Evaluation Question 1

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

I chose the song ‘You’re a Zombie Now’ by the American artist ‘Sam Hart’. As the song is about zombies, I found it only fitting to include zombies in the video itself. 
I am quite fond of zombie movies, such as 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'Zombieland', and so because of this background knowledge the basic conventions of zombie films is obvious, people encounter zombies, there’s an attack scene, someone usually get’s bitten and they might die. I knew the films, but not the music videos, so I researched into this and found several that all fitted the criteria.

One was by a band called ‘Keep You Honest’ the song ‘Lose Control’. The song itself is not about zombies, but the video goes very well with it. It’s shot in a cold season where there are no leaves on the trees and the characters are wrapped up warm, the video has a ‘cold’ feeling about it also, a grey tinge to it. I think this adds suspense to it and makes it more daunting.

In my own video, this was majorly enhanced as the whole video was made in black and white. Another convention was in key parts, the scene was put into slow motion, in some of the attack scenes in my video I added a slow motion effect to draw attention to what was happening and to increase anxiety.

 

My music video is purely narrative, much like ‘Keep You Honest’ was, however all the other music videos of this genre are a mixture of narrative and performance of the band so this breaks that convention; as well as the fact that a huge majority of ‘zombie’ songs are usually heavy metal, or pop punk, whereas ours is acoustic. Acoustic music is normally shown as being calm and tranquil, with relaxing videos, most likely with the singer themselves performing and playing guitar.

My music video breaks all those conventions. The artist is not shown, the song itself gets quite angry in places and this is depicted in the video and the storyline isn’t exactly relaxing. Not what you would expect from an acoustic song. I used the 'Lose Control' video for inspiration for mise en scene; make up, props, costumes and some shots as well as I think it's a very well done video for an amateur band. We chose a desolate location, much like the one they used, and also in a similar season. 

‘The Nearly Deads’ are a pop punk band whose song ‘Never Look Back’ is not about zombies either, but the video features a narrative, as well as the band playing and members themselves as victims running away from the undead. The video varies from the above as it is quite comical in places, so it has a comic factor which neither ‘Lose Yourself’ nor ‘You’re A Zombie Now’ have; though the latter is more light-hearted about it in the lyrics.

For the digipak I decided I would in fact make a sleeve instead. I made this decision because they are becoming increasingly more popular with artists such as Gorillaz and Laura Marling using them for their albums. They use a lot less packaging which is good for the environment and are a simple way to hold a CD. For a unsigned artist I think sleeves are a particularly good idea as they are so cheap and easy to manufacture; when a artist is starting out, the last thing they want to be doing is spending a lot of money on the packaging for their album/EP/single, and a cardboard sleeve is the best way to go in my opinion.

I made the sleeve cover myself and designed it like a map in a homemade kind of style. The reason I did this was because it fits in with the conventions of zombies stories, the character s are always trying to find a safe place, where it’s zombie free and have protection, so to elaborate on the video, this shows where the characters were planning on heading. 
 I got the homemade idea from a Jeff Buckley EP cover (which is also a CD sleeve), it is simply a napkin with a coffee ring on it and someone had written the title and the ink had been smudged off. Then a digital image of the artist had been planted over the top. I thought it was great idea and something so basic. The back cover is just as simple with the details, producer, record label and the track listing, and again another picture of the artist.

When designing the sleeve, I looked at others to see what details they featured, such as barcodes, record company/label name and a website where you can find out more about the artist. 

I used the same idea for the magazine poster so that the audience would become familiar with the concept and relate it to the artist – a bit like a logo or motif.

On both the products the same typefaces where used for the song title and the artist’s name, I thought it was important to keep consistency, and a reoccurring theme, throughout the advertising and digipak. Bands such as ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ have a famous logo which fans all over the world will look at and understand, sometimes the logo’s will change when a new album come out or the band ‘re-makes’ themselves, but it’s something all the fans will notice. Another band are an acoustic/indie group called Bombay Bicycle Club who have kept a very similar logo throughout their career (up until there last album, which has a very different sound to the rest). 


I used some of Andrew Goodwins theories to help make my music video. Goodwin has five main statements when it comes to music videos: Thought beats, narrative and performance, the star image, relations of visual to song and technical aspects to music video.

When making the video I linked the lyrics in with the storyline of the song so that it followed a narrative, much like a film. When the artist says 'bullet between the eyes' it shows the character being shot. As the singers voice in the song is a little nervous and changes throughout, this fits in with the situation; he's scared about the girl becoming a zombie, and as the song progresses and grows stronger, so does the video. Star image does not play a vital part in this music video as it does not feature the artist himself, but instead others acting out the scenes of the music video. The video strongly illustrates the songs narrative, and I amplified the effects used and added them in several places throughout the video so the audience would recognize it and also set it in black and white. 

At the very start of the video the music and the cuts work in time together to create a pattern to go with the beat, I think it draws the audience in and maybe has a sort of hypnotic effect on them. Goodwin also looks at voyeurism, how women are represented and also intertextual references.

Voyeurism is the notion of looking, and there are a couple of subtle references of this in the video, but nothing we actually set out to do. There is only one female in the video which may say something, that men are natural survivors. But the two zombies are in fact male so did not survive. An iconic moment is when the girl get's turned into a zombie, and the boy shoots her. Why did the boy not get killed instead? We don't know. There are no real intertextual references in the video, only inspiration from other zombie films that I have seen.