Evaluation Question 1

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

Within the music video industry, there are a number of set codes and conventions that are followed or challenged and in our music video for the song ‘Heathens’ by DAZE, we believe we challenged the forms and conventions of real media products for the most part. However, we did in fact use some of the forms and conventions.

Before we started shooting our music video I researched into various music videos within this similar genre of  indie and what I found in particular was the majority of these music videos featured heavily the artist and followed many narratives that are personal to the artist. So, by learning from this, I decided to follow this convention by heavily featuring my artist DAZE and making sure that the story of the video is DAZE's own and it relates to his background and his story. Within my music video, it follows the narrative of a young teen going through a tough time where he is being treated as an outcast and does not know what to do. Throughout my video, it shows him being alone and doing things that are unusual to see in for young man - for example - when DAZE is at the park all by himself where usually at that age you would have a group of friends to go with.

As my music video progresses, it also features the singers iconic elements, which are his hoodie, skinny jeans and his hat. I decided to use this because by looking at other conventional indie music videos, they usually consist of simple yet engaging shots of the artist. So, I felt as though it was more than essential to incorporate this idea/technique into my own music video through this costume props. I used bright stage lights for the dark room scenes, which i directed at different angles to get good lighting on to our artist to get the best edgy shots. I also learnt that most conventional music videos within this genre often have their mise - en - scene within their music video relate, be symbolic and represent the words being sung within the song. So, I again found it more than essential and necessary to do this in my video. For example, when DAZE sings the verse in which he describes the people siting next to him we got our artist to sit ever side after the beat to represent that.

I also discovered how the pacing of the majority of music videos essentially are fast paced and cuts in almost every shot to engage and keep the audience attracted and not become tired of what they're seeing on screen. As I found this to be a crucial element within real music video products, I knew I also had to closely follow this convention in order to ensure that my music video fits within the conventions of what a music video should indeed look like. These are some of the elements that I followed from Goodwin's Theory in terms of pacing tempo and relating things on screen to the words of the song being sung.