Evaluation Q1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms or conventions of real media products?

Music videos that are of the jazz/soul type of genre, particularly amongst female artists would consist of them being revolved around themselves, with no other character or person in the video, with the camera just focusing on them. Stereotypically, they may perform with a sense of emotions that portray deep thought and a sense of bringing them out through close up shots and handheld cameras to represent them as close to realism as possible. Usually with these music videos, they would demonstrate their dominance, even though they appear to perform  in surroundings where they are not noticed or in peculiar places and this usually carries on throughout the whole video. An example of this would be the original video taken from Duffy's single that is called Mercy. Here she represents what it is to be a female soul singer, that is portraying the dominance of the video, placing her in the centre and therefore it is only focused on her.

Our music video contains the same  ideas that stereotypical soul/jazz music videos have and that is that was mentioned earlier, with a female protagonist, and the camera following her every move very much like a narrative based video would but instead there is no narrative taking place but it is very much a normal day in her life and we are just followed and intrigued by why she is singing about her surroundings in the first place. The video's storyline follows her in the location of London, strolling through the streets, gazing upon the people that surround her and she reflects this through the lyrics that she sings, so both products that is the song and the video very much link. There are various other artists within the same genre that present this similar view where the artist just walks through her location without a narrative but more of a sense of their everyday life instead such as this one taken from Adele's video "someone like you".

Although there is this convention that these types of music video should be focused solely on the main artist and nothing else, we have subverted that through introducing some characters from the artists surroundings and we had done this through making them anonymous, unknown but yet influential in how they represent the streets of London. We have characters from different social classes, gender and age because we wanted the most closest representation to London as possible. The cards that the characters are holding up would reflect the lyrics that the artist is singing and these are the most important words because it revolves around the theme of street life according to the artists life.

Looking into the mise en scene of the video, we have the performer dressed within the conventional aspects of soul/jazz music videos and that would be dressing her in dark clothing, as that connotes sophistication and giving her an overall clean look, as it is usually associated with the target audience that we are aiming for and that is young adults to middle age and her image would impress them most likely. Her appearance would be similar to the conventions of real media products of the same genre such as Amy Winehouse's image in "Just Friends".

Some of the locations that were used in the video changes from the busy, overcrowded streets of London to a more surreal surrounding of a park that represents the singer state of mind.This is shown through the lyrics as she begins to pick up the pieces and realises as to why she questions everything and the park represents serenity and peacefulness. This subverts videos of artists within the same genres as they do not have a resolution towards the end of the video but instead leave it as a blank page for the audience to sympathise with their emotions instead. There is also a transition in the colour of the picture as yet again it represents that she has resolved her problems and doubts and her future is bright. The balloons are symbolic of that as they range with different colours and the performer lets them go at the end, it is a metaphor of letting her troubles go.

The special effects that were used in the video was most predominantly the usage of the black and white effect. We had used this effect within the scenes of the street and park locations because it is supposed to highlight the past, meaning that these scenes are taken from her days before the performance scenes, which is supposed to be set in the present tense and it is revealed through making the picture in colour as to not confuse the audience of when the timings of the different scenes really are. In addition there is also a montage of different establishing shots been taken at the beginning to highlight where the video is taking place and that is in central London with streets such as Oxford street.

 These performance scenes highlights the present.

Whilst this one represents days from her life in the past. It is very much similar to Duffy's video in Rockferry where she explores her surroundings as well and this is shown through the black and white effect. This effect also represents simplicity which connotes, that music videos in the soul/jazz genre do not need effects in order to get the message of their song through but rather what is required is simple camera work and editing.

 This is one of the establishing shots taken from our music video at the beginning. 

It is very much similar to Duffy's Rockferry video where this establishing shot would express the location of the music video.