Question 1

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Or Real Media Products?

We used various representations and conventions for our genre. Most of them had to be based around the folk genre.

This representation is showed through out the piece of video, and is shown through self-reflection of the character and the journey of the protagonist.

First off, one of the main focus’ that indicate our genre was the costume. The various pieces of costume we used were boots, waistcoats and floral shirts. These are one of the common visuals that we see throughout the videos as this shows the identity that the artist is trying to convey. It’s also what the main protagonist wears, throughout the video.  It gives the video a rural field and, that the audience is expecting to see, nature scenery and get lured in, to this love story plot. We also had to include this love story into the plot and make it clear to the audience what was happening from the beginning, until the end. We make this clear by including a lot of shots of the couple together, and also shots of the couple apart so we can show the differentiation between these, and so we can also create separate moods of loneliness and happiness that the audience can grasp while they are watching the video. The costume, takes a copy from folk videos such as Mumford and Sons and Bob Dylan, the costume of the character takes a sophisticated twist to his personality, which reflects my target audience. I was aiming to appeal to a demographic of C1 – C2 males and females, aged between 25 – 30, as they are prime examples of people who are in a middle class lifestyles and are not in too extreme classes. This may be people who take a dip into certain lifestyles, but don’t make it their motive to be in an extreme identity group, its just expected of their background.

Some examples of shots that we highlighted are, shots of the protagonist either, walking down the side of a river or playing a guitar. These shots are more referred to the section of the audience who are commonly used to conventions of ‘contemporary’ folk, such as a younger audience, whoa re used to old types of music being brought back up onto the music scene, such as country rock or folk. The various uses of the artist playing the guitar in a cornfield is a very clear indication of our genre taking an influence from the famous Mumford and Sons video, ‘Winter Winds’, as they are a band in our genre. We took a lot of influence from this particular video, such as features and aspects of the background scenery, as it was seen quite a lot that rural areas and big open spaces of fields and places, seem to take a dominate place, in the folk videos. The chair that is dragged along in the field by the protagonist is also a trait that I take from the video. These visuals usually take the form of representing freedom or creating a new world, which looks ideal to the audience. Along with the costume, the character gives of a sense of individuality and the audience get so see him to whatever he wants, in this world that we have created for him.

The research I did into the video (the identity and the genre conventions) helped me to plan out visually, what I was going to do, and the forms that need to be included into the video to make it fit it into a genre. Such as analysing videos myself that were in my musical genre.

The female in my video is seen less then the protagonist male, but is seen in the video, as the counterpart to the male. She wears a red coloured jacket, and it stands out in the piece (contrasting to the background of the rural areas) as the colour of red is used to symbolise the theme of love, which is present throughout. It also gives the audience the impression the character will have an important role in the video, due to her being bolded more then the male character.

The music video fits into Goodwin’s theory of music video analysis, where he states that there is a particular rule where there is a relationship between the music and the visuals on screen of a music video. Examples of this in our video are at the beginning of the video when the protagonist picks up his phone and sees he has a missed call, from his girlfriend. At this point the music starts and kicks in at this moment. Another moment would be at the start of the chorus, when the music is upbeat, and the tempo is quite fast, we see a lot of travelling and walking around, and scene changes to particular locations, this is when there is just instrumental music opening up the piece to the audience. However, as soon as the song kicks into the chorus, the tempo slows down and we hear a slow rhythm section to the music and the lyrics beginning to be sung, as a visual point, we are focused on one particular scene and location, and it is off the protagonist walking down the street singing the lyrics as if he is the artist. This is the show in differentiation of the music and visuals and how they match. There is also an emotional piece of the song, when the character begins to break the chair as we see his emotions come full surface of his actions showing a different mental state of mind with the character in the video. The changing narrative here shows his extreme change in his emotions bringing all the events into one moment, making the tense of the song being at this particular moment.

The locations we used are very rural and agricultural. This especially is shown when the protagonist is walking through fields and we see the look of fields, trees, and forests. The scenery and the visuals are going to bold out the videos narrative, so it gives a fresh feel to the background, for the audience to look at. This relates to our target audience, as these are some of the traits that the audience will be able to identify with the genre we are displaying for them.

Lastly, the locations we used are very rural and agricultural. This especially is shown when the protagonist is walking through fields and we see the look of fields, trees, and forests. The scenery and the visuals are going to bold out the videos narrative, so it gives a fresh feel to the background, for the audience to look at. This relates to our target audience, as these are some of the traits that the audience will be able to identify with the genre we are displaying for them.