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

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I feel that this is a key shot within our music video because the use of a dog is one of our main elements, and this is the first shot in our video in which the dog can be seen.

Using an animal in a music video is not commonly done. However, for the genre of video that we have aimed towards, it can be seen. For example, during Ellie Goulding's video for 'Your Song' there are several shots that show her playing with a kitten.

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This is key shot because it clearly displays our use of blank and white, as well as being a clear shot of our protagonists face.

We chose to use black and white because we felt that it differentiated our video slightly as black and white isn't often used in music video.It can be related to Jessie Ware & Sampha's video for 'Valentine', in which they use the black and white throughout their video to enhance the simplicity very successfully. This video also has several shots of the both singers faces, similar to ours in the way that we use many shots that clearly show Imogen as our protagonist.

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I feel that this is key because although it is quite simple, it displays a lot. It shows clearly a major part of our video which is Imogen walking  in the country.

For this, we were inspired by Ellie Goulding and her use of the outdoors within her videos.

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To me, this is a very important shot because it is one of the only long shots where Imogens full body can be seen, from head to toe. This displays her outfit. This is often seen in music videos as a lot of attention is on the protagonists clothing.

Unlike other videos, this is not shown very often. The difference with ours is that we appreciated the focus on other things, such as facial expressions and lighting. Furthermore, in many msuic videos, the protagonist has several striking outfits. Our video challenges this because we kept it simple with only one outfit (and a few small changes such as shoes) but we feel that this works for the genre of our video.

I feel that this is also a key shot because the long shot enables viewers to see me of the surroundings, by displaying the fields around her, which enhances her location by clearly displaying that it is set in the countryside. I think that continuously setting the scene throughout the video increasing the understanding of the viewers.

This style is also shown in a slightly different way in Rizzle Kicks video for 'Down With the Trumpets' because while they are filming with their back to the sea in Brighton, it is clear where they are located because of key elements related to being on the by the sea, for example the beach huts.

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This is a key shot because it displays one main convention of music videos which is lip sync.

I feel that it is very important to allow the audience to focus on the lyrics to the song by removing any distraction. Variations of lip sync are shown in several music videos, ranging from close ups to long shots to walking down the street. However, we decided to stick to close up because it gave us the ability to show other things at the same time, as it kept it quite simple.

I was inspired by Natalie Imbruglia’s video for ‘Torn’. During this video, there is lip sync throughout and it cuts between lip syncing and action within the music video. I think it is similar to ours because we used a combination of lip sync with other shots throughout too.

It is also really similar to Azealia Banks' video for '212' because she uses a similar style of lip sync in the way that they use two close ups of the mouth, one a bit further away than the other which is very like ours.

 

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Stop motion is a key element in our video. Stop motion is becoming more and more commonly used within music videos. Oren Lavie’s video for ‘Her Morning Elegance’ uses stop motion throughout. It was extremely effective and done very well, which was inspirational to add some stop motion in our video.

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This shot shows the only male in our video. For romantic songs, it is very common to have two main characters in the video, one male and one female.

This can be related to Gotye's video for 'Somebody That I Used to Know', in which the female character appears half way through the video. Like ours, the opposite sex is not shown throughout.

However, it differs because during our video, the female protagonist is never in the same shot with the male character. This is slightly similar to Plain White T's video for 'Hey There Delilah' because during this video, there are single shots of them collaborated together on screen.

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This is another key element, which is repeated throughout our video in the chorus. Some music videos use text within their video in many different forms. I think that the use of text was very successful in Coldplay’s video for ‘Paradise’. This inspired me because I think it works very well and enhances the key words of the chorus. We chose to do it differently with our video because it was better suited and different from others that I had seen.

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This shot shows our protagonist interacting with the camera and audience. For me, it is key because it adds to the atmosphere of our video and is very ‘cute’. I was inspired by Ellie Goulding because she often does this in her videos and it is very interesting and grabs the attention of the audience.