Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

What are the key conventions for music videos?

Firstly here are a list of what I think are the key conventions for my genre of music videos;

• band scene
• storyline
• lip syncing
• editing to the beat
• artist name at the start and end
• music playing in the background

Conventions tend to be used in music videos to define its genre, as previousy explained in my blog, and the ones above are the ones that I think define my song that I have chosen. So for this reason within the video I have tried to incorprate all of them in.

Band Scene

As this is a very instrumental song we needed to have band elements in it to make the authenticity on point. I feel we did this very well because it looked as if we were genuinely playing the instruments and singing along to the song. Many music videos have band scenes within and I felt it was a necessity to include it in ours, mainly to make it look as professional as possible.

Here is a comparison I made with the Kings of Leon video for "Use Somebody"

Lip Syncing

Lip Syncing is almost always included in every music video, with the exception of a few. This meant that I felt I needed to include it, which we did. There are many ways in which we could have included it, for example most videos lip sync in the band scene or as they are acting out the story. I chose to do this both ways which was encouraged by our peers and teachers. Overall lip syncing helps emphasise the meaning of the lyrics and makes it more personal to the viewer as the actual emotions are being felt through the singer. Below I have made a comparison to Ed Sheerans video 'Lego House' because they are very similar in the way they are both on their own in public singing to the camera, also similar with what they are wearing.

Below is the full video if you would like to make a full comparison.




Storyline

Having a storyline in a music video is a very good thing to have because it gives the audience something to focus on and would give them a very good chance to understand what the lyrics mean (this is only if the story and lyrics correlate) and will also allow the audience to sing along to the song because they understand it better, which will make the audience enjoy it more. This is why we chose to do a storyline, which is also a very basic story of a rocky relationship which many people can relate to.

Challenging conventions?

In my opinion my media product does not challenge any conventions throughout and I have tried very hard to stick to them to make it as traditional as possible. However I have heard one or two people say that because one of the main characters in my video is female, this could be seen as against the flow of society because men are predominantly seen as being more powerful and in control of things,  for example David Cameron and Barack Obama. This is called the 'feminist theory' being initially applied by Laura Mulvey and suggests that the female character is in control of things, which of course goes against real life circumstances, although I do not fully agree with this and is only what I have been fed back by my class mates.