In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our media product we chose the song ‘London Calling’ by The Clash, which would be recognised in the punk/rock genre. We used various methods to show how our video and other products conform to the characteristics of this genre. Our music video contains narrative, performance and conceptual aspects, which we feel make our video stand out from others which only include one or two of these aspects. The concept of our video follows two politicians on a ‘date’ around London. We felt that this concept relates to other media products, as well as our target audience, as we have used popular and current figures as our central characters and narrate topical issues.
When trying to relate to our audience we used Andrew Goodwin’s analysis (Dancing in the Distraction Factory, 1992) was essential, the first point being that music video’s relate to genre characteristics. Our media products are targeted to a punk/rock audience and we felt that our theme of politics and anarchy fit this perfectly. This is shown particularly through the shots of the St. Pauls protests of 2011, displaying hate towards the government and relating to the original message of the song, written in the late 1970’s about the terrible conditions plaguing Britain at that time. We also translated this theme to our album artwork of the two politicians. We manipulated the images of them using Photoshop to make them somewhat satirical, for instance showing them covered in graffiti and showing them swearing. Our theme can also relate to another feature of Goodwin’s analysis where there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. Our video often illustrates the lyrics, as well as amplifying them at certain key moments of the song, such as ‘engines stop running’ and the image of cars coming to a halt and the lyric ‘London calling’ with an image of the phrase. 
We also displayed a relationship between the music and the visuals by editing each shot to the beat of the music to help the video flow and to keep it exciting and upbeat. As our video focuses on an iconic song, band and setting we decided that the use of intertextuality would be effective in conveying our theme creatively, as well as conforming to Goodwin’s theory. The shot of the two characters at abbey road follows this idea exceptionally, as this is a well known landmark in British music. The shot of the characters walking copies that of The Beatles and their infamous album cover and is instantly recognisable by our target audience.
Another way we conveyed our British theme was through exaggerated mise-en-scene. We used costume in particular to do this; such as the masks worn by the characters and their suits. We also used various props that are quintessentially British, such as a cup and saucer, newspapers, the Underground and telephone boxes to not only convey our concept but our narrative as well. When filming we used a variety of different shots, such as close ups, mid-shots and long shots, to keep our video interesting yet simple, as we felt our narrative and concept was strong enough to be shown through simple shots and therefore was appropriate for our target audience. We used a High Definition camera to ensure our footage was of a good standard and quality, and made sure we were familiar with all of the features of the camera, such as white balance and zoom, to help enhance our footage. We used the software Final Cut to edit all our our footage. When editing, we kept the shots short and cut between them at a fast pace making our video exciting and interesting and ensuring the audience is entertained throughout its entirety. We took advantage of the different tools available on Final Cut, such as the marker tool and the razor tool to make our job easier and to make the footage look professional.We took inspiration from the video ‘Country House’ by Blur when making this decision, as this also cuts shots to the beat of the music and keeps them short and fast.
In order to ensure that our music video conforms to the conventions of real media products we looked at and analysed some real music videos in the research stages of production. I looked at the Radiohead video for ‘Just’ and ‘Janies Got A Gun’ by Aerosmith. I noticed that both these videos follow the ideas of Andrew Goodwin’s analysis, such as the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. They also use exaggerated mise-en-scene to amplify the narrative, concept or performance of the video. The video for 'Janies Got A Gun' uses this very effectively, as there are many shots in the video that use the images to amplify the lyrics.
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