The song for our music video is an Alternative/Rock song with witty humorous lyrics, the lyrics have no deep or emotive meaning and are about a somewhat comical subject matter (a straight man accidentally dancing with a homosexual), the song is cool and upbeat, so as a group we decided to focus heavily on the generic rock and roll lifestyle for our music video, using, developing and challenging forms and conventions within that genre to appeal to our audience.
From looking at real media products with the same target audience and genre as our song for influence, we found many forms and conventions. When studying other music videos, we looked at representations of social groups and we applied what we found to our music video, using, developing and challenging forms and conventions. We used many conventions synonymous to the rock/alternative genre that we found in real products such as the mise-en-scène in the genre. The main part of the mise-en-scène in alternative/rock videos we looked at were the instruments and band members performing (Below is an image of the band and their instruments).
Mise-en-scène, Representation & Performance
From looking at real media products with the same target audience and genre as our song for influence, we found many forms and conventions. When studying other music videos, we looked at representations of social groups and we applied what we found to our music video, using, developing and challenging forms and conventions. We used many conventions synonymous to the rock/alternative genre that we found in real products such as the mise-en-scène in the genre. The main part of the mise-en-scène in alternative/rock videos we looked at were the instruments and band members performing (Below is an image of the band and their instruments).
The semiotics of the music video connotes the songs genre of alternative/rock, predominantly through the videos mise-en-scène. The above image shows how we used conventions of the alternative/rock genre in the mise-en-scène of the video, the band are all in typical order, singer front centre, guitarist left, bassist right and drummer at the back. This typical band line-up was not only due to other music videos we saw but also due to audience research wanting standard band scenes. The band are all also playing instruments such as guitars and drums which are metonyms for the rock/alternative music genre.
The below image shows how we used mise-en-scène in the narrative shots to develop forms and conventions of our genre within the music video
The location of the street is developed from the conventions of videos we studied wherein the characters were shown to be cool and casual, and also in a gang. The mise-en-scène of having the characters in a gang formation is from inspirations from inter textual analysis of Quentin Tarintino's Reservoir Dog's which had the same target audience as the song for my music video. We developed the iconic signs within the text of the middle aged gangsters walking across a sunny Californian street to a gang of teenagers walking down a street in gritty England, this scene could be interoperated as a parody as it does not take itself too seriously or a genuine reference to Reservoir Dogs as it contains a dark undertone as it is an image of a teenage gang which the media has created a folk devil out of. The Paradigms of a gang of teenagers dressed smartly walking down a street creates a dark syntagm of youth crime. The road that the characters are walking on creates the metaphor of an open road being freedom for the young gang members.
We also challenged the conventions of the genre within the mise-en-scène as (seen in the above image) we set the narrative shots in a relatively suburban location as opposed to an inner city, this paradigm alters the syntagm of the video, catering for a wider audience as it has connotations of average suburban life as well as crime. It could also be argued that not only did we develop the gang idea from Reservoir Dogs by using teenagers, we challenged the forms and conventions of previous media texts as most gangster genre films use middle aged characters wherein we used teenagers in our music video. We also challenged the forms and conventions of previous music videos within the genre by referencing scenes from a different type of media, we referenced scenes from a film in our music video. We challenged forms and conventions within the performance shots (shown in the top image) by having all band members apart from the lead singer sitting down, this arbitrary sign connotes importance of the lead singer and how cool and laid back the other band members are in comparison to the lead singer jumping and dancing around the stage, drawing attention, this challenges forms and conventions of previous videos as in other texts we studied we saw the other musicians being very energetic on stage and trying to draw attention to themselves as well. The performance shots juxtaposed with the narrative shots of the band walking which is a direct vertical inter textual reference from Tarintino’s Reservoir Dogs creates the indexical sign of criminality and a rock and roll lifestyle, this is through the target audiences’ understanding of the Reservoir Dogs reference which has been parodied, pastiched and paid homage to in various other texts that they may have seen.
Cinematography
From looking at previous music videos of the same genre as our song, we looked at the forms and conventions they held and we decided on how we would use, develop and challenge them with the cinematography of our music video.
The Above image shows how we used forms and conventions we found in previous music videos such as the close-up shot. The close-up shot of the drums connotes the metonym of rock and roll as it is an image synonymous with the genre. This close-up shot also uses forms and conventions previously used in music videos as it shows the musicians performing, giving a live gig feel as the genre of our song is based heavily on live music and we wanted to recreate that for our target audience who enjoy live music shows. We Challenged conventions from previous music videos as well in the performance shots as, wherein previous videos they use a dolly for performance shots (Arctic Monkeys-I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor 2005) In our music video we used hand held shots to create an even more live feel, to make the audience feel as though they were actually at a gig.
The above image shows a long shot of the band, we developed forms and conventions of previous videos here as we showed the band walking around like in other videos but we used a long-shot to give the audience the impression they were a passer by looking on as the band walked casually down the road, almost from a POV view.
Editing
When editing our music video, we kept in mind what we have seen from real media products we have studied and used them for inspiration; trying to use develop and challenge forms and conventions we found.
The above shot shows how we challenged forms and conventions of real music videos of the same genre as ours. In this shot we used a split screen to show multiple images of the bands' performance, we also used different colours to connote a pop art style image like something Andy Warhol would make. Each of these paradigms contain forms and conventions synonymous with a pop music video syntagm, a genre that clashes with the alternative/rock genre of our music video, I feel that this challenges forms and conventions of real media texts greatly as the audience of my music video will not be use to seeing conventions of a genre of music video they may not usually watch.
The above image shows how we have used a convention of a vertical reference when editing the colour of the music video; the majority of the music video is desaturated (Black and White) which is a reference to the Tarintino film, Reservoir Dogs. This also developed forms and conventions of previous media texts as we cross bread ideas of music videos and films when creating our music video. The cutting of our video challenges forms and conventions of our genre as usually, alternative/rock videos are quickly cut whereas our video contains many fades and dissolves, we felt this made our music video look quite contemporary and different to previous texts.
Digipack
Below is an image of our digipack
In the above image you can see that the main colour scheme of the digipack is black and white, with certain items highlighted in red, this was to use the conventions from vertical intertextual references from Sin City the film to which we drew much inspiration from (Below).
The desaturated image we used creates an indexical sign for film noir, which is a theme contained within our music video.
The above image shows the poster for our digipack. The image is in an almost sepia tone, which is a convention that we challenged as not many images within the alternative/rock genre contain sepai tones, if any do at all.
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