EVALUATION

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

The finish product of my music video uses conventions and challenges them.
Before  thinking and planning my 3-5 minute music video, as a group we had to think of what our music video may consist of. So we referred to the conventions that we were taught by our teacher in class and they consisted of:

• Had to be an unsigned artist
• Any genre of music
• No foul language or violence

We definately wanted the genre of our nmusic video to be something that we all three like and that R'n'B.
As the genre of our music video is R'n'B we decided to make it a romantic love song. So the rhythm of the song was slow and had a soft base. We also made decisions together and wanted to use smooth transitions like fade ins and fade outs instead of just using straight cuts because it would not realistic enough or would not be effective.
Our song 'Therapy' is quite a slow song, so when it came to the editing part, we had to be careful when making cuts, because the lip syncing had to be in time of the song. Also when we were making cuts we had to ensure that when we made cuts they had to be in time of the beat in order for it to go well with the pace of the song.
My music video has a wide variation of shots  that are very similar  to real artist videos in the music industry. My video also shares some ideas regarding the same story line as other R'n'B artists. 
Before filming as a group, we had a discussion and spoke about what artist in the industry is similar to our artist Corinne Vielle, mainly talking about the sound. We came up with popular artists such as Rihanna and Beyonce. We also watched a few of their videos to help us get a range of ideas that would help us for our music video. As Rihanna and Beyonce both come under the category of R'n'B, it did help us as most of their songs are either to do with love, romance or sexual emotions.
Furthermore i went to do more research into Beyonce Knowles, she is an R'n'B singer in America and is known world wide for her extravagant music videos as well as for her beautiful singing. Beyonce's music video also consist of a variation of shots. By doing more research i found out that she is known for using close ups when it come to her romantic/love music videos. This shows to the audience that there are emotional references and indicates pure intimacy as well as communication. Therefore we thought that it would be a great idea to involve these kind of shots in our media product. 
Here are a few close up shots from her music video and here is a close up shot from my music video...



The use of black and white was important to portray in our music video as the black and white shots convey the past and shows the audience how much they love each other and what they have between them is special. In addition, the colour shots are to represent to the present and this shows the audience that they are inseparable and she always thinks about him. The use of black and white shots was a good transition to use, because it made it clear to the audience that the shots not in colour were flash backs.
The use of fades throughout my music video challenges real media conventions reason being, in a real media product fade ins and fade outs are barely used and if they are used, they are usually used to fade out the end of a music video. 


As i said before we didn't just want to use straight cuts all the way through because it would be less effective. A straight cut is a type of transition used to separate clips. A cross fade is emerging two images together, we used cross fades to soften the cuts and to also match the story line.




I did further research into another artist who i listen to often. Her name is Keyshia Cole who is also an R'n'B singer and known for her romantic videos. 'You complete me' is one of her best songs, and has romantic lyrics, even by the name of the song tells you that the song is all about the person she loves.
Here is the video...

As I have mentioned Rihanna's name before she is known for her touching lrics, she always produces 'feel good' songs and would always have a romantic feel about it too. So we thought we would develop our music video by getting a few ideas from her music video.
Developing more of the R'n'B convention
R'n'B music videos are often romantic as well as sexual.
Trey Songz- 'Neigbours know my name'
Video...

Nicki Minaj- 'See right thru me'
Vdeo...

Here are some screen grabs that show intimacy as well as sexual emotion form both of the videos above and from my video...






Trey Songz 'Neighbours know my name'  had a big influence on me personally because it was a really intimate song and that could have helped us develop more on our song but as a group we looked at other artist that had sexual scenes. Trey Songz had quite a sexy video as well as emotional communication just like towards the end of my music video. We wanted to leave the audience questions on what they thought would happen next. Furthermore, we didn't want the actors to go nude as that would be unacceptable or our task, so they kept their clothes on and it was an exception.
Developing media product conventions (Lip syncing)

One of the key conventions we had to follow in order to complete our music video was to lip sync. Lip syncing is not just a regular convention in the genre of R'n'B it is used in all types of genre whether it is Soul or Pop. Most of the artists in the industry lip sync in their videos so we had to get used to it. It was a fun and a good experience especially when it came to the editing.  As a group we had to ensure that the lip syncing in our music video existed throughout so that we showed we were developing  the use of conventions in our music video.