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

During the early process of making the music video we were given different briefs on different artists to whom we had to develop and produce a music video for. As a group we decided that we wanted to create our own brief and that we wanted to represent an ‘Indie rock band’. The next step we had to take was choosing the song we decided on Kasabians – Club Foot as we all had some pretty good ideas relating to this song when listening to the lyrics.  We then decided on the band name ‘Rogues Gallery’ as it has a very indie feel to it.

 

We had to consider what the codes and conventions of our genre would be which is ‘Indie Rock’. To do this and to make our interpretations a lot easier we carried out a lot of research by looking on the Internet and also looking into similar bands to us such as Kings of Leon, Oasis and Kasabian. When looking in to these previous bands each of them all had something which made them different which we all really liked therefore we felt that we wanted to combine these strengths by adding them to our band image and performance to make it as successful as possible.

 

When looking into what codes and conventions we used we firstly related it all to Andrew Goodwin’s Theory and thought that if we could use as many as these conventions as possible then we will have a successful overall product. The codes and conventions that Goodwin thought out are:

 

• A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.
• A relationship between the music and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the music.
• Genre-related style and iconography present.
• Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist.
• Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females.
• Intertextual references to other media texts may be present.

 

 

Relating to the music video our relationship between lyrics and visuals shows our youngest actor Freddie on a training scene the lyrics sang at this point are ‘chase down an empty street’ therefore we felt that we should portray this by showing him running down an empty street so that the lyrics and visuals link in and that this convention is clearly recognized by the audiences who watch the video.

 

We have also made a clear representation of the relationship between the music and the visuals this is seen by us matching the pace of the music whilst editing so that it is in sync with the visuals, we have also featured a guitar solo of myself which shows me performing along with the beat of song, throughout the video we have clips cutting back to Harry the lead singer who is shown singing the song this again shows that we have followed this convention correctly as Harry is singing in time with the song so it looks like a professional performance.

 

When following the next convention, which is showing how we have portrayed the genre, it showed that our research had paid off, as we all knew what had to be featured to show the best image of an indie rock band. As a group we decided to make our style and image very important therefore we had to make sure that we was all dressed very appropriately we decided that black jeans, shirts, jackets and desert boots and brogues were the correct style as when looking at the existing bands this was they what they were all wearing. Again from our research we found that a vast majority of bands do feature a narrative but also a band performance to show each band member performing with their certain instrument therefore throughout we decided to cut back to the band and show us performing.

 

Throughout our video we again followed another of Goodwin’s theories by including lots of close ups throughout which were mainly of our lead singer Harry. The close ups are mainly there to reflect the expressions shown on his face to capture certain images from different angles. When filming the band we did try to capture close ups of each member as we are the selling point and as we are a newly established band it was important to get our image across to the audience and for us to be recognised. When also filming our narrative side to the music video we used close ups again to capture the emotions shown on our characters faces but also to show their importance. When filming our footage one of the characters had a scar that we wanted to be very identifiable therefore a close up shot was shown so that it was easily recognizable for the audience.

 

 

In our music video Notion of looking is used through viewing something from a different point of view therefore in this case we are referring to the CCTV footage which we have which is used to try and show the fight scene from a different perspective. The shot used is very clever as it really does show a perfect angle of the fight scene along with the cuts used to show it from a normal angle the contrast between the two makes the scene look a lot more professional and realistic.

 

Lastly the final convention that we followed was ‘intertextual referencing’ as a group we all liked this idea as it gave us the chance to reference a part from an existing media product. When initially planning we had a few good referencing ideas however the one that we leaned towards was the very famous running scene from Rocky III. This idea worked very well with our video as we needed to feature a training scene therefore we decided that by us using this it works very well and the referencing is very easily recognizable due to a very similar location and also a good use of similar shots which will also help the audience understand the reference.

 

Overall throughout the music video we have followed every convention very accurately which shows that we have stuck to the correct structure of a typical music video. We haven’t actually challenged any of the conventions or gone against them which shows that we didn’t want to change or adapt any of the existing conventions.