Q1-In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

If a music video uses both narrative and performance then often actors are used in the narrative section so that in the performance it is just the band members. This means that the narrative tells a story of the song. We do have both narrative and performance in our video however we decided that we wouldn’t have the band members for the performance only, we decided that we would have band members in both the narrative and the performance. This meant that we adhered to the conventions of some common indie rock music videos but we also subverted some of the conventions of the music genre. However in some indie rock music videos the main performer is also the main band member or just one of the other band members. This means that our video adheres to some of the stereotypes of indie rock. Often when the lyrics are telling a story the actors are also the band members because they have to have continuity in the lyrics and the video. Another important factor of actors in music videos is their appearance. No matter what the genre the actors have to look appealing to the audience of the genre. Different actors from different genres wear different clothing, in indie rock genre the actors are often young and they look “perfect” they are often the perfect image of what people want to see. This is how bands and artists attract the target audience as they have actors that they want to see so they are more likely to watch the video again and recommend it to. They also sometimes use just normal actors to give the audience something that they can relate to so that they have a better connection with the band and the actors. In our video we decided that we wouldn’t have different actors for the performance and the narrative. We decided that we would use the band members in the video for both the narrative and the performance because then the audience can have a better connection with the band so that they feel connected so they will want to learn more about the band and they will be much more likely to go back and watch the video again and watch different videos of the band.

 

Influences for our video

We only had two main influences for our music promo. They were can’t stop by the red hot chilli peppers and golden retriever by super furry animals. We chose these to use as they are both from the same genre as our chosen artist, indie rock. Also both of the videos that we chose to look at for inspiration used the same style of video as us, this style is disjuncture. Both of the videos and bands are successful so we knew that if we followed similar conventions of these bands and videos that we could make our own video successful.

 

 

Directors Commentary