Evaluation Question 1

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

Our first step in creating our A2 portfolio was research. Here, we used the internet to find forms and conventions of real media products, to ensure that we created a product with all said forms and conventions.

Motifs

Many music videos seemed to use motifs to convey a message throughout the video. We decided to develop this convention as we used the recurring icon of the rose in our video.

This short video shows the use of the rose as an icon throughout the video. This develops the media convention of using metaphors to portray to the audience the main message of the media product.

We have used this rose religiously throughout the three tasks, as it was important for us to get across the message of the importance of the rose. Research prior to our project showed us that metaphors are an extremely useful part of any media product, and our use of the chroma key effect etc. really helped us put across this message.

Editing

Cross Dissolves

We use cross dissolves a lot throughout our video, to reflect the plausible gloom and slow pace of the video. These are a conventional transition used a lot in the real media world. They are vital to create a specific nostaligic mood. We wanted to use them specifically to represent how much I am hanging onto hope, as using cross dissolves blends the scenes together.

We made a concious decision to include lots of cross dissolves after seeing them in a variety of music videos and other media products, including television programmes and films, where a reflective mood is present.

One of these music videos was Usher - Burn.

Syncing

We specifically edited our product so it resembled a product in the real media world. One of the things that was most important to us was making sure that everything was in time with the music. When we recieved audience feedback, they said that they specifically liked they fact that it was all in time with the music, especially this clip, which shows the hand crashing onto the pills:

It beared a similarity to this clip from a Saturdays music video for Forever is Over, where the door crashing syncs with the crashing of the cymbals.

Black and White

We used the 'desaturate' tool for a lot of our video. This was because we wanted to create a gloomy atmosphere and thought that black and white was the best way to go to create this.

We were inspired by the use of black and white in famous videos, including Amy Winehouse's Back to Black ,Beyonce's If I were a boy and Robbie Williams' Feel

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black MUSIC VIDEO

How did these videos inspire us?

We wanted to use black and white for the scenes where I am clearly dead, like in the graveyard, one of which is shown below:

However, we also used it for scenes such as these, to show the death of the relationship:

Finally, we used it for the arguement scene to show a prolepsis of what this arguement will lead to

We also partially saturated some scenes using the colour corrector tool on final cut. This is to show the journey to death which the character has embarked on, for example we used it in the suicide scene.

Here is an example of where we edited the saturation to create a more gloomy effect:

Connection of Lyrics to Visuals

"to know you is hardly wonder"

Here, we challanged the lyrics by putting a romantic scene ontop of the line "to know you is hardly wonder". This means that the song line could almost act as a warning for what is to come, as it seems like "wonder" at that current moment but there is a hidden warning that it will all fade away.

"really too late to call so we wait for it"

This line is sung with the arguement scene, we see how it is indeed 'really too late' for anything, for the relationship. It is a pivitol point in the video where all the motifs and hints used at the start come together and it is realized that suicide is imminent. It represents the last chance, and from then on it is shown how I am just 'waiting' for death.

"to the outside the dead leaves lay on the lawn"

This line occurs during the suicide scene, as I reach for the pills and grab them. The importance of this line is the metaphor of 'dead leaves' because I am indeed 'dead' by that point, as next it is shown as I am walking to the graveyard and metaphorically dying.

There is also an overriding connection of our lyrics to visuals as our song is called 'the funeral' and the video is about a 'funeral'. This gives a literal connection between the narrative and video, after listening to the song we discussed and realised that there wasn't really anything else it could be about but a funeral.

Lighting

We mainly used ambient and natural lighting in our video. This was because the aim of our video wasn't to give a polished, preened, artificial tone. It aimed to create a realistic setting where we could tell our narrative best.

We did ,however, use one of charlotte's professional lights to shine on the wall in order to create a shadow for the scene where I am picking off the rose petals in the shadow.

This had a certain eerie quality that we wanted to use, the shadows being suggestive of death already.

Eye Contact













Eye contact directly involves the viewer, giving them a more intimate experience as they feel that the actor is relating to them.

In love the way you lie, Megan Fox (sorry about the fact that my blog is basically a shrine to her by the way), looks at the camera directly in the video. It gives the viewer a sense that she is telling the story directly to the viewer, and gives the narrative video an extra sense of story telling. This is what we aimed to do through the clip above.


Firstly, we desaturated the whole clip. However, we decided to make the second half in colour so my dead face bursts into colour as I open my eyes. This gives an eerie sense to the video, as there is a question of - is she dead? - and really involves the viewer through the story . The half saturated half black and white also emphasizes how hard the decision was to commit suicide, and how easily my life was destroyed.

Colour Scheme throughout the brand

Although obviously it is impossible to just contain two colours in our brand, we made a concious effort to mainly use red and black. This was because these colours represented the evil, death and dying love which we were really trying to convey. While researching the use of these colours, we came across this page showing the importance of these colours. Here are screengrabs showing what they represent.

We used these colours because our research showed that people linked black and red with ideas of death and destruction, and from our audience feedback we learnt that they did indeed recognize these colours as such and it helped with the overall tone of the video.

Facebook Scenes

These scenes did challenge typical media products. Whilst doing our research, we found lots of narrative videos, however, rarely with such a haunting message as ours. We feel that the facebook scenes made our video stand out and they really addressed an important issue at the moment. The use of colloquial language highlighted the teen age group which we were talking about.

It must be remembered that our video is very controversial, addressing a sensitive and not often talked about subject. Therefore, in this way, our video on the whole challanges conventions of media products.

Another music video which addreses controversial and sensitive issues is pink's "fucking perfect". This addresses typical childhood and youth problems such as bullying, fitting in, eating disorders and self harm.

We decided to create a music video with controversial messages to raise awareness about our topic, which was cyber bullying and the harm it can cause. We feel that we successfully did this as our target audience commented how meaningful and emotional our video was.

What about our ancillary tasks?

Ancillary Task Question 1

Our media product both challenges and uses forms and conventions of real media products. We wanted to create something different, that hadn't been produced in the same way before. This is why we wanted to create such a controversial product, whilst using the conventions of music videos as well. Hopefully we raised awareness about such an important issue through the forms of a typical video!