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

The media product we have created, in our case being a music video, uses many conventions of real media products. Firstly is the stereotypical use of the locations we have chosen. The two main locations we have used is one of the characters houses where the friends meet up before their night out which plays a big part in the linear sequence of our music video. Secondly the club is used as a main location which stereotypes the dance music genre.

Another use of real media conventions is the costumes and props used. The friends wear casual jeans and a tee shirt for their night out, just as any teenager would. However unusual costume and props such as the sombrero hat, the apron and the scuba diving goggles may challenge any natural media conventions. These props may also reflect the use of alcohol in the music video which reflects their behaviour.

Stereotypically in many dance music videos, such as ‘Tiesto- Adagio for strings’. A mixture of different camera angles are used. Again using real media product conventions. Close ups, medium shots, long shots and point of view shots are some examples of what are expected. These different shots can be used for many different purposes such as to explore facial expressions to settings and locations. A video I studied is ‘Wiley- Can you hear me’ as the camera shots are similar and vary just like mine do. The editing we have used is cutting the different scenes to what we needed but also timing the lyrics to the video and emphasising scenes.

We have also used a very simple linear sequence for the audience to follow. The narrative of the music video is basically the friends preparing for a night out in town, then going to town and finally returning home to one of the friend’s house. This helps the audience become successful when decoding the video as it is not complicated but is still entertaining.

Real media conventions could also be challenged by our music video due to a lot of the video being focused on the preparation for going out, and not being actually in the nightclub which is more stereotypical. A lot of dance music videos don’t do this such as ‘Swedish House Mafia- Leave the world behind’ which does focus a lot on the setting of being in a night club and the events that happen in there. The smaller use of the night club in our video creates the challenge of it being stereotypical.

In our music video the characters are never personally introduced. This could be seen as using a real media convention as it is rare in dance genre. However the convention could be seen as developed due to the beginning of the video when the friends are greeted by the host of the house, at the door.