Question 1 Draft

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

The song that we chose to use for our music video was Bombay Bicycle Club’s ‘Shuffle’. We came to this decision as the song itself is from the indie/alternative genre and this is the main style of music we listen to & therefore we wanted to create a video that follows similar conventions to that of other indie/alternative music videos. One way in which our music video follows the indie/alternative genre is through mise en scene. The mise en scene is established and the conventions are followed very early on in our music video with a sweeping shot of the band walking. This shot introduces the band to the audience and it becomes clear straight away that the style and clothing of the band follow the indie/alternative conventions.

[Clip of the band walking]

In many ways we used Bombay Bicycle Clubs own video as inspiration for our video, the idea of the video being spontaneous and having no real meaning other than to entertain. The idea of creating a spontaneous video also follows indie/alternative conventions as it is often the case that bands from this genre of music create quite random and frivolous music videos. This is evident when looking at other bands videos such as; Foals – Red Socks Puige and Mystery jets – Young Love.

[clip of music videos above]

Our video also challenges these conventions as it based upon our conceptions of what band life would be like. Our conception of what band life is like is conveyed in our music video, however, many other people have a very different conception. The media convey a completely different conception of band life, one which includes excessive amounts of alcohol, sex and drugs.

[insert picture of Pete Doherty]

Another way in which our music video follows the conventions of the indie/alternative genre is by using short and quick shots in order to create a fast and interesting tempo in our video. This is particularly evident in the keyboard shots in Leicester, there are 4 different shots ranging from mid-shots to long-shots all within 8 seconds. This was not an attempt at stop motion, we were simply trying to create a range of shots within quick succession of each other to interlink with the fast pace of the music. This technique has

The mise en scene of our video was inspired by Bombay Bicycle Club’s Shuffle video. We loved the idea of having lots of different locations throughout the video and the video representing a trip/journey with the band and then keeping in line with Bombay’s video have it cutting back to a band performance. We did however only have a few shots where we cut back to the band as we didn’t feel our band shots were overly great but mainly we liked having more shots of the band in the various locations as we felt it just looked better.

It is clear from both of our ancillary texts that we have followed the same media conventions and have been influenced by the indie/alternative genre. Our ancillary texts use the same mise en scene as the music video. Although our ancillary texts are very different there is a clear link to the music video. Both of our ancillary texts contain photos of each band member it is clear from these photos and the bands appearance that our ancillary texts follow the same mise en scene as our music video.  

Bombay Bicycle Club have various shots in which the band are just chilling out with each other with not a lot happening. We decided we also wanted this in our video; however we chose the shots well and placed them when the music is slower and more relaxed itself. We also placed one of these shots early on in the video in an attempt to introduce the band and their style immediately to our target audience.

[Clip off walking shot, train station, Jamie]

One way that our music video challenges certain conventions is the way that our music lacks a specific narrative idea. We were well aware of this, however we didn’t really want to have story or a particular meaning to the video, and we simply wanted to show our audience what a day in the life of our band is like.  With videos such as ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ from Arctic Monkeys, this has a clear narrative and is totally centred on the life of a drug fiend who funds her habits through prostitution. This shows a binary opposition between our video which completely lacks a narrative and the artic monkeys which is completely centred on the narrative idea.

[Clip of both videos]