ video but change some conventions and have a story with an actual serious meaning. The forms and convention to any other music videos are; to show the audience the artist who represents the music video, show the audience the personality of the video, portray the track in a visual way, represent the artist in a way that the audience can relate to and feel positive about and lastly, to represent the genre of the track. In most music videos, the aim is to clearly follow these specific guidelines to ensure the video has met all the the targets and for it to fall into the correct genre. If an artist challenges these forms and conventions, it can cause a lot of controversy and could possible ruin their career. 

Ke$ha - Tik Tok

Lady Gaga - Just Dance

‘Pop’ is a genre that can be portrayed in a simplified way but also has to follow the guidelines for a successful video. ‘Pop’ stands for Pop Culture which simplifies what’s popular in the current charts. In preparation to make my own music video for this genre, I researched popular ‘Pop’ artist music videos such as ‘Ke$ha - Tik Tok’’ and ‘Lady Gaga - Just Dance’. I chose these songs as I found they follow the guidelines for a successful music video and specific portray the artist as well as the surroundings and other happenings in the video. The song I chose to shoot the music video is ‘We R Who We R’ by the American artist ‘Ke$ha’ who is a ‘Pop’ genre artist who’s music videos consists of a lot of party scenes and glitter. I chose this song as I felt I could use a storyline which relates a lot to the song but isn’t actually portrayed through the lyrics of the song apart from the title of it. It was important to chose the right ‘Pop’ song which could follow the correct forms and conventions as well as taking a bit of a challenge to show the skills from media I have learnt.

The narrative of the music video I decided to use came from the title of the song ‘We R Who We R’ and having a true meaning behind it rather than just having the typical story for a ‘Pop’ music video. From my imagination, it a short while to brainstorm and come up with the final decision of the story and having it as ‘Pop’ as it could get and making it original rather than just exactly copying other music videos. The narrative focuses and a teenage boy who is kidnapped by a woman who was been following him and turns him into a puppet where she controls his movements. There are movements where the boy is on a bed surrounded by mostly female company looking at him and trying to change the way he is so he can become what everyone expects of him. The narrative continues of the actual meaning behind everything, the walls covered in magazines shows that the media in particular are always constantly telling the audiences what they should wear, what hairstyle to have, what make-up to wear and how they should be in order for the rest of the public to respect and accept them. The boy as the puppet is trying to be brainwashed but is fighting back and eventually wakes up in a room just thinking it was a heavy night out and was a dream. As it was not clear in the video, as the boy was fighting off to much and not allowing anyone to change him, he was let go but made not to remember anything. Also I added dance scenes in the video to stick with guidelines of a ‘Pop’ music video and to also give it more excitement. I came up with this narrative as the media nowadays are getting ridiculous on the perception on how the public should be and what they should do. I therefore think this wrong, so I chose to try this out without it looking too commercial and as well of portraying the genre of ‘Pop’. 

When evaluating my media product, I looked back to see if I had kept to the guidelines for a ‘Pop’ music video and also challenged it in a way to make it different and stand out from the rest. I had kept to the majority of the guidelines as I did show the audience the artist of the music video, show the personality through the visual aspect and playing around with it also to give excitement, show the track in a visual way to help the audience understand the meaning behind the lyrics and show the genre of the song. What I didn’t do so well was represent the artist in a positive way so much as there is a clear shot of the artist drinking out of bottle with consumed alcohol and for this video to be able to be seen by all age ranges, this specific scene should of been changed. I did not put it a party scene so much, It was a dance sequence with around 5-8 dancers surrounding myself. The costumes for this music video were kept simply but bright colours to help stand them out in certain scenes. The make-up however was very different, a lot of glitter was used to make it look fun and have sequins on our faces and hairstyles to look a bit different than normal. 

A convention that I did stick with, was the editing process of the music video as it was quick, sharp and snappy. The editing fits well with the music and cuts a lot to different scenes to keep it exciting. The editing process was a success and with the finalised piece, it looked like a professional ‘Pop’ music video. The programme used for the editing of the music video was ‘iMovie’ on a ‘Apple’ ‘iMac’ computer. With this software, it was easy to edit and simple to change and cut clips to a certain extend to help make the music video look appropriate for its theme. 

With the camera conventional shots, I chose to use simple shots with show the artist and extras so it can show the audience what happens are appearing the help the story unfold. I took shots of just the artist as I felt it was important for the audience to get to know and feel the personality of the artist, as well as figuring out the story.