Evaluation Research Question 1

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

In our media film, our conventions were mainly based of Andrew Goodwin's theory. He stated that all music videos could be broken down into six Features. These were; 

• Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. (e.g. stage performance in metal videos, dance routine for boy/girl band, aspiration in Hip Hop) [this is also known as iconography]
• There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics are represented with images. (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
• There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music. (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
• The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).
• There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, mirrors, stages, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
• There is often inter-textual reference (a relationship between two texts or films, tv programmes, other music videos etc).

For the purpose of our evaluation, when we put together our response to this question, we will break these points into five just to make it easier to discuss. These are;

• Thought through beat (Seeing what the lyrics mean in your head)
• Relationship between the song and visuals
• Narrative and performance of the song
• Technical aspect of a music video (Mise-en-scene, special effects, sounds and editing hold together the video.
• Star Image (The artist’s image/appearance/reputation)

In our music video, we have used these conventions by first having our cuts in time with the beat. Although this currently isn't the case as we have only put together our first rough cut at this present moment, we aim to achieve this and mention it in our evaluation.
We are linking the song to the visual by having some of the lyrics being played out on screen. The first example you can see us do this is when you see a track shot going down a worn down road while the lyrics play 'in this torn up town...'. Linking to this and the narrative, we decided to show the difference in classes to show how Lorde feels when she says that they will never be royals but then goes on to say that they don't care. Our group of lower class people are more carefree but at the same time, sometimes when we see them during our video,  they may not seem as happy as the group of upper class people.
We have created a star image by having our lead singer the main star of the video by having many shots of just her in front of a white wall just like Lorde in the official music video for 'Royals'. Celine is also dressed in a similar modern costume including a grey jumper and skinny jeans. We also wanted to have her hair curled like Lorde's hair but we were short on time and we didn't get any hair extensions as planned but we did get the make-up similar to Lorde's.

Perhaps we could create GIFs from our Music Video to answer this question?