Evaluation Question 1 Draft - Nat

Evaluation 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products by both adapting and copying different styles, to make our music video fit within our chosen genre. 

Typical emotional pop videos contain a narrative of some sort, so by sticking with this convention we have recreated a video in a format, which is already in the market. However, by using contemporary dance within our narrative we have challenged a convention within our genre, as we haven't chosen dance music. An example of a pop video which incorporates a narrative similar to ours is Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift's Collaboration of Everything Has Changed. This narrative, along with the dance composition in Pink's Try video, is our video. 

The concept behind the story of the Ed Sheeran video was what we copied, however we used teenage actors rather than children, and we incorporated dance for the 'love story' rather than a day at school. Therefore when researching into particular dance music videos we copied elements from Pinks Try video. Due to having a wider knowledge on dance used in films, I thought by researching into dance footage from trailers and film scenes was important to ensure our choreography worked. 

From the films viewed both Step Up 1 and Step Up 4 mainly included establishing shots, close ups and long shots. The different style of dance expressed across both films made us aware that when filming dance, constant camera movement and change of angle was key. Therefore we have ensured our final video demonstrates these conventions in order for us to attain a professional aesthetic. 

We also needed to ensure we had many different shot types of our artist singing. This was because, with a white infinity curve studio being our location, it meant it was very plain. This meant that by changing the camera angles significantly, from high to low, left to right and close up to long shot it made the video a lot more interesting. The remaining Mise en Scene (lighting and costume) was what we focused our efforts on especially, as this was what would create the atmosphere for our video. Our inspiration from the shadows came from an America's Got Talent contestant called Blue Journey and the new Union J video, as this proves that shadows can be used with in the pop genre and meet a convention. 

The inspiration for our camera angles, movements of the camera, and styling of costume came from the indie-pop genre (same as Katie Jones). The video Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran which came out the week of our planning for the video gave us great inspiration for how dance can be presented through a slow, emotional song. With limited knowledge on how to style dancers, we found it greatly helpful to be able to copy the clothing ideas from this video, as it meant we didn't have to go into too much depth with regards to planning it. 

My digipak and advert both follow conventions of a basic pop / indie-pop genre. The one thing I decided to challenge with regards to the digipak and advert was the photograph I produced. In both images, Katie Jones looks away from the camera. With evidence of Taylor Swift's album cover 1989 not presenting eye contact I believed it was acceptable to do this on my. It however could be argued that due to Taylor Swift being extremely successful and well-known this was acceptable for an artist of her caliber. Therefore I believe I challenged this convention of both products. The colour palette has elements of bright colours and black and white. However, artist albums such as Adele and Jessie Ware prove that not all pop album covers have to include colour like Rihanna and Beyonce.