Evaluation question one

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

Before I can answer this question I first need to recap what the genre I chose to use and what were the conventions of the genre were.

I chose to use the rock genre for my product because I believed that I would be able to input my knowledge on the genre and that I would therefore be able to create a better product if I used this genre.

I found when researching the genre that one of the main conventions is that performance is focused on more than narrative, with some rock music videos not having a narrative at all and instead having a live performance) or footage of a live performance which is then edited). It is also a convention in the genre for the video to be dark and have low key lighting, this can be either with lighting during filming or by using effects in editing. Another convention also includes clothing, such as leather jackets and black or ripped clothing. These are very common and are the style of the genre.

The other conventions I found are listed below:

• Links between lyrics and visuals
• References to looking, the artist often looks at the audience as if they are talking to them directly
• Voyeurism of the female body
• Violence, anger and hate are common topics
• Love and relationships are also common topics
• Close ups of the artist singing or of members of the band playing instruments

After researching the rock genre I also looked into Andrew Goodwin's theory on music videos, his theory is that music videos are a genre themselves and have their own conventions which are separate from the other genres. The six main conventions of music videos according to Goodwin are:

• The video demonstrates the characteristics of the genre of music
• Links between lyrics and visuals
• There is, or there is links to, intertextual references
• Voyeuristic treatment of the female body
• References to looking
• Lots of close ups of the artist

These conventions are very similar to those of the rock genre, so it was relatively easy to incorporate conventions into my product for the audience to gain a greater level of communication from the video.

Conventions I chose to follow

I chose to follow the main convention of the rock genre and have most of my product consisting of the performance element rather than the narrative element. This was not only because it was the convention but also because the song I chose had large gaps between each verse and it would have been hard to make a coherent narrative that matches the lyrics when there is no lyrics for a large part of the song. I wanted my product to convey the story as well as it could and I chose to add in more performance elements so that it 'showed off' the guitar parts to the audience.

I also chose to use low key lighting in my product, I thought that it was appropriate as the song was about betrayal, robbery and murder. The use of low key lighting is to emphasise the negative emotions of the song, so that the audience will have a greater insight into the singers state of mind when he is telling the story. This type of light effect also fits in with the genre and would distinguish it from other genres such as glam rock or progressive rock.

Throughout the whole video the visuals followed the lyrics, as the lyrics were telling a story and I made the visuals follow this so that they could express the emotions and have a accurate interpretation of the story.

Another convention I used was the topics of the song. The main topics of the rock genre, violence, love and relationships are present in the song I chose. So I chose to emphasis them and make them as evident as I could to the audience when I shot the scenes for the video.

When it came to clothing for my actors, I used both clothes that fitted the conventions and clothes that went against it, this was to show the two opposing sides in the story. The main character had torn black jeans, a rock t-shirt, and a shirt that spent most of the time tied around his waist. Whilst the antagonist wears a tweed jacket and a neat red shirt.

Conventions I chose to challenge

I chose not to follow the convention of the artist looking at the audience because the audience is not involved in the story, and if the artist or actors looked into the camera at the actors it would break the effect of the story. I did this so that the story would have more of an effect on the audience.