Evaluation Question 1

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

At the beginning of our project we had to make the decision on what genre we were going to base our music video on. We originally knew that Indie Rock was a top choice due to its unique and interesting conventions. We finally made the decision and chose Indie Rock and the song we wanted to do was Way Down We Go by Kaleo due to its deep tone and powerful lyrics; we knew we could create a storyline along with these lyrics. Sticking to the conventions was important to our project as we wanted the theme to fit with the song itself, if we chose a theme that was different to Indie Rock's conventions the product as a whole would look odd.

One Indie Rock convention I find to be fairly obvious in our music video is the Setting. A number of Indie Rock music videos are known to be quite low budget, the main settings in these music videos are in studios, cities, parks, towns etc. These are places that can be accessed easily and can create a mysterious atmosphere. In addition, the settings are kept simple because producers want the music video to focus more on the artist/performance. For our product we used this convention to our advantage and chose locations and settings that followed other Indie Rock music videos. Our chosen locations were in Rainham, Canterbury and Rochester. In Rainham we only used the train station where we had to get on the train Canterbury; we took advantage of the opportunity to use the train station as it was easily accessible and is a part of our protagonist journey, as we would still need to get on the train to get to our other locations. In Canterbury we used the High Street, King Ethelbert Garden, Love Lane, Outside the Marlowe Theatre, Dane Johns Gardens and Westgate Gardens. All of these locations were used as they reflected the conventions of an Indie Rock music video and created a certain feeling and atmosphere for the video. They are also all very accessible. Places such as the gardens and high streets had fairly secluded areas that reflect a mysterious and intriguing atmosphere that is captured in a lot of Indie Rock music videos. The gardens had fields, rivers, and seating areas that can reflect someones state of mind and how they are trying to escape. Whereas the high street is usually very busy and overpowering for the beginning and middle of the video and the kind of message we were trying to create about mental health. However we knew that this particular high street had pathways and alleys that could create the idea of feeling trapped and separated from others. Which we found to be successful. In addition, one idea I had in mind was to include a lot of the statues and architecture that is in Canterbury because in a Indie Rock music video it can have a much deeper meaning. A statue of a face or person can represent an influential person. However some are pieces of art that people have created to make an impression to the world around it, meaning statues can have a much deeper purpose. That is why we wanted to use them in our video. Moreover, on a separate filming day we decided to use the High Street and The Vines in Rochester as this was where the running scenes began and where the double-ganger was caught. This is where the High Street benefits our video as it was easily to access (more than Canterbury as it is closer) and the fact it is busy intensifies the scene. This part of our video defiantly challenges some of the conventions of our video as Indie Rock music videos are known for their secluded locations which are subtle and simple in order for the focal point to be the artist. However we wanted the message of our video around mental health to be obvious so the intensity of the high street was effective.

Another convention of an Indie Rock music video is the use of cinematic effects and filters that are often used to make the music video feel like a mini movie. This is a convention that we used and developed in our video/product by not only having a continuous montage of our protagonists day but also used different effects, filters, overlays, cuts etc. to link back to this convention. The reason we had chosen to have a story behind our video and have an on going montage of different shots as it draws the audience in more and involves them. They want to find out more about our protagonist and where she is going, what's going through her mind, who is the hooded figure. To achieve this storyline effect we used multiple montages that combine different shots in different locations, along with different editing effects. For example; an effect I really liked which I made using Final Cut Pro was an double exposure/overlay of different shots in order to make a unique and cinematic transition between two parts of the montage. The transition was going from a shot of our protagonist outside the Marlowe Theatre next to a statue to a shot of her walking along a river close by. I decided to use several shots of Aiden (our 'artist') who was 'singing' the song to overlay onto the other shots in order to get a smooth transition, In addition, this is how we developed this convention in order to suit our storyline and the effect we were trying to create; the lights I had used at the time helped brighten the shots and distract from when the transition occurred. The reason I has chosen several shots instead of just one was because it allowed there to be a moment of intensity as a lot of Indie Rock music videos are duller, this moment in our video allowed colours to contrast from the screen and liven the video up.

Indie Rock conventions in a music video were always something that we had in mind and thought about all the way through the planning and production process of our video. We ensured that we used as many as we saw fit in order for our video to link to Indie Rock and that be recognisable when the audience is watching. However, we found ourselves challenging one of these conventions due to our original ideas and plans we wanted to do and meet. The convention was to do with the Camera work side of the video; extreme close ups of the artists/actors are often used throughout an Indie Rock music video to capture and represent the emotion they are feeling at the time. When filming I took this on board by trying to capture a few extreme close ups of Hannah (our protagonist and actress) at the end when she is panicking in the street and others at the beginning when she is near and in the train station. However we challenged this convention by using a variety of different shots such as; long shots, pans, mid shots etc. This made the video a lot more entertaining and aesthetically pleasing for the audience due to the fact that the variety of shots means that the video is not boring and repetitive, drawing them in till the end.