Evaluation Question 1:

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our media product was designed to play off the generic stereotypes of rock music videos and action style chase scenes. As well as this we looked at Andrew Goodwins work on Key features of a music video which incorporated several media concepts to create an effective music video. To create an effective music video, we looked at similar rock style bands such as you me at six and Zebrahead. One main feature of a music video, according to Andrew Goodwin, was the notion of demonstrating genre characteristics, such as rebellious youths for rock genres or high noble like status of classical music. Having chosen the rock genre, we aimed our research at known rock bands that have demonstrated similar styles to what we were looking for. Through following these ideas and concepts, we found that the type of video that was best suited for our song would be a fast paced, action style video that linked the lyrics and the visuals. This was another Andrew Goodwin concept: linking the visuals and the lyrics of the song together. We wanted to try and give our video a unique twist but also keep it rooted firmly in the rock music genre. To try and give it its unique twist, we once again looked at known rock bands to see where they adhered to their genre and where they had deviated from the norm of their genre. We found one main reccurring feature of these video which was that the songs pace occasionally differed from the visuals being shown. With our video we tried to combat this be keeping the pace of the song and the visuals at the same tempo to eliminate dubbing issues.

We also tried to develop on what has already been done in music videos of the rock genre. One of the main things that we picked up on was the way that the band is portrayed. In typical rock genre music videos the band is normally in just one location, which could either be relevant to the songs story or not, have various lighting effects on the band and also (typically) wearing dark clothing. For our music video we wanted to build on these concepts and the result was band shots that were in the Faraday room, which was also used for several shots in the videos story. The band member shots were edited with several different lighting effects to give it a shady feel and the clothing of the band is very similar throughout the shots of them as they are wearing dark clothing.

With every genre of music there is a stereotypical view that is associated with it, whether it be the high class, noble like status of classical music or the dark, doom related death metal. We wanted to keep with the rock genres image which is your average rebellious teenage years. We tried to stick with this look for our band member shots but with our video we aimed to devise a chase scene of a more action/thriller albeit it turned out to be more action than thriller.

When we were developing the main chase in the early stages of development we wanted to see if there was any way to effectively merge the rock genre with a chase scene other than just keeping the pace of the song and editing in time with each other. We found it very difficult other than to dub the lighting and effects to remain similar to keep the two in check. There is a certain feel to the rock genre of music: dark almost uncomfortable near surreal settings. For the band shots in particular we tried to recreate this style of setting. To try and accomplish this we used the school Faraday room as it presented an already enclosed room with light which is easy to manipulate. We used some LED lights for the main lighting of the scene which was then complimented by overhead projectors which were used for backlighting on the walls in the room to create a surrounding that we felt fitted the style we were aiming for. Little editing was required as we felt that the effects that we obtained from the two sources of light (the LED lights and the OHPs) fitted the scene ideally for what we were trying to achieve.