Task number one: In what ways do your media products use, develop or challange forms and conventions of real media products?

The first stage of the production of my music video was the research and development stage. One element that is key is the major conventions of a music video. Keith Negus, a popular music theorist identified the thirteen major conventions, these are:

• the explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s image


• featuring the artist


• a wide and extensive use of shot types


• camera angles and movement


• repetition of reoccurring thematic elements


• narrative


• performance element


• the flexibility to disregard realism


• shots cut tightly to the beat of the track


• use of special effects


• mise-en-scene appropriate to the content


• tone of the track and finally high impact instantly

We looked at the original video for 'La La La' by The Bird and the Bee. The original features the band but a narrative element of two children playing with toy bricks. We wanted the video to be about youth in the same way as the original is; however we did not want a narrative element but just wanted to feature the band. This is because I feel a narrative element would distract from the band as it is a promotional video for their first ever song and we wanted all the audience’s attention on them. Also, we do want the video to be about youth, but not children, more teenagers growing up to be youthful, free adults.

The origional video of 'La La La' by 'The Bird and The Bee:

We researched popular music videos on ‘Youtube’ and we decided that we wanted to have the same look as an MGMT video. MGMT are known for producing not only creative videos but videos that have a quality in them where the audience are not fully aware what is going on, the audience are left to answer questions about the video.

The video we wished to produce was to the song 'La La La' by The Bird and the Bee. The song is about freedom and youth, "Make yourself free, make yourself grow." Therefore, we wanted our video to be about two teenage girls full of youth and freedom. We wanted to imitate and subvert the convention of a featuring of the artist as we decided we did not want any one else in the video. However, we wanted to subvert the convention of a narrative and performance element as we wanted to just have an interesting and unique performance video.

The image and brand of the band we were trying to convey was two twin girls enjoy youthful life together as close, girly and happy teenage girls. We wanted to create the idea of coming back from a meeting with a boyfriend; showing the excitement and anticipation one may feel as a teenager. We did not want the girls to look promiscuous but youthful. Therefore, they wore white dresses in some shots to connote their youth and innocence and cosmic style t-shirts and fashionable velvet bottoms in other shots, to show their creative stylish side.

Most pop videos use movement to give an idea of intimacy with the artist for the audience. Since our aim was to create an ethereal world, we used movements such as tracking and crane shots that gently followed the artists as the weave their way through the set. Colours were white, blue, pink and green, all gentle colures again. We used circles and ovals as shapes in the mise-en-scene to stress the dream like quality and how unthreatening it all was. Are edits also imitated Negus's conventions, cutting to the beat which was gentle in itself and so emphasised the dream like work we were creating.

We also followed the rule of thirds with most of our shots. Again allowing the audience to enjoy the images gently and not be threatened in any way. The images were easy on the eye as the eye is used to the rule of thirds.

As Khuleshov says 70% of the meaning of a film comes through the visuals not the sounds and our pop video tried to follow this route. Even though the purpose of a pop promo is to sell the song, the visuals are more important as this is what attracts the customer into buying the song.

Another crucial element is that we had to communicate the genre of the song, not just through the audio but also through the visual. The theorist Barthes states that; to understand genre audiences should take two things from a media text, 'jouissance' and 'plaisir'. Plaisir is the pleasure through the expected and jouissance is pleasure through the unexpected. We stood by Barthes' theory during the creation of the pop promo. We imitated some of Negus's conventions to give the audience plaisir. For example; we featured the artist. This is important because as it is the band's first song the audience needs to be aware of who the band is and possibly relate to them. We also subverted some conventions to give the audience jouissance. For example; we subverted the convention of having a narrative element as we only used performance, this is because we wanted the full attention to be on the band.

When creating the pop video, we had to think carefully about how the video and song fit together and would therefore come across to the audience. The song is about letting go of the constraints of life and being free especially in youth. Therefore, we wanted our video to portray this too. The video tried to bring over an ethereal message of girls promoting youth, freedom and heavenly girly feelings. This fits the image of the band well, as they are two young attractive girls that are creative and have an open mind to freedom and having fun.

This still shows the basic idea of the video. We used the idea of being 'girly', youth and freedom to create the mise-en-scene of feminine items such as flowers, fairy lights and cushions. We then explored this idea and came up with the feeling after a girl has found happiness, either in her love life or in her social life. We decided that we would use bed sheets in different ways to symbolise this, eg hanging them up and the girls exploring through the sheets, or using them like a tent with the girls inside this like a hide out a girl may create as a child. We did this to explore youth but to show that they are not children and are growing up but not forgetting their child like qualities.

We also explored this idea using a wide variety of camera shots, and angles, that we imitated from Negus’s conventions. However, we subverted this slightly by only using close-ups and mid shots. This was to show the intimacy between the two girls to show their friendship as well as sisterly love.

We explored this idea of intimacy further by disregarding one of Negus’s conventions of short fast shots cut to the beat. We did imitate the convention of cutting to the beat for a professional finish; however we subverted the convention of just fast paced short shots. A fair amount of shots lasted for up to eight seconds, especially at the beginning of the song when there is no singing and is just dream like chimes. This is to increase the intimacy of the video and the friendship between the girls as the camera tracked free hand close up lingering on the girls. This was also to increase the heavenly, free and relaxed feel to the video.

Another of Negus’s conventions is for there to be a repetition of reoccurring thematic elements. We imitated this convention as we repeated the shot of the two girls on the sofa regularly throughout the video. This is because we felt this was the strongest shot as it we felt is explored the idea of intimacy and ethereal femininity furthest out of all the shots from the shoot day. We started with the two girls on the sofa and weaved around the sofa with a hand held camera, using tracking but stayed on one shot, that lasted eight seconds. We then repeated this throughout the video; this was to ensure that the audience knew that this was the most prominent image we wanted to portray of the band.