Evaluation question 1

Evaluation question 1 - In what way does your media product use does, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The conventions of real media texts relate to the certain clothing, setting, props etc. that you would expect to find in a media text before actually seeing one. An example of this would be for an alternative rock genre you would tend to see certain things such as guitars and often see the clothing they were as urban which would tend to be bright colours which would often have rips in to show that they are ‘masculine and cool’. Moreover, for our media product it took us a while to know which genre we wanted to choose as we were stuck between two which made it hard to choose which one. For example, for our research and planning we decided to look into ‘The Verve’ as a band and decided that their song ‘bittersweet symphony’ was the best one to choose because the song has a slow pace meaning our actor would be able to lip sync it easier. Also, we looked at a number of James Blunt songs which helped as it had clear narrative which is what we wanted.

Camera

In alternative rock music videos you tend to see a number of close ups which means that in our video we tried to do the same as we need to fit the conventions of real media products to show that we have an understanding of our genre. An example of this is in our video we used a number of close ups at the start to show the expression and emotion on his face. Also, anther generic convention is the camera tends to move a lot when showing someone’s face to make it disorientated for the audience.

 

Costume/clothing

As a group we decided that costume within our video is a key aspect in order to create a perfect student music you must consider clothing as it stands out if you use the wrong clothing. For example making characters wear a suit for a rap video isn’t correct and would look odd and this would restrict the mark you will get.  We ensured that our character was wearing specific clothes in each scene so that it fits the conventions of real media products. He was always wearing oversized clothes in the homeless scenes to connote that the clothes weren’t his and that they were donated to him by various charities. The last clothing was a suit for when he was in the work scenes to show him smart and professional.

 

Setting

Setting was another element we found was a key aspect of a video that critics pick up on as it can be noticed when the setting doesn’t fit the genre. To show the setting we chose, we used an establishing shot which clearly connoted to the audience that we were in a lower class area where the surroundings are rather dirty and not easy on the eye. We chose an area where homeless people tend to sleep as our actor was meant to be homeless which made it perfect.