Evaluation 1

1. in what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

Our music video uses most of the conventions and forms that most music videos use, it has a performance part and a narrative side, but unlike some our narrative and performance are happening at the same time, whilst the artist is playing we have the narrative projected behind him against a green screen, whereas with most there might be overlap between performance and narrative, usually there is a separate narrative and performance, with a story being told, which then cuts to shots of the artist performing.

The performance part of the video follows most conventions of music videos in the sense that there is an artist singing and playing an instrument, whereas the narrative is somewhat unique in the sense that it is made up of pictures exclusively, but the pictures don't just appear on the screen for an equal and allotted amount of time, we sped up the speed that the changed, slowing down as well for some of the more shocking images, so the full effect of the image can be seen, we also tried to ensure that a picture doesn't stay on during cuts, where the performer moves but the picture doesn't, we also kept the performance in full cover, but we added an effect to the narrative, giving it a black and white old film style, we got the inspiration of this from Black Stone Cherry's "Things My Father Said" how the music video starts and ends with an old film effect, and how the music video throughout has a slight sepia colour tone, there is still colour but faded like a memory, we did this foremost to separate the performance from the narrative, the song is about war and peace, so we picked pictures associated with war and peace but during one line, the lyrics change to "because this is one short life that we live", so at this point we decided to add pictures of famous music artists that died at a young age, this also i feel adds a bit of freshness to the music video, just to break up the pictures of war, hatred and other atrocities.

We lip Synced to the song, so that when it came to editing, it would be easy to sync the music to the raw footage, because the song is a sombre song, in the acoustic rock genre, we decided against having much movement from the artist, so it was decided that the movement for the video would come from the narrative of the pictures in the background, usually in this style of music the artist doesn't move much so this gave us some freedom when it came to movement to simply take the movement and use it in the background narrative.

For the mise-en-scene because the song and video we imagined, of an every day, working class man, standing up, expressing what he believes, and starting his own peaceful revolution, we decided that he should be dressed in everyday working class clothes, so a white t-shirt with a stormtrooper design and denim jeans was the choice of costume we went with, and we picked a guitar that was not a expessive top of the range guitar but the type of guitar that anyone guitarist could own, that ability to stand up, as you are, and express such a strong belief, a belief that strong it attracts all around who believe in it aswell, we looked at John Frusciantes "The Past Recedes" how he just wakes up like everyone else, wanders around his house, and then sits on the floor to play a beat up old guitar, that idea that it doesn't matter where, when, how your dressed, what you own, just the fact that we are all connected because of music.

For the digipak we decided to keep the theme very simple, like the music video, so we used a simple theme, a plain black background, with a peace symbol on the front cover, only this one is made from bullets, and the centre of the peace symbol is removed from the whole and sits just out of reach almost like a metaphor for peace, how it is so close, but just out of reach and yet to be whole, we also took a line from the song "Can't the whole world love one another, throw down your weapons, fix all the hunger" we picked this because we felt that of all the lines in the song it had the most effect emotionally to the listener even though it is found at the end of the song, it sums up the song and the message of the song, also just behind the cd and on the edge of the digipak we have included more peace symbols to really illustrate the message.

The tour poster we kept in the same theme as the digipak, it has a simple design but the background is grey and black around the edge, the artists name is at the top, with the peace symbol underneath except this time it is complete, giving the impression that during the gig the audience bring peace closer to fruition, and that the time within the gig, brings everyone closer together, that they are the revolution, underneath that we have put the supporting artists and gig dates and links where the tickets can be brought and any information on the artist, also at the bottom left is a picture of the digipak.