1. In what ways does your Media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Most videos of Indie Pop are of a narrative and performance nature. From the examples I looked at these were all like this. As my video is dominated by Indie Pop genre I think the audience for my video is likely to be female and male, but more elder teenagers (15+), but more likely to be more popular at the eldest of audience in their late 20’s.
In my video I used conventions from this as I tried to replicate an old fashioned ‘Super 8’ camera for the‘home video’ scenes. I did this by experimenting with the colour correction area of effects on Adobe Premier Pro (the programme I used within which to make the Music Video), mainly experimenting with the Red, Green and Blue filters. The reddish tint makes it look like it is more vintage and aged film. I decreased the blue filters a little and increased the green filters more, but then increased the red filters the most. I also experimented with the contrast to make it a lighter picture which also made it look more ‘aged’. I also used the conventions of a more modern video camera device, using the ‘Rec.’(abbreviation of ‘Recording’ tool with the symbolic red dot) which made it look like it was being filmed with a stereotypical video camera from the‘boyfriend’s point of view.
Lana Del
Rey closely associates her videos with culture such as war, presidents such as
John F Kennedy, the 60’s and 70’s lifestyle and different interpretations of
‘The American Dream’ .It is different from many videos nowadays such as R&B
where the imagery is hugely populated by audio-visual sexual nature. This is
also inspired by film maker/director John Waters, and retro photographers
Philip Lorca DiCorda and Juergen Teller. Del Rey also makes prologues or
epilogues in some of her music videos, such as ‘Ride’ or ‘National Anthem’.
In other scenes, when she is outside in a more run down area, it shows the contrast of her emotions, from when she is happy in the home video, to when now in ‘reality’ she is more upset as now what made her happy has left her life. She wears darker make up, her hair looks like she cares about it less (she made more of an effort when she was with her man) and wears leather/black clothing. I think stereotypically she picks up codes and conventions of the image of ‘rebellion’ like for example a misunderstood teenager, typically labeled as an ‘emo’ or ‘goth’ , with a similar, milder style. Or perhaps like a ‘motorbike chic’ who rebels against her parents, it gives the image she is trying to rebel and deal with her recent ordeal with her partner. I got this idea from picking up similarities from Lana’s ‘Ride’ video, in which she is a prostitute biker chic who hangs around with a Hell’s Angels type of gang and also various films, mainly comedy, like Big Momma’s House 2 in which the family he is looking after, their eldest daughter is gothic and a stereotypical portrayal of a rebellious teenager.
Also in other scenes, in the bed scene for example, I also tried to portray Emily rebelling against her recent broken relationship by revealing a little more flesh in the sense that now she is trying ‘to impress’other men now that she is newly single even though she knows deep down she still wants him. It also portrays the mild sex appeal that Lana gives in literally every one of her music videos but does it in a more artistic or romantic way rather than a RAP genre video for example where it is just of a mindless audio sexual visual nature.
I used various techniques to get feedback from people. This included interviewing various students (I filmed these using my phone camera), sharing my video on Facebook (a social networking site) and putting a poll on my blog which showed who would be most interested in my music video initially.
