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

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


In order to compare the codes and conventions of our music video to real media products I decided to take various screenshots from music videos by 'The Saturdays' as well as my own. This way I can compare the two and how they use, develop or challenge aspects of their videos.

The first image (top left) shows an establishing shot taken in one of their videos, this gave the song an eery feel to it and reflected feelings of sadness, in the same way the first image taken from my music video shows an establishing shot of where we filmed by the river. This shows a similar shot and this was used in a way that the video would relate to our lyrics for example 'I thought that you were better' showing the song is about feeling hurt and betrayed. The shot by the river reflects these feelings and the overall theme of the song is established to the audience.

The second image shows the girl group as a whole, in the same way to the second image of my music video, they each have a different colour, we used this so that it makes each member stand out in a different way and it makes the video more vibrant and exciting to watch, in this way the product uses the same conventions as real media products, however, many girl groups don't have a particular colour scheme and in this way our music video challenges these conventions. 

The third image shows a long shot of the group all together as a whole, this is also shown when our group are performing in the studio again showing the use of typical music video conventions. This shot shows the group together as a whole, reflecting the idea that each member is in the same situation. 

The fourth image (top right) shows 'The Saturdays' altogether holding an umbrella in a narrative scene, the fourth image from my music video shows one of our members alone, in our narrative scenes most of them are individual rather than showing us altogether as a group. Typically girl groups are shown together throughout the video, but as a group we decided to challenge this convention as this is the most effective way to gain empathy from our audience as they can see each member's story in more detail. 

The fifth image shows the girl group performing a dance routine, as a group we felt that our songs lyrics would not be suitable for a dance routine, especially a fast paced one. When girl groups tend to take part in a dance routine their music is often up beat and so to fit in with our storyline which holds a sad tone we took more shots of each individual member.In this way the typical convention of a girl group dancing were challenged.

The sixth picture shows a close up of one of the members in the girl group 'The Saturdays', in the same way our music video uses many close up shots, this is so we can see the lip-syncing of the character and the audience can see the emotion and identity of the specific member shown. The sixth picture from our music video shows two of our members, this shows the individual as well as being part of a group at the same time.

The seventh picture shows one of the characters looking out of the window singing and looking upset, this gives the audience the impression that they are reminiscing on previous events as if something in the past was once good but has now turned bad, this fits in perfectly to the story within the lyrics of 'Ego' and so we decided to recreate this scene, conforming to the stereotypes of a typical music video.

The last picture shows not only the variety of colours within the girl group but also shows all the members using a close up of just the legs, in the same way there is a close up of each member in our group as well as various colours conforming to this stereotype.

Often group music videos show each member individually as well as collectively and throughout our music video we made sure that this was parallel. Not only did we conform to typical girl group music videos but we also formed our own collective and individual identity bringing something new to the 'pop' genre of music. We did this through our story line, in which we used balloons and a different 'boyfriend' for each member of the group again showing an individual as well as group story line, often 'pop' music videos rely heavily on dance routines in which we challenged. As no-one in our group have been trained to dance unlike girl groups in the music industry we decided to make the video more narrative which isn't what you would expect to see.