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

Before making our video we researched into similar products (other drum & bass/dubstep [drumstep] music videos) to see what the codes and conventions were which we could either follow or challenge.

Although we didn’t shoot or edit our video in chronological order we did the opening scene first. Because the song we chose has such a long intro before it truly gets into itself, we made the opening scene of the video like this, slow and not much happening. We did this because we followed other similar media products’ codes and conventions with a long slow intro, where the video takes the same time as the song to kick in. We followed this as we had a good idea to do this and make it look professional, without it getting boring. We did a time lapse from day to night and then back to day, over an urban area in Peterborough. We filmed it on a night where there was some colour in the sky from a sunset to make it look interesting and a visual you can’t take your eyes off. When it came to putting the titles on there, we used simple, yet aesthetically pleasing font appearing on and off the occasional beat.

When it came to setting/locations we again decided to follow the codes and conventions of similar products. We filmed in Peterborough city centre, Peterborough embankment (under the bridge, next to the train track), Werrington Skate Park and random places around the city. All of these places look very urban and cool. The locations we used were either places where the target audience would “hang out” or places which looks good to them. This is just like several other drumstep videos.

The costumes and props was the easiest decision we had to make for the whole process of making the video. Because we ourselves are the main target audience of the song choice we had, we chose to wear the clothes we like to wear (baggy tops, skinny jeans, caps etc.) and used props which we enjoy using (road bikes, bmx, skateboards etc.). In some similar products the costume and props is like ours, very real and down to earth, however some are very surreal and out of this world. We obviously chose the first option. This is because we wanted to make by us for us. A video to explain who we are and what we enjoy no matter how random it is you could say, after all the only line in the song is “I love you so, but why I love you I’ll never know”

Because of what I have explained in the previous two paragraphs, the relationship between the lyrics and video is strong but not too obvious to prevent it to look cheesy. The target audience are the characters in the video doing what they want to do wearing what they want to wear, care free and having a good time. Also, as I previously stated, the shots are taken in the locations where the characters would hang out or like the look of. As everything in the video is what the target audience love, when considering the lyrics you can then realise the relationship between the lyrics and video. Often in similar products, the video is completely unrelated to the lyrics in any way. However we decided to go against this as it would have looked more random than our video already did. Our song is still not directly related to our video but there is a meaning in there.