Evaluation Question One Written

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

During my research for the project, I watched a lot of music videos within the indie-pop genre, including Palma Violets, Nirvana and The Wombats, alongside Wolf Alice, the band I am using for my video. The main points highlighted by the videos which I watched were that indie rock videos often; included elements of distortion in terms of light and editing; used techniques in order to create an alternative atmosphere; and that only fifty percent of the time included live band performance, while most of them did include fragmented pieces. E.g. just the singer, or single members of the band in random/remote locations.     Firstly, lighting came across as very important in the majority of the videos I watched, as it allowed for undertones to be set within the atmosphere. Often, lighting alone was used in order to create a slightly “off-looking” ambience, where there was a sense of something being not quite right. Equally, such techniques were used as a nod towards being under the influence, for example, in the video for 1996 by the Wombats, where a mixture of low key, house-party-style lighting and strobe or disco effects were used alongside blue and green hues to back up the hints of being under the influence shown by the mise-en-scene. As a result of this research, I chose to light my video in a very high-key manner, with bright, white lights that gave off an almost clinical feel. A way in which my video subverts the genre conventions is that it was, as previously mentioned, very high key. This is often not the case with videos of this nature, because of the darker themes that run through the music and the videos, but I wanted to produce a more cinematic piece, one that would effectively get across the concept of struggling with issues such as bipolar disease or multiple personality disorder. I wanted to use a much brighter lit set so that the contrast between her happiness and her distress was clearer to see. One theorist in particular, whose theories were reflected clearly within this idea, is Claude Levi-Strauss, who talks about the use of binary opposites within media texts. For example, in film, the juxtaposition of good vs evil, and in the case of my own music video, the happiness vs sadness, shown through the use of lighting, hue, and contrast altering effects post-filming.     Secondly, something that I noticed was that often, depending on band preference, there wasn’t a heavy influence on live performances in front of crowds or on stage, often, there were simply shots of the singer, sometimes there was no reference to the band performing at all, as in The Wombats’ video for Just give Me  try. The video only includes three shots of the band themselves, they are not in a musical or studio setting at all, but just sat casually as a group while the lead singer lip synchs a line in the chorus. There is one shot near the beginning of a character within the video actually lip synching a line. This was where the original concept for the clip in my video where the actress lip synchs the lyric “slowly I could die” came from. I chose a line that related well to the point I was trying to make with what she was feeling, and had her sing it into the camera instead of my performer.