Evaluation 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I've presented my first evaluation as a video essay below:

Here is the script to the above video:

At A2, the music video brief meant that our research of real media texts had to be much more extensive and on a larger scale. My group and I watched a huge range of films from the dance genre, especially Sia’s, ‘Chandelier’, but most significantly many Beyoncé’s music videos, including ‘Halo’ and ‘What now’. However, watching so many music videos from this genre, led me to notice the difference between narrative and performance. This led us to do a considerably larger amount of research- looking into different types of music videos to identify typical media conventions, which is much less genre defined as A2. Therefore, like ‘What now’, our music video had a combination of both performance and narrative, which put a distinctly contemporary spin on our music video. However, our researched was not just limited to one genre, like it was at AS. Watching other music video’s like Miley Cyrus’ ‘Malibu’ and Goyte’s ‘Somebody that I used to know’, we discovered intertextuality is extremely common in music videos. Consequently, we continued researching outside of the typical dance genre and implemented them into our final media product. This is something we didn’t even consider doing at AS.


As a result our music video became inspired by many real media texts, including ‘Countdown’, ‘That’s what I like’, ‘what now’ and ‘Halo’. The music video my group and I were particularly inspired by was ‘Halo’, which is clearly present in our own media product. Beyoncé is a mix between narrative and performance, where she is dressed in simplistic, monotone colours, with a faded colour grading effect. Therefore, in our music video we used simplistic clothing and the use of the performance dance aspect. However one aspect that interested us most was the use of the mirror. Consequently, we used a bare, simplistic room with glass surrounding it to create a mirror effect.
However the mirror effect created a slightly sinister atmosphere to our media product, which was inspired by another music video- Rihanna’s ‘What now’. Furthermore, the narrative in this music video is similarly paralleled in our final music video. As a result, the use of implementing real media texts at A2 became considerably more complex. Although we still used basic conventions, including using many close-ups on the protagonist and the monotone colours like in ‘Halo’, we also used a variety of more advanced conventions. This included, split screen, twitch effect, glare effect and most significantly overlaying. However, this was necessary to creating the most professional and skilled media product possible.


Furthermore, at A2 the brief also required us to produce ancillary products- a website and magazine advert. When doing our magazine research we realised the central importance of interactivity on a website page for example on Rihanna’s webpage, where you can buy merchandise, watch her videos and read articles on the brand she has created. As a result my group and I set page, which enabled the user to watch our music videos and other by the artist. In addition, a key convention we found was photos. This included a number of photos of the artist from performing to photo shoots and magazines. To mirror this, on our page we added a widget to the homepage which allowed the user to click on photos and find photos of the artists singing, throughout our music video.