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

Screenshots from my video

Close-up

It is conventional for soft rock/indie style music videos to have close-ups of the artists guitar while he is playing it. Here we have a close-up of Jack playing his acoustic guitar. This reflects the genre as acoustic music and it shows Jacks guitar which becomes an icon throughout the video. We used this shot near the beginning of the video so that the audience immediately see what type of guitar Jack has and they can experience him playing it themselves.

We can see a very similar shot being used in The Scripts Man Who Can’t Be Moved. This shot has been used relatively near the beginning of the video and is during the performance part of the video.

Mid shot

This a mid shot of Jack playing his guitar. This is one of the first times that we see his face in the video. This immediately lets the audience know what he looks like and that its him playing the guitar. This type of shot is key when including performance in the video and as our video was mainly performance this shot was used a lot throughout. This shot also allows the audience to associate Jack with the guitar and vice versa.

In The Scripts video Talk You Down the guitarist is seen in a similar shot. This shot is also featured a lot in their video and appears quickly in between shots of his fellow band members.

Wide shot

As part of the narrative we put in a wide shot of two people on a hill. This gives the idea that the shot is from the point of view of the main character, in our case the artist. It is conventional of music videos that the narrative includes other people as well as the artist or main character. This shot also shows the location which is well known locally.

Ed Sheeran includes a similar shot in his video Give Me Love. This shot is from the point of view of the woman in the video. This shot carries the same emotion as the shot we tried to create of two people coming together.

Close-up 2

It is conventional in acoustic/indie music videos to have close-ups of the artists face singing or otherwise as it creates more intense emotions that come from the artists face. It also gives the audience a closer look at the artist so that they can see and recognise him. We included a lot of close-ups of Jacks face while he was singing throughout the video to give the audience that chance to keep seeing his face.

The Script also cut back to close-ups of the singers face constantly throughout their video Man Who Can’t Be Moved. This lets the audience seen the emotions on his face while he is singing.

Wide shot 2

Even though this wide shot isn't used at the beginning it is like an establishing shot as it gives a full view of where the artist is. This location works particularly well as Jack is a local artist and the video is filmed in a local public place that is well known. This means that the audience can relate to Jack and where he is.

A similar shot has been used here in Ed Sheerans video Give Me Love. Here it is clear that the video is set in a city, even though it is a very different location to the one in our video it is used for the same reason, to create an emotion or feeling. Countryside is quiet and empty and a city is busy and loud.

Over the shoulder shot

In an acoustic/indie video the aim is to create emotions. An over the shoulder shot shows exactly what the artist is looking at. In our video we followed on the theme of two people coming together. Having this shot of Jack looking at them gives the impression that he is on his own wishing to be with someone.

This situation is similar to the one shown in The Scripts video Man Who Can’t Be Moved. The over the shoulder shot here is shown throughout the video so that we can see the environment the artist is in change.

Long shot

This is a long shot of the sun setting. The shot has been sped up so that you can see the sun moving down and the clouds moving quickly across the sky. Sped up shots are conventional in these music videos as they create the illusion of time passing quickly, which can add to the storyline and the emotions within that story.

This shot is from Ed Sheerans Give Me Love video with the same idea as our shot but with a moon moving across the sky. This gives the same illusion of time passing but at night instead of during the day.

Representation of genre

0 Jacks guitar is an instant representation of the genre acoustic/indie (a sub-genre of rock) as it is an acoustic guitar.

0Simple edits and transitions follows conventions of the genre as special FXs are more common of pop and hip-hop videos.

0The types of shots make the video personal to the artist which is very common in acoustic videos.

Narrative vs Performance

0Our video focuses on performance, this is a convention of rock videos. Acoustic/indie videos do tend to have an equal amount of narrative and performance which our video doesn’t have, however this is another convention that we have challenged to make ours unique.

0The video cuts between performance and some narrative elements which is a convention of music videos generally.

Audience

0Our primary target audience was males and females from 16 to 21. This is a similar audience demographic for most of the artists within this genre like Ed Sheeran and The Script. This means that we have managed to create a video that is suited for our target audience, as most of the codes and conventions in our video relate to the ones used in theirs.