Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms...

The aim of the promotion package was to create a video, DVD Digipak and magazine advert for a local band.

The band I used was “Vivid Sky”, a group of 4, 17-20 year olds, who write and produce their own material. I estimated their target audience to be male and females, aged 15-22, with an average lifestyle but may enjoy gigs and live music more. From this information, I was able to construct a video which matched with the identified characteristics. The main storyline of the track is about a drug dealer; to try and make the target audience aware of the dangers of drugs, and understand the lyrics. The original plan was to use narrative.

The video itself is based on Goodwin’s illustrative theory. By using illustrative shots and acting we were able to connect the lyrics to the video. We decided to use an illustrative style as we thought it would help the audience understand the lyrics and meaning of the track. The lyrics to the track create a lot of mystery, and so we wanted to imitate that within the video. Enigma is an important convention where mystery is created. Barthes theory uses enigma codes and helps the audience to decode what is being created. I feel that the video we have constructed develops the enigma convention. Also, the video follows Todorovs’ theory of having a structure; however we created a new equilibrium [the woman in black] instead of a re-equilibrium. Propp’s theory of characters is not used to a great extent, we have the villain [man in black] and the victim [girl] but there is no hero present.

The mise en scene of the man in black is created around the target audience (age 15-22). The man in black is wearing trainers, a hooded top and tracksuit trousers. This was because this age range is more likely to connect with the younger dressed, danger of the man rather than a man in a long, black trench coat. The way that the woman is dressed supports the male gaze theory and she is dressed to look vulnerable. This helps create the potential risk and danger which the girl faces. The weather which the video was filmed in was a dull, windy day. This was to reflect both track lyrics and the genre of the artist. This band’s main colour theme is black, white and red, so we wanted the weather to match the alternative rock, darker atmosphere.

I think our video uses the same conventions to many other music videos of a similar genre.

Overall, I feel that the video develops current forms of conventions. Due to the amount of enigma created, I think that the video is individual to the genre and styles to usual videos of this genre. A lot videos of an alternative idea, nearly always still uses band footage. Due to the band having problems, we were unable to gain the footage we needed and therefore there was no band footage within the video. This challenges the typical convention of illustrative idea in terms of genre videos.