In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products?
I have looked far into real media products throughout the project to ensure my own work remains professional, realistic and interesting. You tube was very beneficial for my research. First, I will show how my media product uses, develops or challenges forms and conventions of real media.
To see how my products relate to real media, I have gone back to my previous research. I searched many videos on you tube and used features of these videos in my own. Examples are shown below:
Looking at the eyes of the characters within the music videos, I saw that a lot of emotion can be expressed through just the eyes. I wanted to adapt this into my product. (Something I believe I have done). Using just the eyes of characters means that the acting of my actress is not as much of a concern.
Close ups are used in many ways as they allow the camera to tell a story through use of facial expression. By looking down, a character appears as feeling hopeless and as if they cannot continue on. Shown above are examples of how I have used real media and developed it to make my own products. Having Alice looking down a lot throughout the video allows a feel of sadness and little hope for an audience.
As shown here, I also took ideas for setting from my real products. Through looking at real products, I noticed that the bathroom seemed to be a place where characters were most depressed. I assume this is due to this being the place in which people are most private with themselves. No one can see them so therefore, we can feel their inner feelings. The use of the bath allows a character to reflect over their life. I believe having Alice in the bath by the end of our video was very successful in portraying her thinking over her life. (Flashbacks are shown here to further mirror this).
As well as setting, I was able to gain ideas to improve and develop my own story line. Within many of the videos I researched, I saw that when depressed, the character tends to try and change something about themselves whilst at the mirror. In the examples I have shown here, the top especially shows the character trying to change herself (hoping this will help). I decided to have Alice put on her make up and then angrily wipe it off. I believe this would reflect how nothing she does helps with the negativity she feels about herself.
In contrast to the stories on the left, a lot of videos portray this attempt at inner change as successful. However, for our video, we have shown Alice doing her make up as being hopeless. She does not feel any better portraying that no matter what she does, her depression will remain.
One thing I noticed is that many of the depressing music videos such as Adeles 'someone like you' and Beyonce's 'if I were a boy' is that their videos are in Black and White. This is an effective technique as it means that the emotions of the character stands out clearly. If we had further discussed this idea as a group we may have changed the colour of our video. It would also cause it to link more to our ancillary tasks which are in black and white.
However, our colouring (especially in the bathroom) is already quite dark and seems to have a type of grey-scale effect. Therefore, it is not a major problem.
One thing I noticed is that many of the depressing music videos such as Adeles 'someone like you' and Beyonce's 'if I were a boy' is that their videos are in Black and White. This is an effective technique as it means that the emotions of the character stands out clearly. If we had further discussed this idea as a group we may have changed the colour of our video. It would also cause it to link more to our ancillary tasks which are in black and white.
However, our colouring (especially in the bathroom) is already quite dark and seems to have a type of grey-scale effect. Therefore, it is not a major problem.
From my video research I was able to see key features, themes and settings (these are presented through the word cloud below).
Next, I looked at my ancillary task. Addressing the real products for these products is something I have done a lot during the entire blog. Therefore, more can be found by looking at the label of 'comparing real media and our products'.
Shown above are examples of how I went from real products to create my own. I believe I successfully stayed on task and all my products relate. Black and White imagery is used in our all of our digi-pack and magazine advert which relates directly to our research (especially of Adele).
Adeles album:
Adeles album '21' has been the most beneficial album to link our work to as we believe Adele expresses the same kind of emotion we want in our own product. Sticking to looking at real products allowed us to ensure that our product remained professional and looked realistic My audience feedback allowed me to see that our Digi-pack (especially the back cover) looked like a real product. This is all we have been trying to achieve.
The controversial scene:
The outdoor scene when Alice admits her love to Jessie is one that our group added in in order to challenge conventions of media products. We did not want to create a typical love story where a girl falls out with her boyfriend. From our teachers advice, this would be rather bland and too similar to many other music videos. We wanted to do something different. By adding homosexuality into our video, we address a topic that is sometimes sensitive to work with. However, we believe it worked well, increasing the drama in our product.
Realism:
I believe we could have improve the realism of our product is if we had better choice of equipment and more time. It would be very beneficial for us to have a camera that we could easily use whenever we wanted. However, it was a piece of equipment from school. This meant that we had limited time with it. I still believe that our video and ancillary task have remained rather professional, generally, sticking to the normal conventions of media products.
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