Evaluation, Question 1: Ellie Scott.

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

Our music video is a mixture of performance, narrative and is also concept driven; our video follows both David Cameron and Nick Clegg around London, with the added scenes of performance and the concept of Britain and the patriotic theme. Our video, due to the focus on the two politicians and our own interpretation on the characters, our video is very much comedy based. Traditional music videos only normally include one or two of the following themes; performance, narrative and concept, however our video includes all three, this has been purposely done to try and appeal to our target audience and make our video both entertaining and exciting. Our video in relation to Andrew Goodwin’s analysis follows many of the factors within his theory on music video analysis. The first factor of this particular theory is how music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. Our music video appeals to the Punk/Rock genre and in order to target our typical audience we have made our video very rebellious and troublesome whilst including the two politicians; Nick Clegg and David Cameron. This is shown within our video with the scenes at St. Pauls and the protests that took place, the protests present the theme of anarchy and the hatred towards the government within Britain; which is also reflected within the lyrics of ‘London Calling’, which is focused on anarchy against the government during the 1980's. This rebellious and troublesome theme is also represented within our magazine advert and our album digi-pack with factors such as graffiti painted on the politicians, the bold and eye-catching font and the un-stereotypical photographs of both Nick Clegg and David Cameron swearing. This therefore refers to the second point within Goodwin’s analysis, focusing on the relationship between lyrics and the visuals. The lyrics within the song are illustrated with the scenes at St. Pauls, proving the anger within Britain over the government and their policies over time. To add to this, as a group we managed to fit as many visuals with the lyrics of the song as possible, we included a scene of the two politicians at Abbey Road and the lyrics mention the Beatles; an iconic British band, this again fitting with British theme of our video. 

The third factor of Andrew Goodwin’s theory is something we definitely, as a group, purposely tried to include within our music video. The third point is about how the visuals have a relationship with music. Throughout the majority of our music video, we edited to the beat of the music to ensure that there was a relationship between the music and the visuals. We edited the video so that on every change of setting or shot it changed on the beat of the music, this factor also makes our music video more entertaining and exciting as the music has a very fast beat, therefore the edits are quick and snappy to yet again appeal to our target audience. Andrew Goodwin also explains within his analysis of music videos about how the record label of artists tends to want a lot of the music video to be focused on the band/singer. Within our music video, we have incorporated this and focused predominantly on our two main characters, the politicians, but have also included shots of the whole band. The penultimate factor of Goodwin’s analysis focuses on the notion of looking and the voyeuristic treatment of the female body, within our video we have not included this particular factor as the notion of looking as well as the female body are not topics focused on within our video due to political references and the prime focus being on London. The last factor looks into intertextuality, this refers to references made to other films, TV shows, music videos etc. Within our video, we have included sights and shots that have been included within other media sources; these include the shot on Abbey Road and key landmarks such as the London Eye, the Thames and Big Ben, all are commonly included within film, on TV and within music videos. An example of intertextuality is the shot at Abbey Road, this was obviously done by the Beatles and was also re-made within an episode of The Simpsons.

Throughout our music video we tried to portray a patriotic theme and a British theme, we also tried to appeal to our target audience from the Punk/Rock genre; a rebellious and troublesome audience. We edited our video on the beat, making it very fast paced in order to appeal to our target audience. We also, to try and appeal to our target audience and present the British theme used several factors involving mise-en-scene. The mise-en-scene that we included within our video includes things such as; suits as the politicians costumes, cups and saucers for cups of tea, traditional British newspapers such as The Sun, settings such as the Tube and famous London landmarks, a ‘Where’s Wally’ scene and well-known British stores. All of the mise-en-scene that we included within our video was purposely included to make our video more patriotic and stick to the British theme throughout. The use of mise-en-scene, the song and its lyrics ensure that our video conveys a British theme continuously; the lyrics of the song discuss the problems within Britain during the 1980’s such as the Miners’ Strike and public unrest due to government decisions. This yet again relating to one of Andrew Goodwin’s theory within his analysis of music videos on the relationship between music and visuals.

Throughout our video we used a variety of camera shots to ensure that our video follows the traditional forms and conventions of established music videos. Within our video we used several different camera shots; long shots, medium shots, close ups and extreme close ups, as well as following the forms of traditional music videos, we also chose to do this in order to appeal to our target audience. Our target audience would want to watch a video with a variety of shots as it would make the video more complex, exciting and entertaining for the viewer; therefore making it an enjoyable viewing experience in instead of it being full of the same shots, making it common and uninteresting. The editing of our video is also similar to that of the traditional music video; editing on the beat of the music. Many other artists do this as it makes the video more exciting and also shows a relationship between the music and the visuals. In the case of our music video, due to the fact that ‘London Calling’ is a very upbeat and fast paced song, it makes our video more eye-catching and definitely more exciting.

In order to successfully ensure that our video was similar to that of a real music video, I looked at various music videos at the beginning of the year. I analysed both, 'Judas' by Lady Gaga and 'Learn to fly' by the Foo Fighters. I looked into the conventions of these videos, such as; the links with Andrew Goodwin's analysis of music videos, the themes of the videos and factors of mise-en-scene. From the 'Learn to fly' video, I was particularly inspired by the comedy elements of the video, the men dressed as women, was an idea that made us think of using costumes and mise-en-scene effectively within our coursework, and therefore inspired us to use masks.  Within this particular video, costumes are very important, as one member of the band is acting as several different characters, so without the costume changes, the video would definitely not be as effective and entertaining to the audience. 'Judas' by Lady Gaga also includes a lot of different costume changes and different settings, the video includes very exaggerated settings, this gave us the idea of featuring lots of various settings within our video; including several London landmarks. Analysing music videos was definitely helpful when making our own music video as we could use these videos that we have analysed as inspiration. 
Our video also conforms to that of Richard Dyer's star theory as our video focuses predominantly on the two politicians. We have done this purposely as we wanted David Cameron and Nick Clegg to be the prime focus, we managed to do this by including several close up shots of the two characters and due to the fact that the whole video follows the two politicians around London, we have managed to present the two characters as stars of the video. 

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