Question 1

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

Titles

• In my video production I followed a conventional path when creating the titles. For example the artist name and title of the song appeared over the intro of the song.

• The reason for this is in my research I found this to be conventional and appears in multiple instances in particular in Nicky Romero's work, another artist from then genre of the song.

• My audience feedback suggested that it became clear what type of media product it was after the intro piece (car scene) when the titles appeared as I implemented them in the classical music video style (across the middle, whereas films tend to position them off centre to maintain focus on the scene in the background or have them on a separate shot).

• Due to the inclusion, positioning and timing of the titles in my video I feel that I was able to follow the conventional use of titles in my music video. Something that my audience feedback supports as the first draft audience were able to identify it was a music video and the final draft audience did after the prelude.

Setting

• In my video production I followed a conventional path when choosing the setting for the majority of the video. For example the two characters that the narrative follows go to a beach (Brighton). Throughout my research I found that narrative based EDM videos tend to take place in open spaces and in multiple occasions take place on a beach.

• One of the such videos was Calvin Harris “I need your love”, where one of the scenes is on a beach in America (where Calvin Harris lives) we similarly set one of our scenes on a beach in England (where Panacea lives).

• Due to the open space and the fact that it was on a beach, to a greater extent, followed the conventions I found in my research allowed me to develop the convention of settings in an EDM music video.

Narrative style

• In this genre of music I found examples of narrative based, performance based & music videos that combine the two.

Performance

Narrative

• In our video we had scenes showcasing both performance based and narrative based scenes, which I found from my research to be conventional in music videos in general for artists where they use instruments of one form or another.

Performance

Narrative

• The reason I decided to have scenes from both in my production is the performance pieces allow the audience to see who the artist is and the narrative aspect allowed us to represent the artist in a positive way (a talented musician) and also ensures the audience don’t get bored and we keep up fast pace of editing throughout the longer scenes as we could cut between the two sections with needed to change the narratives focus.

• Our audience feedback showed that nobody in our sample harboured negative feelings towards the male character, which is the dominant reading that I wanted to put across however an alternative reading that I identified is he seemed apathetic at the start

even though their relationship was clearly failing.

Being dragged around, behind the female

• As the style of narrative is not clear cut in music videos and is generally based on the type of artist, I feel I did not really develop the convention or even follow it to an extent as it could be argued either way which side is conventional, narrative or performance.

Editing Style

• In my video production I followed conventions when creating an editing style for my music video. For example in my research I found that it is common for the editing pace to match the beat of the track (as seen in Toulouse where the shot changes five times in five seconds).

Image taken every second for 5 seconds in toulouse

• In order to develop this convention we edited the video in such a way that it was not uncommon for scenes where shots are a second or two long.

• The audience feedback on the first draft suggested the original edit was edited too slowly to match the pace of the video which was one of the main reasons for increasing the pace of the cuts and shorten the length of each shot in order to make it more appealing to the audience.

• As the editing style in our video was fast paced and also changed in places depending on the BPM of the track at the time, I followed this convention of editing style in EDM music videos quite successfully.

• However I do feel towards the end of the narrative the pace did decrease when the couple got to there final destination and due to the actions being less dynamic (standing still) I was less successful in following convention in the second half.

• In conclusion I feel that I was successful in using conventions or real life media texts in my A2 production, however I also feel that I could have better developed or even challenged some of the microelements to better suit Neale’s repetition and difference within the EDM genre rather than just repeating the underpinning aspects (e.g. Setting).