Question 1In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

The Medium

The music video is a form of advertisement, when looking at my music video I had to be aware of this to assure my video targeted the specific audience making the video specific to my audience.

My music video had a strong comment on abuse within relationships, showing the pressures of life and the pain of this love eventually lead to the characters suicide, the music fit in with my video due to having a indie-pop form of music, whilst being sad showing the pain the protagonist is going through. Due to this comment on domestic violence the audience can sympathise for the main character and begin to look into the issues surrounding abuse.

My music video promotes and markets the song Here We Are, but also promotes the artist due to the comment on a serious issue.

My video follows the usual length of a music video standing in at 3:46, conforming to the length of many music videos, I felt that this was important due to the message my video was trying to send and by having it this length it allowed more of an audience interpretation.I’m marketing my product in order to promote the music for Michael Reeve this is effectively an advertisement for Michael Reeve.

I didn’t use the whole of the track as I felt the song began to lose its intensity towards the end, meaning it may of taken away the emotion which was currently undertaking. Due to this I thought it was important to cut it off earlier keeping the audiences intention and allowing a more developed

video.

Media Language of Music videos

I’ve followed Goodwin’s theory of the relationship between music and video “I've no answer, no easy cure, For the pain that we endure, Help me now, Don't say what I'm waiting for” my video takes quite a literal sense to these lyrics, clearly representing violence that the female character has endured blatantly showing this. The idea of violence links to both the lyrics and music video within the song ‘Breezeblocks’ by Alt J. the lyrics are quite literal saying “hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks” showing clear relationship to the video, for me this was very important as the audience could begin to understand how cynical the male character is.

Music Video - Locations

My music video is one of a British convention, due to this I decided to keep the locations in typical British locations. For example, the house used was one of a ‘typical’ English household, this was important as it showed the rawness of the singer. This wasn’t a main focus for my video, but was still crucial in showing the consistency of my video. This overall stops my video from swaying from it origin, allowing the location to focus on my target audience.

The song ‘Here We Are’ doesn’t leave an obvious direction for the location of the video, the video could take many directions, however I felt that the enclosure of all my shots not having one outside shot appears to take away the characters freedom showing how she is trapped with the abusive character, that is why her walking out the door is such a pivotal moment as it shows potential for change. not having the shots outside also allows the location to become an opinionated subject meaning that the true outcome of the female character can’t be truly identified, adding mystery to the video.

Genre and IntertextualityThe artist Michael Reeve said his genre was indie pop, following from this we used many similar conventions to this genre, for example dim lighting keeping the mood similar to one of a typical indie pop video. This is related to artists such as Vance Joy, often using lyrics speaking of love. I followed artists such as Jack Garratt mixing beauty with pain, for example the sound of music is wholesome but the video expresses pain and hardship contrasting nicely between the love and destruction, connoting with the idea of domestic violence.

I used conventions from the group Alt J who are known as an indie rock group, I followed their idea of confusion and abuse within the breezeblocks video. Only using shots inside and having an image of the protagonist leaving, this helps leave confusion throughout the audience and gives them their own interpretation to what is happening.

Narrative StructureMy narrative structure is linear with flashbacks, I used flashbacks during the protagonists dancing to show the abusive character, representing how much pain and destruction he has caused. By doing this the audience could understand that even the thing that she loves has still been overthrown by the abusive boyfriend heavily due to the pure pain he has inflicted upon her.

At the end of the video I reversed the whole video to show everything flashing before, representing this life before death. However by showing her walking out the door at the end and returning to her face it is possible for the audience to interpret her as living by doing this it leaves more of an open narrative for the audience watching.

Representation My video follows certain stereotypes, for example the male character appears to be controlling over the female protagonist and is always within her mind, this makes her appear as more of a passive character. The reason for this was more for a statement on the issues of gender dominance and sexism. Within the video we challenged this hyper sexualised representation of the female character, we did this by focusing more on the emotion she was feeling so the female protagonist wouldn’t be objectified and the audience would be able to see her as an important character for showing many issues surrounding media platforms. We tended not to use stereotypical props for setting as we wanted to the focus to purely be on the characters, allowing them to be heavily represented in different ways.