Evaluation draft

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

Individual Evaluation, Sara Karimi

My product is a recreation of an already existing band called Marilyn Manson therefore whilst being influenced by the genuine band I also altered a few things and explored some of my own ideas and thoughts. On the other hand I have followed most of the conventions of a Gothic Rock Music Video and Digipak. The narrative is not based on a specific story and has a more random storyline with themes such as Vampirism, Blood, Death and Love.

My music video and Digipak clearly indicates the genre of my music and explores the themes and conventions of the Gothic Rock genre. These conventions include a sad love story which leads to an unhappy ending full of blood and heartbreak. There are also vivid scenes of death and tragic love lost and scenes of sexual nature. My video includes a disturbed women and male victims, it also follows the sexual scenes and graveyard scene which suggest death and over all a dark theme.

The characters I have decided to construct is a women and two men. The women is a vampire who gets pleasure from blood, that’s why she bathes in her own blood and uses the syringe to drink her own blood. The men characters are mere distraction, playthings that she uses to keep herself busy. This may be one of the aspects of my music video in which I have decided not to follow the conventions as in this case the female is the one in control and the male who is the victim and has no choice.

I have used simple editing and camera shots to create the visual and emotional effect I liked to portray the horror and gothic theme. I’ve uses the fade cross cutting effect which allows you to effectively move from one scene or shot to another but it also merges the two shots which in itself creates another few second of a shot and adds to the disorientated theme. This effect is not often used in other related music videos because there aim is to have flashing vivid scenes and this effect is disorientating. This effect however allows me to follow my dark and unordered theme.

Another editing technique I have used is the black and white colouring for the graveyard scenes because of the vivid colours in the other scenes full of red I decided to create a black and white scene which at the same time compliments the scenery but also distracts the audience from the bloody scenes. The use of colour and black and white is also not often used in related music videos because they want to show everything as clearly and a full contrasted as possible however I decided to move away from that convention and create another type of effect.

My main source of inspiration is Marilyn Manson himself, and throughout my blog I have explored and investigated his work. I'm also a fan which means I have created a music video from my own imagination and influence and interest. I’ve also been influenced by people who’ve created photographs or videos in inspiration of Marilyn Manson which helps me understand how other people interpret his work and try to recreate it through there own imagination.