Q1

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

Title: Mad World

The title of the song that I have chosen to produce a music video for, Mad World, is conventional to its alternative genre and conceptual style of my video. The narrative enigma created by this title is similar to that of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Born to Die’ which produces an oxymoron and develops the stereotypical conventions of alternative music. Mad World is also suggestive of the artist’s opinions and emotions and leads the audience to ask themselves why the artist has these views of the world. This, again, is similar to the bittersweet title of Lana Del Rey’s album.

Setting: ParkI have chosen to set my video in a park to reinforce the narrative enigma and conceptual style that the title of the song first presents. It is not a conventional setting for an alternative/ soft rock music video, however, it does create a narrative enigma which is often associated with alternative styles of music. The main influence for me to choose this setting was The Struts’ video ‘Put Your Money On Me’ which is an alternative rock song. The video is one continuous tracking shot following the band walking along a path through a park. Although the mise en scene in The Struts’ video is not as obvious that it is a park as it is in my own work, I felt that this setting would be appropriate in order to create a narrative enigma to leave the audience wondering why the performer is in that particular setting, as I felt when watching The Struts’ video

Costume: Skinny jeans, leather jacketI have chosen a costume that is iconic to the rock genre for the performer in my video. He is wearing a leather jacket and skinny jeans which is a stereotypical costume for a rock musician. My influence for this costume was Bruce Springsteen, who is featured on a magazine advertisement which I analysed for my product research. As Springsteen is a well known rock musician, I felt that it would be appropriate to utilise this costume so that my audience will be able to identify my video as being of the alternative/ soft rock genre. To further influence this idea I also added a flat cap to the costume because this item is iconic of the soft rock/ folk genre which the song also falls into

The way that I have edited my video further contributes to the conceptual style and narrative enigma of my video and the song Mad World. I have included sequences of stop motion animation to my video which I created using Stop Motion Pro software. I then used cross dissolves to fade into and out of these sequences to live action scenes of my performer. The narrative of my video has become fragmented because of this as both stories, that of the performer and the animation, are cut into short sequences and interrupted by each other. I was inspired to use stop motion animation after studying Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I used to Know’ for my product research because his video also has a conceptual style and so I felt that it would be suitable to use this idea in my own product.

The opening sequence of my video is an animation of a stick figure playing the piano introduction to the song. This then dissolves into live action footage of my performer at the park. The dream-like effect of the dissolves between these types of footage gives the impression that the stick figure, or animated sequences, are happening inside the performer’s head and are in face his thoughts. This idea of portraying the performer’s emotion through narrative enigma and conceptual style is stereotypical of the alternative rock genre. Radiohead’s ‘Knives Out’ video influenced me to recreate this idea as I felt that it worked well with the conceptual style of their video and it will allow my audience to identify with the genre because of this. As well as opening my video and establishing the genre and style, it also introduces my performer and allows the audience to create their own opinions of him and what they think that he is feeling.

I have encoded my video so that my audience will be able to identify the alternative/ soft rock genre through costume. I used a leather jacket, skinny jeans and a flat cap to create a stereotypical image of a soft rock artist so that my audience will be able to decode this. I also used this same costume on my ancillary products so that the audience are able to familiarise themselves with the house style of the album and identify that the products have synergy with each other. I have encoded the narrative of my video using Barthes‘ hermeneutic code, narrative enigma, so that my audience are able to decode the video in different ways depending on their own individual circumstances. By encoding my video in this way, it is more likely to appeal to a wider audience as different people can interpret it in different ways to make it appeal to them.

During post production of both my video and ancillary products, I used many different tools to manipulate the footage and images that I used to create my products. By doing so, I have enabled myself to produce more effective products which conform to stereotypical conventions of an alternative/ soft rock music video. The first of these is animation. I created animated sequences and added them to my video so that they would cut apart the live action footage and therefore generate a fragmented narrative. This added to the conceptual style of the video which is conventional of alternative rock music such as Gotye’s ‘Somebody that I used to Know’ which inspired me to utilise stop motion animation. Another way in which I have manipulated my imagery is by applying filters to them and altering their hue and saturation so that they appeared a moody grey/blue colour. I was influenced by McFly’s ‘Transylvania’ to do this as I felt that the black and white filter that is used in this video worked well with the genre of music and created a moody feel that I was trying to achieve from my video and ancillaries. I also created a house style for my ancillary products using a specific style of font. I utilised a sans serif typeface, similar to that which is featured on Lana Del Rey’s ‘Born to Die’ album because it is an informal style of font which is conventional to the rock genre of music. The typeface that I used is also bold and in block capitals which I felt was appropriate to make it stand out against the busy background of my ancillaries.

Above: My video in comparison to McFly’s ‘Transylvania’, the black and white filter has inspired me to use a grainy effect in my video.Below: My ancillary in comparison to Lana Del Rey’s ‘Born To Die’, the blue hues and block, sans serif typefaces have influenced me to utilise similar colours for my ancillary products.