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

In order to create a successful music video, our group had to be aware of the conventions of a music video and what was often included in our chosen genre. Each genre has its own style, interpreting a variation of conventions appropriate to the stereotypical view of the genre. I feel that our music video shows a good knowledge to the right conventions.

Here is our music video:

Once we chose our song ‘Breathless’ by Asking Alexandria, we became familiar with the song and researched into the lyrics, we discovered our own interpretation from which we formed a narrative. This narrative was like the base of our music video were our ideas developed from. We included a narrative because we found that this was quite common for the rock genre to either include a narrative with a performance, or just a performance on it’s own throughout the video.  By choosing to include both I think it challenged us more in the way that we had to think of how to intertwine both aspects into our video and also make sure each of their screen time was equaled out to balance out the video. By including a narrative as well as a performance, it helped us avoid viewer fatigue which is important to make sure that doesn’t happen in all genres of music videos. Another way we avoided this was by having a constant flow of shots which synced well into the tempo of our music. Also, as our music is of a fast erratic pace, our shots contained a short view time, therefore the audience is always being bombarded with something different to look at, keeping their interest and continuing to hook them in. This is also reinforced by our group following the conventions of varying our shot distances and exploring camera techniques.

By developing the way in which we controlled our camera, it helped us convey certain moods for example if the camera is still along with the subject it becomes a lot more calmer and mellow where as if the camera is shaky along with the subject, it reflects a lot of energy and excitement to our video. We use this shaky camera technique in our work because we discovered this was quite persistent in the music videos of the rock genre. Also, linking back to our narrative, the song is based on letting go of a past relationship that is messing with his head, therefore causing frustration and anger, the shakiness of the camera helps convey this manic look which links to the emotions in the narrative, however this is only successful when used at the right times and in the right way. I feel that our performance shots really reflect this and show the advantages of this technique, it also helped create the atmosphere and illusion of a live performance making the scene seem more realistic which is also what music videos are about.



It is crucial that the performance looks believable; this can be done by perfect lip syncing. I feel that we were lucky to have a member in our group that was already aware of the rock genre and because of this you could see their passion for it reflected throughout their performance. With our performer obtaining such confidence and enthusiasm for this task, we were able to follow the convention of making the vocalists role look believable, emphasizing their emotions and expressions in order to portray a believable, realistic performance. Another convention that reinforced this was being aware of the right type of mise en scene, especially in our performance shots. In order to help make it believable we had to gather the right props which a band would use and set the scene up to look like a gig, even though we had to change the plan of our performance set last minute, I do think it was still successful and the outcome was a lot better than expected. Not only did we film a scene in the style of a gig, but we also filmed in the woods, a drama room and a bedroom. This also follows the conventions of music videos having around 3 different sets, however we developed this further to include 4 which helps the audience get a better understanding of the narrative.