Evaluation 1!

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

The conventions our music video are pretty typical for the genre. As we were doing an Adele song we used her for our inspiration - making a lot of the conventions in our video similar to hers. There's nothing partucularly different or out of the ordinary in our product. It has quite a simple, basic narrative, no special effects were used - much like the work of Adele.

We didn't add man special effects to our music video because we felt it relied more on the narrative and acting of our main character (Chloe) than the effects used. However we did add some colour filters and made some shots black and white. This seems to be an effect that Adele likes to use in her own videos. We slowed some down to make the shot a little more dramatic but apart from that the only editing required was the synching and making sure the narrative was clear, that the shots were all in order.

The camerawork we used also isn't anything unusual. We included lots of medium close ups on Chloe to convey the full emotion that she's feeling, and some long shots to show the locatation fully and to make it clear how alone she is to the audience by shooting everything in relatively desserted places. This also allowed us to get the full mise-en-scene of the locations in. For example, up at the Wind farm (the image above), it was a very dark, dismal day and it was really windy. All adding to the effect. This again isn't anything out of the ordinary. Although it wouldn't be used in a typical Pop video, shots like these and mise-en-scene like this is only included in videos like ours that a more dramatic and narrative based than some of the more simple genres.

When making this video we also decided not to include any diagetic sound and only have the focus track heard. Some pre-existing musci videos include some sound in the video that isn't on the track, but fits in with the video. For example; if there's a conversation and something needs to be heard which is nescassary for the narrative to be understood. Then perhaps a couple of words can he heard - or maybe a laugh. We chose not to do this.

The mise-en-scene throughout our video is very dark and dismal. It wouldn't have the same effect if we had shot it on a really sunny day, on the beach. It jsut wouldn't fit. So we chose to use locations that are much more rural and believable as places she would go when she's upset or wants to be alone. Again, this isn't different. it's a lot like the work of Adele. She usually wears dark clothing, generally black - as Chloe has done - and is in quite secluded places in her videos. Adele has used places that are known for being very overcrowded and busy but filmed when the places are desserted. Either by having these certain places such as; the bridge by the Thames or other main tourist attraction points of London, closed briefly, or filming very very early in the morning. In this video ou see a panning shot around her and there isn't a sole there apart from Adele herself; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLQl3WQQoQ0&ob=av2e. Which has the same effect as in ours - it shows how alone she is.

The narrative of our video is a little different. We have got a connection with romance in the video, which is what most songs and videos are about these days. But instead of just loosing love we decided to make it a little more dramatic and make is suggestive that the boyfriend had died, fighting in a war. This is so relatable at the moment for so many people. Whether they know someone fighting, someone that has died or are fighting themselves. It would make the song very sentimental to a person. There is already the music by The Army Wives which is for the men fighting but we didn't want to do a video like theres, we wanted to make the video more narrative based than their mixture of photo montages and performance shots.

So our video doesn't particularly develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music videos. But we have used lots of existing effects an conventions in our product.

The same applies for our promotional work. None of it particularly challenges the usual conventions. We again used Adele's work as inspiration for this, but much more heavily than in our video. For our poster and album cover especially.