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

With my genre of music the conventions and forms can be quite varied. A lot of the time they will on and off have the band playing, if not them pretty much playing the whole time, they very much like to advertise the band, but the main ones I have been working from have quite meaningful video's, almost like short films but the main character will also lip sync.

Although Cliché's are cliché's because they are good and effective I wanted to challenge some aspects of certain ones, for example having the band or artist playing/singing in the video, I avoided that because I feel it takes some meaning out, you follow the video, you start to feel something and then suddenly the band is there and that built up emotion is basically lost because you've been taken out of it and remember it's just a music video, where as if the band is not shown you continue to watch it feeling more and more and forgetting it's a video and feeling a part of it.

This image ^ is a part of my shot reverse shot which was also used in one of my style model videos to show the two different alternatives in what could happen, in mine it is to show the back and forth or her getting better then getting even worse than she'd ever been etc.



This is their first shot of the three.

My second shot.

Their second shot.








My third shot which is the same as the first and their second shot which is the same side as the first just continued. Obviously this doesn't make much sense without the movement but in the videos, if de-constructed carefully it is a noticeable symbolism, although others may read it differently which is fine.

They used the silhouette to show the light, to give a religious connotation, the light symbolising the good etc where as mine was the opposite, it was to show the bad, her depression taking over her but if you notice, there is a thin ray of light, to symbolise that there is hope for things to get better and the fact that she's walking through a tunnel it does imply that she will eventually get into the light.

These two shots are slightly to the side, I found that this was actually a convention of my genre, it was also used in another style model video that I looked at, possibly to show that there's more than meets the eye, something you wouldn't notice, at least that's how I used it.

I tried to keep it to a mid-shot most of the time so it showed a lot of her body although actually most of the time in my style model videos this is not the case, it is focused more on his head and face, I could have also done this but I preferred the mid-shot for the journey but getting closer to her face in the flashes or the deeper story lines.

I wanted her to have a wistful look, I first saw it in this still above, I feel that even though he just got beaten up he still seemed hopeful and I wanted to also show this, no matter what she goes through she will always, eventually 'get there'. I also fitted this with the lyrics 'I'll get there' to reinforce that.

This is where I got the idea of my main character lip syncing while acting rather than going away from the story to have a 'band moment'. He is also the singer of the band but technically Atlanta is pretending to be me as it was my song that I was singing so to the audience it may well be her singing, I did find that this did look awkward at points but nobody else seemed to point that out, probably because I kept it to a minimum.








These final two images are very similar, same amount of body shown, both looking down, I did want her to be looking down some of the time as it looks like she's in thought as he does, thinking about the life issues.







I tried to stick fairly close to these style models because they fit with my target audience and if the audience like that then they should like mine. This fits with Steve Neale's theory, Neale says that pleasure is derived from 'repetition and difference' which is how I view my text, it has some similar conventions, it has to to be enjoyable as I can't just change everything completely and expect my audience to still enjoy it just because it's different because conventions are conventions for a reason. Although I have also done some things a little differently, the lack of lip syncing as I feel it takes the emotion away and it is a different narrative than some are used to as it is a deeper topic than some dare to go, it is also more open than a lot of videos can be, I feel that most directors tend to get too caught up on their preferred reading where as I just want people to find their own way of connecting to the piece. Which brings me to the uses and gratifications theory, what enjoyment they get from it, I find it is entertaining just to watch but also as it would need 'decoding' it would create some diversion as they are stepping away from their own problems and concentrating on decoding. I also feel it should educate my audience to a degree on depression and what kind of things can be behind someone, things you may never even notice it, this would also help them maybe identify with some of these situations or people, or maybe they've had someone like that in their life, depression is quite a common issue so hopefully it'd be easy to relate to in some way. It could even make the audience look at their lives slightly differently, or it could be the case of watching someone else's life takes them away from their own life and problems for a while(escapism).