Evaluation Question 1

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

My brief was to create a music video of between 3-5 minutes for a chosen song, I started this by being pout into groups of four to create our video and to work together. My group consisted of Devon Thomas, Lucy Nottage, Shaun Mcfarlane and myself. We then conducted research into many different music genres and decided we were going to focu on the soul/indie genre. We then researched this genre further to find our chosen artist and song: Paloma Faith - Only Love Can Hurt Like This. Paloma is who we would focus our music video on and her music. Researching our artist was helpful as we gained inspiration from her work and motivated us. A music video is roughly a three minute video that is either narrative, performance or concept based. They usually portray the chosen genre and are conventional tot he artists style. Whilst making our music video, every member of our group had a specific job role: Devons was to be the director and help with the editing, Shauns was to be the camera man and main editor, Lucys was to be the producer and sort out the mise en scene including costume hair and makeup and finally my role was to play the artist. I feel i learnt and developed from the role i had as it was a large responsibility to play the artist as i had to make sure i was present for all of the filming times. This meant that i had to dedicate a lot of time and effort to our group and had to be very imaginative with what we done in our music video. When we carried out our research we also researched and learnt about the codes and conventions of the soul genre. This was important as we wanted to make our music video as conventional as possible to appeal to target audiences and make it successful.

The conventions for the soul genre that we discovered included; close ups of the artists face to portray her emotions to the audience which would also create a relationship between the two. This is evident within my music video where the artist is sitting down crying drinking alcohol, this is conventional as it allows the audience to understand how the artist is feeling and therefore relate to the artist more and feel more involved. I have decided to include this convention as it allows audiences to gain a better understanding of how the artist is feeling as they can see her facial expressions more meaning they can build a relationship with the artist as they will relate to the artist more and feel more engaged in the video.

Vintage/quirky locations portray the artists individuality and uniqueness which is a convention of the soul genre. This is shown within my music video by locations being places such as Brick Lane and quirky backstreets of South Woodford appealing to the target audience as they are unique and different. This is conventional to the soul genre as it is a quirky location which portrays how unique and different the soul genre is and how it explores the artists individuality. Therefore the effect of quirky locations is that it keeps the audience interested in whats happening in the video and allows the audience to relate and aspire to be like the artist. 

 We also included clips of the artist singing so the audience can build a relationship, these are included when the artist is singing out of the window and infront of a wall. This is conventional to the soul genre because it shows to the audience that the music is personal to the artist and therefore creates a personal relationship with the artist and audience. We tried to include these aspects within our music video to appeal to our target audience of male and female 16-32 year olds. 

Also, vintage quirky clothing is conventional to the soul genre as it shows the artists individuality throughout the music video. We decided to include vintage/quirky clothing as it allows the artist to stand out from other artists in the genre and to also express her individuality which would build a relationship with the artist as they would be inspired to be creative and be themselves like the artist. We included vintage clothing such as a long pink coat, ripped jeans, a large hat and black boots to add a quirky style to the artist.









The theme within the music video is also very conventional as it includes a relationship theme which includes a breakup and how it affects the artist. This is conventional to the soul genre as it shows the narrative is personal to the artist as it is about her past relationship where soul music is about artists own personal experiences. This allows audiences to build a relationship with the audience as the audience is gaining a insight into the artists life and how she is feeling about personal relationships.

Also another conventional features that is included in my music video is the use of slow paced editing. This is conventional within the soul genre as it makes the feel to the music video much slower and much more emotional. This helps build a relationship between the artist and audience as the shots are slower it allows the audience to think about what the artist is doing therefore getting them more emotionally involved. An example of slow paced editing is where the audience is in the bath looking at the picture of her and her ex boyfriend and sets it on fire, this is an emotional scene and the slow paced editing emphasises the fact that she is emotional and therefore allows the audience to feel more involved.

There i believe that we created a successful music video as it complies to the codes and conventions I believe my products develop conventions of the soul genre as they follow the conventions and stereotypical representations of soul artists.