Evaluation question: In what way does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I believe there are aspects in my media product where it follows conventions of its genre and also where it challenges them. In the video there is a lot of close ups of the lead singer and she is framed centrally. If we compare this to the Foo Fighters music video ‘The Pretender’ we can see how they do this as well thus could be said is following conventions. However Indie rock is tough genre to assign conventions to as it is generally aimed at a niche audience especially unsigned indie rock bands. The set up of the band is very common with a lead singer, a guitarist, a drummer and a bass player. The colours they are dressed in are quite typical; red’s positive connotations are: passion, sexiness, love and negative connotations such as danger and anger. The other dark colours worn could imply the band being mysterious, rebellious and dark. In the cd cover and magazine ad the clothing style is similar to that of the video and conventions. The font used is quite typical of the genre. From an earlier post these are the conventions of a indie/alternative rock music video;

Independent music videos used to be solely performance based but with time has become mostly a mixture between narrative and performance. The narrative of the video tends to follow closely to the lyrics of the song. Depending on the lyrics of the song the colours used in the video could be colourful (e.g. Scouting for Girls – Heartbeat) or dark (Kings of Leon – Sex on Fire) or even black and white (Kings of Leon – Use Somebody). The band performing tends to feature quite a lot in the video and there is likely to be close ups of the lead vocalist. The location the band performs in could be anything from a small empty room to a massive stage where they are performing to vast crowd; or even something unconventional like what the Killers did for their music video ‘Human’ where they were performing in an open desert.

There are quite a few examples where my media challenges conventions of real media products. Firstly unlike the generally seen male dominated rock bands my group has 3 girls and only 1 boy. It shows a dominating female figure (lead singer) who comes across as strong, rebellious, attractive and energetic. She is framed centrally and has a lot of screen time as well as extreme close up shots taken. This completely overthrows the stereotypical ideas represented in such videos where women are simply objectified. This contradicts Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory where she thinks men see women as objects and just something to look at. The use of close ups and putting the band on a well lit, isolated ice rink can show star theory, making the audience focus on just the band. It is quite unconventional for this type of genre to use brightly lit backgrounds; however the foo fighters did do this. The video has a narrative structure thus following Todorov’s theory but the structure order is changed around where the narrative starts with boy and girl arguing (which seems like the present but actually is in the past) then it goes onto the present where the boy is not there. It later goes into the past again where she remembers his funeral and finally goes to the very start of their relationship where they are in love together (black and white). The reason I did this is to add a post-modern element to the video and I think it suits the band’s style and goes really well with the story behind their song; which was about a friend of theirs who didn’t know how to express her feelings after the loss of her spouse, and ran away from her problems.