Evaluation

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

We had four initial ideas when deciding which song to use for our music video. They were; Chase & Status – End Credits
Hadouken – Liquid Lives
Hellogoodbye – Here in Your Arms
Paramore – Crushcrushcrush

We were inspired by certain elements of these videos, as they all have the same target audience as the song we finally chose, which was Paramore, Crushcrushcrush. We felt we could use certain techniques from each video and merge them with our own ideas to make the final product unique, yet fit in with the same genre and style of video as our initial ideas.

One specific element we liked from the Chase & Status video was the hand held camera following people running. This adds the effect of someone being chased, rather than running towards something, through the use of a point of view shot and hand held filming. We felt this added tension to the video as it suggests there is something to run from and gives the viewer a sense of involvement, as if they are running away with them.

After filming this hand held shot for our own video, we decided to speed it up when editing, and add it to a montage of other sped up shots that we had filmed, for example mid shots of Beth when she was sat on a bench and walking round the car park, in order for it to fit in with the fast pace of the song and give an even more tense effect. We made the shots faster by changing the percentage of speed on final cut pro, the percentage we used was 500.

We liked how the pace of the video reflects the pace of the song for the Hellogoodbye track, for example when the song slows down so does the video, and the same for when the song gets faster. We tried to bring this into our own music video, by using slow motion on a long shot of Beth dancing in front of the green screen, as the song slows down towards the end, then picks up the pace again. This also occurs in the original Paramore video.

We wanted to make our music video unique to our group, but still include elements of a typical music video for its pop/rock genre and target audience. To do this we included a performance of Beth lip syncing and dancing to the song, as it is a popular shot to have in a music video and we wanted it to fit in with the style of Paramore videos. We tried to keep it unique to our group by adding things like the writing of the word ‘truth’ and a fast montage of shots.