Evaluation Question 1

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

The genre of my music video “riptide” by Emma Stevens is pop / country. The fast and upbeat nature of the song makes it pop and the use of string instruments e.g Ukuleles categorizes it as country. There are a variety of conventions that are associated with this genre. This genre usually features songs with the main theme being love and relationships, and many artists associated with pop/country use this theme.

Clothing is another important theme, artists from this genre (mainly female) tend to wear casual dress and it is unlikely to see these artists dressed smartly in their videos, from the costume the audience is usually able to infer the genre, in this case pop.

Music videos tend to use a lot of long shots, close ups and mid shots to place emphasis on artists, locations as wells as emotions. The camera usually follows the artist/artists and will sometimes tilt and pan etc. the main form of editing used in music videos today is jump cuts and these cuts will always be on the beat in order for the video to flow. Transitions may also be used for example fade of dissolve can create effects. Props are seen throughout most music videos whether it be an instrument or a phone or perhaps some sort of sund system.

My group an I tried to include as many of the main conventions form music videos as we could so that it would feel more realistic.

A main convention of pop/country music videos is that they will usually have a narrative this can be seen in various different music videos from this genre for example Taylor Swift’s video for You Belong With Me. Therefore my group an I created a narrative for our music video.

Also in this genre the lyrics tend to match the visual as this is a main convention, we used this and created our narrative to match the theme of love as you can infer from the lyrics that the song is indeed based around themes of love.

Our video included a female (lead singer) and a male who we assume plays a supporting role, at the end of the video we see these two meet up and thus reinforces the theme of love and relationships.

According to Andrew Goodwin a media theorist who specializes in music videos as well as conventions, music videos should represent the song itself whether it be through advertisement or as a message within the song. Our music video represents the song as the themes of love explored in the song is a constant theme in our videos. And so our video works as a form of advertisement as it heavily links to the song.

The editing of my music video was completed on final cut pro. Due to the fast and upbeat nature of the song we decided to have lots jump cuts throughout the video. So in order to keep the video upbeat we cut every few seconds if that. Also each cut was made sure that it was on the beat so it matches the song and flows properly. Transitions such as fade and dissolve were not used in the music video as we believed that it may appear to slow down the video and so we didn’t think it would be very fitting for our song.