Evaluation - Question 1

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

Conventions of real media texts are the certain items/props etc. that you would expect to find in a media text before actually seeing one. For example, several conventions for a music video for a rock band would be performance shots of the group all together, a live crowd, and bizarre clothing on the band members, as these are things that an audience would expect to see, before physically seeing the video.

For our media product, we had a mixture of developing and using the conventions for music videos of our genre. The genre we chose to do was singer/songwriter; therefore we researched into the conventions of singer/songwriter videos prior to creating our video.

 After having researched into the conventions for our chosen genre, we planned and discussed what conventions we were going to use, and how we were going to do so. We found that the main conventions for singer/songwriter videos are frequent shots of the artist playing an instrument, usually a guitar but in some cases it is different, for example some videos have pianos instead of guitars, the use of a close up on the artist during performance shots, shots of the artist in an outside location, usually in a field and a narrative which links with Todorov's theory. These were the conventions that were all used in the majority of videos we watched in our research that were in the same genre as our video.

We used all of the conventions listed above, some of them we used as they should be, and some we challenged, for example the performance shots. The performance shots we had seen in similar existing media texts whilst doing our research and planning were very simple, mainly being close-ups of the artists lip syncing/instrument, and mid-shots of the artists whilst also singing or playing his/her instrument. We decided not to challenge this convention as we thought it would be better if we kept our performance shots simple, rather than trying anything complicated with them as they might not have looked very professional.



Todorov's theory argues that a music video should have 5 main stages in it, in order to be classes as a successful video. The 5 stages are equilibrium, which is at the beginning of the video where nothing major has happened in the narrative, then there is the disruption of the equilibrium, which is when something happens in the story that alters/changes the equilibrium that was at the beginning. The next stage is the recognition of the disruption, which is when the audience become fully aware of the disruption that has happened. After that comes the repairing of the disruption, which is when the attempt at fixing/sorting out the disruption takes place. Finally, there is the equilibrium again, which is where after the repair of the disruption, everything has returned to normal. This theory was applied in our music video as throughout our narrative, most of the 5 stages occurred. The equilibrium in our media text was at the beginning of the video, when our two characters were very affectionate and loving towards each other. The disruption occurred when the male character set off to join the army, as this disrupted the mood that was at the beginning of the video (the equilibrium). The recognition of this disruption is the shot where the male character is picking up his army bag, whilst wearing army clothes and is about to walk out of the door. This is the recognition as it is a clear indicator to the audience that it is actually happening. The repairing of the disruption is a bit different in our media text, as instead of trying to actually do something about the disruption, the female character simply uses alcohol to try and get rid of her problems; however this can still be considered as a repair as something is being done by a character to help deal with the disruption. Finally, the new equilibrium in our video is at the end, where the the female receives a letter from the male telling her that he is fine and well, as this means that the woman can go back to the way she was at the beginning of the video; not worrying and happy with herself. We decided not to challenge this convention as all good music videos have a simple narrative that links to Todorov's theory, which is visually noticeable to anybody who knows the theory, and this is exactly what we tried to do in our media text.

In a large number of existing media products similar to ours, there are often many shots that are in an outside location, for example a field or an estate etc., particularly shots of the artist singing or playing an instrument. We used this convention in our piece many times, as all of our artist shots are located in a field that we found in Ford End. We decided to use this location as we had been location scouting prior to the creation of our product, as we believed that the location we used was the best for the scenery, and the sunset was perfect for how we wanted it to look in the shots of our artist. The only thing that we did differently compared to in the videos we had watched in our research was use the sunset for effect in the background, to add a more chilled out, calming feeling to the video, whereas the video's for Caravan and Lego House were during the day. This means that we have challenged the convention a little bit, as it is different in ours to what it is in the majority of other videos.



Overall, we have used and developed the conventions that we had found in our research, prior to creating our product. We decided not to challenge any conventions as we thought that if we leave any out, it may look like we have not actually researched in detail as to what the generic conventions for our chosen genre actually are; therefore effecting our final grade. Also, we thought that using and especially challenging the conventions would show that we are able to be creative with our ideas, and it can enable people to see that we really know what we are doing when it comes to editing our piece and making our video look like it actually fits into the genre properly, which would give it a more professional finish.