Evaluation q 1

Evaluation q 1

• 1.
  In what waysdoes your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• 2.
  Our music videois of the genre Soul/Jazz. Typical conventions of Soul/Jazz music videos consist of; simple dress codes, simple make-up, focusing more on the lyrics & voice and less on the image, mainly performance based, some slightly slow music, instruments such as guitar, piano & narrative based, drums commonly used. As well as adhering to stereotypes of our genre we have also subverted some stereotypes in order to make our music video different from others, and to make it stand out. Andrew Goodwin claimed that in all good music videos, there is a ‘high demand’ for lots of close-ups of the main artist/ vocalist. Due to our song being an emotional song with lots of expressions and feelings being expressed, we were able to do this successfully and effectively by using lots of close-ups showing the artists emotions at the time.
• 3.
  We conform togeneral stereotypes through out our music video by having a relationship between the lyrics and the video, we did this in order for our audience to be able to engage both with the video and with the lyrics. An example of this is when the lyric ‘people I will never meet’ is played , here we show the main artist walking alone on a road filled with strangers. We also do this in not such an obvious way, for example, when the lyric ‘so I go picking up the pieces of this puzzle I won’t complete’ is played, here, we have used the balloons to symbolise the pieces of the puzzle which symbolise her worries and fears. This theme is continued until the end of the video, where she lets go off the balloons and you see them ‘floating around’, here she has finally let go of all her worries and overcome her fears.
• 4.
  Most music videosof our genre focus on the artist/vocalist alone and avoid using any other actors. We adhered to this stereotype by only using one main artist and no one else in our video. We did this because we wanted to keep the focus on the main artist and we did not want to pull the attention off her; wanting to show her expressions and feelings. As the main themes throughout the song is loneliness and isolation, it made sense to only have one main artist, showing her feeling isolated from everyone else and not making contact with anyone during the video.
• 5.
  Females are usuallyportrayed as being emotional and sensitive. We have conformed to this stereotype in our music video by showing our artist go through different emotions throughout the video such as; loneliness, isolation and doubt. However, we later on challenge this representation when she lets go off the balloons, showing she is no longer weak, and has let got of all her worries and fears and has become a stronger person, not allowing her emotions to take over her.
• 6.
  The girl inour video rejects the common stereotype of women being portrayed as provocative and engaging in sexual and passive behavior. A lot of music videos use this representation for women. We did not want to use this representation and portray our female as simply an object for the males purpose. This theme is rejected within our genre because songs of the soul/jazz genre are usually about feelings and giving out a message rather than power, money, sex and being dominant. We have adhered to the stereotype of the soul/jazz genre by not portraying our artist in a sexual way. We did this because we wanted to attract our target audience, and also because doing so would have not made sense with our song lyrics.
• 7.
  In terms ofmise-en-scene we used different aspects such as costume, lighting and location to develop, challenge or confirm real media products. Our main artist conforms to the stereotype of our genre, our artist is wearing simple yet sophisticated clothing which is what you commonly see in videos of the soul/jazz genre. An example of this is Adele in all her music videos, for example, ‘Rolling in the deep’, here she is wearing a long black sleeved dress with tights, not revealing much flesh. We requested that our female performer do this because it encourages the audience to focus on the narrative the performer is telling as opposed to their image. Throughout our performance we generally used natural/bright lighting as we did a lot of filming outside. We filmed at a variety of different locations, we tried to think outside of the box and film out of the Wembley area. We filmed some scenery shots at Central London. On the day of filming the park scenes it got dark rather quickly and it made the lighting appear to be dull and made it look dark. However, this worked in our favor as we were trying to reveal the sorrow the performer was feeling, it also was not too obvious to the extent that it ruined our video as we had planned for those scenes to be in black and white anyway.
• 8.
  Although we havemostly adhered to stereotypes, we have also subverted some. For example, most of the soul/jazz music videos are performance based, focusing on the artists expressions and emotions. In our video we have used a mixture of both performance based and narrative based. We have used mostly narrative based and limited the amount of performance shots in our video but to an extent that the audience can still see the artists emotions, but not too much for them to get distracted from the narrative of the song as we wanted the narrative to be expressed.
• 9.
  In conclusion Iwould suggest that our media product generally uses the forms of real media products such as sticking to only one main performer and representing her in a mature, sophisticated way. It also does develop some conventions of soul/jazz music videos and challenge a small selection of them such as using mostly a narrative based music video rather than using mostly a performance based music video