Starting with the planning and research stages of this project, as a group and individually we were able to take typical conventions from other music videos and were able to notice stereotypes from different genres. From our own personal research of different genre of music videos and individual analyses of each we were able to then join as a group and recognise certain characteristics that we would like to use and develop through our own music video for example we took some conventions from Destiny’s Child video to Emotions which showed a split screen shot following the characters around their surroundings which we developed for our music video. Other factors, such as close up of the artist and establishing shots were also used to in turn make our video more recognisable and to establish our artist in a certain way.
Another convention we tried to challenge was the camerawork of the video, we decided to play round with different movements, transitions and angles. This enabled us to give the video a more in depth story and keeps the audience more interested. We opened the video with a close up shot of the artist to establish her profile, this was followed by three news reports that we created in our classroom that we tried to keep as authentic as possible and therefore we studied backdrops from different news shows to create a typical convention of them. This was then followed by the artist looking straight into the camera which focused all attention onto the artist to let the audience establish character. We decided to do this to use the convention from pop videos that the artist is always the main attraction, even though or song had narrative and a hidden meaning we knew that to make a successful video this had to be included. We added lots of performance shots of the artist from all different angles, one of which we had the artist sitting up a tree singing into the camera from a low angle, which was more to promote her image. In other scenes we used quick shots, from a range of different angles such as the mugging scene. We decided to do this as conventions of music videos tend to use fast paced cutting to build up a climax in the narrative, and through the tracking of the character it lets the audience experience the narrative.
From the start of the planning, we had decided that our video was to challenge pop conventions and focus away from Eden’s star image, this would be a challenge against the usual pop stereotype. We knew we had to establish her as a new character at the start of the video, but we wanted to focus more on setting and other factors such as costume and narrative. We used a fair amount of performance shots but we still didn’t take the main focus away from the narrative. This was also portrayed in the creation of the ancillary task because we didn’t have the artist pasted all over the CD cover we used screen grabs to spell out ‘I am one of them’ which included other teenagers that weren’t famous just everyday teens. The MySpace we focussed around the singer as we used it for advertisement, so we included background information and links to other sources like YouTube. The MySpace defiantly followed conventions of real media products as you can see that with the banner and links, other young pop stars have similar conventions to ours.
Front and Back cover
Banner ComparisonThe mise en scene of every shot is especially important. It can suggest different things and is quite a powerful visual tool. Our costumes consisted of the rich girl wearing the girlier outfit with a skirt and obvious examples that show more wealth. The poor girl wore ripped jeans and different layer as to suggest a messier look. This kind of gave us two extremes. We then put artist in a plainer outfit. This initially began in white but it did not look right in the shot. We chose to put her in a pink outfit because it was girlier. We still of course wanted to show a feminine side as well as it having a hippy vibe, the message of peace we wanted to show to the audience. Her outfit was mutual between the two extremes therefore she does not land on either side. We gave all of these the same outfit throughout because it was supposed to show a day continuously. The artist wore the same top in the myspace banner, to link the video to the advertisement.
There are three main actors, one of which is the artist herself. We felt it important to put the artist in it because she of course is the artist, which is a normal convention of a music video. The poor and rich girls are only used in this video and are not on the album or MySpace. We did not want to use them on anything else because it may suggest they are a part of the band because they already have a main role in the video. We felt it important to keep the audience in mind throughout. This led to an effective decision to use only teenagers in our video and no adults or children. The main message is aimed at teenagers therefore involving different ages may seem patronizing. This also creates a youthful image, a common want for real media products.
Choosing the setting was fairly fun to do but was a huge problem too. We felt that London especially could reflect both sides of poor meets rich. We therefore spent a lot of time filming there. Shots like the bench scene were shot at St Paul’s cathedral park. The establishing shots were also good to show a transition. We wanted to show that the girls went from there houses to the train into London therefore gathering loads of different landmarks allowed us to clearly show this. We began with the rich girl on a balcony and a poor girl walking down stairs of a flat. These were stereotypical setting. The walking and driving scenes also have slight emphasizes of status too. Scenes of artist were shot mostly around nature. This was to exaggerate her hippy personality as well as giving her a more mutual/medium take in this video. All in all we find that this is a common characteristic of a music video. Changed of location will be done to make the video more interesting and it brings it alive almost.
