Our music video both meets and challenges conventions of typical music videos. It incorporates common features like a protagonist character and lip syncing to appear professional, but tells a more complex story that flashes between past and present using different color filters. While including standard editing techniques like cross dissolves and cutting to the beat, the storyline does not follow typical narrative structures and leaves the disruption unresolved. Feedback showed the video successfully portrayed the story and emotions through creative camerawork and editing despite diverging from some theoretical models.

1. In what ways do your media
products use, develop or
challenge forms and
conventions of real media
products?
Music video…

2. In ways our music video both meets and challenges typical conventions of
music videos. We felt it is necessary to meet some for it to look
professional and be received well by the audience, however, the ways
we have challenged these conventions make it interesting and we feel
reflect the storyline and song lyrics well.
How our music video develops forms and conventions of real products:
Characters
Through intense research of music videos, I have
a good understanding of typical features of music
videos and therefore, along with my group, tried
hard to incorporate these into our own product.
Firstly, many artists music videos feature one
protagonist character (often being themselves)
with one or two less important figures; we have
used these idea by staring the artist ‘Elle’ as the
main character in the video with a main male,
Harry, who is seen significantly less and a final
character, Sarah, who is seen very briefly. The This scene shows all three of
lengths of their appearances indicate their the characters that feature in
importance to the story. my music video.

3. Lip Syncing
A convention of music videos which we have developed in our product is the
method of lip syncing to make it appear like the protagonist character is
singing the lyrics. Here are three clips where our actor did this:
We felt that by including lip syncing in the music video, it will make the
character appear more involved in the song as she is actually saying the lyrics,
suggesting to the audience she actually feels this way. Our reason for
including lip syncing in the music video was due to our research on music
videos of an indie/ pop genre which all included this convention. I feel our
actress lip synced well, which we ensured by playing the song while she
mimed to guarantee the timing was accurate. She also acted quite angry/
frustrated while saying the lyrics, getting across the characters personality
well.

4. Camera Shots, Angles and Movements
We carefully planned and practised the camera angles we wanted to use, aiming
to use a range of interesting shots to portray the situation the character was in and
how she felt. This included high angle shots during the smoking/ drinking scene to
represent her loneliness and feeling of being forgotten. The first scenes in the
bedroom also use a range of high shots to show her frustration but this changes to
a low shot as she walks to the bathroom, portraying how she now has an idea of
what she is doing, deciding to go out.
Low Angle
High
showing
angle to
she is
show
overcoming
frustration
her
confusion
Like many music videos we included close up and medium to deliver the characters
emotions to the audience, while also using long and establishing shots to set the
scene at the different locations. The initial shot panned up the characters body,
introducing her to the audience while also showing a plain wall which we felt
represented her empty life.

5. Furthermore, the camera movements we used included a 360 degree pan, during
the argument scene which we hoped would make the audience feel involved in
the characters argument. Our use of zooming into the picture of Ellie and Harry
made it easy for the audience to see this was what ‘Elle’ was focusing on and
thinking about while also showing them these would be the two main characters.
The 360 degree pan shows the argument from various angles while also
showing close ups of Elle’s face and so how she feels about the situation.
Most music videos, from my research, use a range of camera angles, movements
and shots and our feedback has told us that by using this typical convention in
our own product, it looks professional.

6. In Editing…
Cross Fading Slide transitions
Between several of our clips, we have inserted a ‘cross dissolve’ transition
which blends the two clips as they change from one to the other, making it a
smooth change. This is commonly seen in music videos so the clips flow well,
while also linking two different adjacent scenes, such as showing a time
change between the two clips. During editing, we added the ‘cross dissolve’ for
this reason, showing the time difference between the present and past as well
as to represent a short time change, such as the character walking between
two different locations.
Cutting to the beat
After watching various music videos of a simple
genre I noticed that cutting to the beat is commonly
Cross done. This makes the music video more exciting as it
Dissolve appears to be driven by the music. It therefore also
means the music video flows well and does not look
out of place with the song. I believe we did this
particularly well with the black and white memory
scenes near the end which cut quickly with the pace of the music, representing her
sudden rush of memories.

7. Increasing the pace of the music video as the tempo speeds up
Part of the song cuts to an instrumental which is fast paced; we met this sped up
tempo with selection of short, quick cut clips put together as a scene of the
character drinking and smoking. While fitting well with the speed of the music, it
effectively reflects the emotions of the character which are frustration and anger.
From my research I saw this is a convention often used in indie music videos as
they commonly have sections with an increased tempo or instrumental.
Use of colour filters for time changes
Research I have carried out shows that music videos which flash between two
different time periods often use a different colour filter to make this change clear,
for example in Katy Perry’s ‘The One that got Away’ and in Kesha’s ‘Tik Tok’. We
therefore included this convention in our own music video, making the past
scenes black and white, so the audience could easily identify the change in time;
in addition the lack of colour resembled the slightly faded memories which would
not be as clear as the present. Our feedback told us that the black and white
colour filter effectively portrayed these scenes as memories to the audience,
showing the editing was successful.

8. How our music video challenges forms and conventions of real products:
Storyline
The storyline of our music video is quite simple but includes flashbacks
between the past and present. This therefore makes the storyline more
complex and goes against the views of some theorists.
Todorov believes narratives are structured in five stages beginning with the
state of the plot and ending in the reinstatement of everything. This
immediately shows how our product challenges the theory, with the ending
showing no progress in the two characters fixing their relationship. In addition
the three middle stages involve disruption of the plot, recognition of this
disruption and then an attempt to repair this. It could be argued our video
briefly follows these guidelines as ‘Elle’ does attempt to fix the problem by
going to Harry’s house. However, the disruption is there throughout the story; it
does not suddenly appear or go away but instead the story flashes to clips of
memories without the problem, showing how Todorov’s theory is not met in our
music video.
Our feedback from the media class and friends, however, told us that the
storyline was clear and easy to understand, therefore showing the storytelling
was successful and well received by the audience.