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

At A2, the music video requirements meant that our research and planning had to be thorough and accurate. My class and I watched a vast range of videos from the dance genre, especially Sia’s, ‘Chandelier’, but mostly Rihanna’s music videos, especially ‘Halo’ and ‘What now’. While watching these types of music video, made me realise the dramatic difference between narrative and performance, as before I thought they were quite similar. This meant I had to research into the different conventions for each music genre. Therefore, like the music video I studied separately, ’10 Feet Away’ by Chris Brown, my music video was purely narrative, but not an obvious storyline. My video was obviously symbolising the lyrics but not getting too deep into trying to create a huge narrative and story.

As a result my music video became inspired by many real media texts, including ’10 Feet Away’, ‘Finders Keepers’ and ‘For The Road’. The music video I was particularly inspired by was ’10 Feet Away’, which is clearly present in my own media product. Chris Brown, however, is a mix between narrative and performance. He is dressed stylish but very extravagant and different, with a vast variety of colour in clothing and effects. Therefor, in my music video I used stylish but plain clothing, to reflect the mood of the sing but keeping the trendy side of the R&B genre. In the video ’10 Feet Away’, there were a lot of scenic shots with the main singer all alone, I tried to replicate this in my music video as I thought it would emphasise the lyrics.

Therefore, the style and layout of this video is very similar to my own media product. As a result, the use of applying real media texts at A2 became much more intricate. Although I still used the basic R&B conventions, including lots of panning shots and scenic shots, as well as the dull colour to reflect the moods, I also tried to incorporate advanced conventions like fading transitions and glowing effect to portray the dream when the boy is reflecting on the past. However, this was necessary to creating the most professional and skilled media product possible.

As well as all of that, at A2 there were more requirements to produce ancillary products, like a website, magazine advert and CD cover. While conducting my website research I realised that having the viewer interact with the page is the best feasible way to reach the audience. On Tyga’s webpage, you can watch his most recent music video, as well as play songs on the side from his most recent album. From this, I created my webpage to replicate this idea and allow the viewer to listen to the song and watch the video without having to transfer to an external page like YouTube. A key convention I found was colour and layout. I figured, if the page is cluttered with boring colours, then the viewer will obviously not be interested in navigating around the page. Therefor, I reflected that with my website, making it interactive, with colours and not cluttered.