Introduction

I am in group 1 with Pru Carter-Phillips (8128) and Ella Budgett (8120). To view my portfolio evidence please click on the following three labels, on the right, named; A2 Research and Planning; A2 Construction and A2 Evaluation.
Please view our music video for MiraJax - Best Be Believing

Please view our music video for MiraJax - Best Be Believing

Front and Back Digipak

Front and Back Digipak
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Inside Digipak

Inside Digipak
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Friday 27 January 2017

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

Our media product, as a whole, manages to follow, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products. For example, we took a lot of inspiration from electropop/synthpop websites and combined all the conventions creating a website which conforms to the genre's conventions. In our music video, we followed the forms and conventions of London-based videos aimed at youths but developed this by adding our split-screen visual motif. We challenged the typical form of an electropop album by making our much more visually busy and less simplistic, but still kept to the abstract presentation.
By doing this, we were able to gratify our TA's needs whilst also surprising and enticing them with features they were not necessarily expecting.

OUR MUSIC VIDEO

The purpose of a music video is to promote a new track released by an artist.

                      

Goodwin analysis:

Forms of the genre:


Narrative or performance driven?

From my research, I found that music videos from the Electropop genre tend to be either performance driven OR narrative driven. However, I do think that the majority of music videos are performance driven.

When the video is performance driven, I noticed that the performance will often be contemporary, sometimes featuring dance or bold colour themesLip-syncing is extremely common and some shots will focus solely on the singing. It is common in studio shots to show artists playing electronic instruments such as an electronic drum kit.

When the video is narrative driven, the story is often simplistic but told in a distinguished/abnormal way focusing on artistic or interesting features rather than being a complex storyline that is told in a straight-forward, normal way.

Performance-heavy examples:

Marina and the Diamonds' music video for Oh No! is filmed in a studio. There is, therefore, no strict 'story-line'. The video contains Marina lip-syncing to the camera, always keeping eye contact with the camera lens. The strong colour scheme and 1960s pop art theme is the main focus point for the video.

           

Another example I found was in La Roux's Bulletproof. The whole video is shot in a studio altered in post-production to make it look like the singer is walking through colourful suspended shapes, almost like a video game. This also gives a very contemporary feel as well as being not quite in the 'ordinary'. The main focus f the video is, again, her singing.

          

Hands by The Ting Tings is filmed in a studio setting where, again, the theme of shapes is used to give a modern feel to the video.We can see the incorporated shots of the artists playing various instruments. She is lip-syncing.

          

Narrative based examples:

How Deep Is Your Love by Calvin Harris: The video does not feature the artist in the video; we see Gigi Hadid make a journey through various settings including a party scene and a villa/pool scene. The narrative is very simple in the sense that it is a woman enjoying life, partying etc. However it is told in an subjective way; Gigi is presented as a robot-type-person who has either escaped from her creators and is now seeing what the world has to offer or is only dreaming she is doing this.

           

Another example is Ke$ha - Tik Tok which follows the basic story-line of a teenager going wild, partying and doing everything her parents told her not to do, basically. Again, the colour scheme is very vibrant and fun. The storyline is simple and focuses on partying and young romance which would be relatable to the youthful TA.

         

The last example is AlunaGeorge - Attracting Flies. This is all narrative. However we still have lip-syncing, just like in the Tik Tok video. The video is based on twisted fairy tales; fairy tales with a modern twist which make them more relatable for youths of today's day and age. The stories are obviously simplistic as everyone is familiar with them but the viewers is kept wanting to see more, wondering how the next fairytale will be altered.

         

How we applied this to our music video:





                       
A clip from our narrative

                       
A clip from our performance 

Lip-syncing and dance:

The majority of the videos I have researched include the artist lip-syncing or, in the case of Calvin Harris' video below, incorporate some sort of miming of lyrics in their video.

                      

Therefore, we chose to follow this convention and have Mira lip-syncing in the performance half of the video. We did not have Jax singing because he is the DJ although, instead, we had him miming operating the decks.

                     

I found that a convention of electropop videos was that the artist would be filmed dancing a lot, as well as background dancers. However, the dancing was not necessarily a structured routine, but more whatever the individual felt like doing.

                   
AlunaGeorge - You Know You Like It

In our video, we made Ella dance in whatever way she felt like suited the music with some particular movements which linked with the lyrics. For example for 'turn it down' she gestured 'down'. 

                   

Beauty shots:

I found that 'beauty shots' were a convention for electropop music videos. These include 'money shots' of the artist which are continually repeated and differentiated throughout the video. 


We stuck to this convention, We included mainly close-ups of Mira but also had a couple of close-ups of jack and mid shots of them both together facing the camera which were tightly framed. 

                                    

Visual motifs:

In music videos of the electropop genre that I have researched, the majority have a distinctive visual motif which is relevant to the branding of their artist. this is a must for the record label to make the product distinguished from other products, especially for a more niche genre like electropop. Marina and the diamonds used a 1960s pop art theme for their video where they inserted comic book writing and expressions in post-production.



We created a split screen visual motif which we carried through to both our website and our album cover as well as the music video. The split screen symbolised their different mindsets and disjointed journeys where neither of them are able to find each other until, at the end, they come together and the screen is united as one (parallels with how they make-up and their relationship is fixed).


the split screen ^


^the ending

Use of colour:

It is extremely conventional for electropop music videos to be very brightly colored. Sometimes these bright colours chosen correlate with the overall theme of the video. This makes the video feel more contemporary and also matches the modern, up-beat sound of the music. The use of bold colours is also much more striking and interesting for the viewer. 



We decided to follow this convention. We had three different lighting set-ups which we got the inspiration for from Destiny's Child's - Say My Name video. We also chose to use brightly coloured props which matched with the lighting set-up; blue pink and white. We think this will appeal to our youthful TA. We also tried to colour-coordinate Mira's costumes and make-up with the lighting. We made sure to enhance our use of colour is post-production by significantly grading all our shots.

           

How we applied this to our video:

Vernallis Analysis

Camera movement:

It is highly conventional for electropop music videos to use interesting camera movement. For example, in La Roux's - Bulletproof video, there is a lot of jolty camera movement where the camera swings from side to side as shown below. 



In our music video, we used the dolly to create an alternate viewing for the audience to the regular head-on mid-shots etc. This keeps the audience excited and has a very cool effect.



Editing:

It is very common to have jump-cuts, fast-pace montage editing and cut to the beat footage in electropop music videos. This reflects the pace of the music, which is usually fast and up-beat, and also makes the video more artistic as it moves with the music.



We conformed to this convention in our music video. All our editing is cut to the beat and we made sure to cut every shot just before the viewer is expecting a cut so there's never a moment where they're wondering where the next shot is. We still kept the chronological order of our editing clear, which is a convention for music videos in general and made sure our editing was 'invisible'.



We also created a fragmented narrative through our disjointed editing that defied the continuity rule. this is common in electropop music videos. Jax is seen to walk one direction, then the screen shifts slightly and Mira is shown to walk the opposite direction but in the same path.


OUR WEBSITE

              

OUR ALBUM COVER

        

In conclusion, we made sure our media product challenged, used and developed the forms and conventions of real media products by researching existing products from the genre to see what the common trends were in our genre and use them accordingly.

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