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

2. -Music Video-
• Music videos have been created over the past few decades as a means of
giving life to the music, as well as advertising the band whom created it.
These videos have followed no particular evolutionary chain, starting with
both concept and narrative videos, of which I will talk about. These two
themes played a large part in the creation of this video, and considering the
fact that my partner and I didn’t wish to create a simple straightforward video
we wished to take both into account. We wanted to challenge today’s normal
conventions and truly spawn a genuine work our own in the process. To do
so however, we needed to take a few things into account, those being: -
How would we put across this message in the video itself?
- Would we make any references to any other conventions?
- Would we make any references to cultural theories? (i.e. Hegemony)
- Would we have a general narrative structure in the video?

3. -Concept vs Narrative-
Concept: Our main focus was on
exactly this. We wished to put in
odd images to blur the mind of the
viewer, as opposed to giving them
clear insight into the narrative. To
fuse this with narrative would be a
challenge however proved to be
quite hard considering the fact that
we had to add in elements of
nature and psychedelic ideas into
the general story accompanying it.
• Narrative: This was more of
a sub-focus in the general creation
of the video. We only wanted to
add in elements of a story so as to
keep the viewers mind working.

4. -Concept vs Narrative cont.-
• We made use of the mental stimulation technique Synaesthesia to give us a
decent understanding of the random conceptual images we may want to
use. My partner and I actually shared many of the ideas that came through,
such as: nature, isolation, and confusion. We then listened to the song a
second time so as to gain understanding of a narrative that could
accompany the concepts. However, we had rather conflicting ideas when it
came to this, though we did, somehow, have the same image of 2
characters different in age. The decision was made to follow through on this,
however, so as to add mystery to the video, we masked one of the
characters.

5. -Inspiration and Direction-
• The initial idea was to create something that challenged the norms of today’s music
videos. However, we needed inspiration for this as we would have no idea how to go
about doing it. For this we mainly focused on the videos for Mastodon’s song ‘Colony
of Birchmen’, as well as ‘Dry Bone Valley’. Though one is strictly conceptual (Dry
Bone Valley) the other has a small narrative taking place. This was one of the main
ideas we followed. We challenged the conventional narrative routine by creating a
story but distorting it as the video went on. ‘Dry Bone Valley’ also helped us in our
thinking of different concept shots, e.g. trees, and fields.

6. Conventional Narrative - How we challenged it
• Normally has a structured story
(beginning – middle – end)
• Tends to have the frontman/woman of
the band acting as the protagonist.
• Differing costumes (depending on
setting), as well as changing locations.
• Within rock music videos there tends
to be a storyline containing the trials
and tribulations of the character and
his/her way of overcoming it.
• A tendency to be colourful.
• No particular starting point, seems
almost as though it is a routine
occurrence.
• There was no frontman in the video,
therefore it doesn’t match this.
• The costumes were kept the same, as
was the location to maintain continuity
of a broken story.
• Unlike most rock videos, we decided to
have the trials of the protagonist
unresolved as he wades in and out of
a confused and almost insane state.
• We actually followed this, though it
clearly contrasts with the odd black
and white, or even strobe (flashing),
shots.

7. -Peirce’s signs-
• Though many may not have interpreted it the way we
intended, the rope made use of indexical elements in
the sense that it was captured to indicate suicide.
• This was used as a symbolic shot, so as to see the
happy characters within the picture, though this
clashes with our own narrative.

8. -The convention we did follow-
• Though we wished to pull away from all the normal themes present in
modern day rock videos, we did have to add in a shot of the guitarist playing
the solo. This was done to simply add a more musical feel to the video, also
it allowed people to ease more into the song as the distorted story may keep
people’s minds abroad.

9. To conclude
• Though we managed to pull away from
most of the average conventions of rock
music videos, we still had to make the
inclusion of one. However, this did add a
little sanity and humanity to the video.
Today’s conventions seem to be needed
so as to portray at least some clear picture
to the audience.

10. To conclude
• Though we managed to pull away from
most of the average conventions of rock
music videos, we still had to make the
inclusion of one. However, this did add a
little sanity and humanity to the video.
Today’s conventions seem to be needed
so as to portray at least some clear picture
to the audience.