Evaluation Question 1

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

Our group decided to do the song ‘Winter’ by Joshua Radin. This song is of the apparent folk music genre as albums written by the artist have performed well in this genre chart. However, the song is more commonly considered to be an acoustic song as it has nothing other than the voice of Joshua Radin and an acoustic guitar. This meant that we would be filming a music video for a song with a very slow tempo and therefore we would have to plan our video accordingly, for example a performance video would not be suitable as it would be too repetitive, although our rough cut came perilously close to this.
We believed the lyrics to be of a very down and depressing tone, as we took them to generally mean that the artist has lost someone, whether this be through death or through a breakup we are unsure. However, personally I assume it is a breakup because most songs of this genre tend to be about love, as they are most akin to the traditional ballad form.
Reading the lyrics, we decided to create the idea of a breakup and perhaps to leave the video itself on a bit of a cliff-hanger, similar to the style of video used by Don Broco in their videos ‘Dreamboy’ and ‘Top of the World’, as these carry on from each other.
We begin with Glenn and Lucy, the only two characters in the video, appearing to be very happy together. They joke about and take pictures in situations together that they seem to want to remember. All in all, it allows for a very upbeat tone to the beginning of the video. This is slightly different to the conventional videos of this genre as they seem to be more based around the constant mourning of a loss they have experienced. In this sense, the beginning of our video challenges the typical media conventions. However, we do adhere to the stereotype of the genre, as we have Lucy alone in a white dress with red ribbons round her wrists and she is holding a red rose. This imagery hints towards depression and perhaps even death, and this contradicts the original happy image we see of the couple.
We then see a twist in the storyline as the couple begin to argue in the car scene, which suggests that we are beginning to move towards finding out what happens to the girl to leave her alone clutching at a rose.
The audience then sees Glenn trying to win back Lucy, by taking her roses to her door. This is not filmed in a way that coheres to music videos as a whole, as we used a first person shot so that the audience can emphasise with Glenn, and see it through his eyes.
Finally, we see Glenn throw the roses down as he admits defeat and after he storms off, Lucy bends down and picks up a single rose before turning inside and leaning against the door. This then cross fades into Lucy in the woods holding onto the rose, linking in with the storyline, but not solving the viewer’s questions about what happens.

We used a variety of camera angles in the filming of our music video, and we tried to not use too much camera movement as the tempo of the song and the genre of the music do not generally allow for too much movement, as that is generally more suited to a faster paced song.
This is the predominant shot used in our music video to show Glenn lip-syncing to the song. This is a common shot used in all types of music videos as it is a medium close-up, and allows for the artist or star of the video (who is normally the marketing point for the product) to be exposed to the audience more.
This shot was directly linked to the lyrics in the song, as at this point in the video we hear “I could've lost myself in rough blue waters in your eyes”. This is a very common technique in music videos as well, as it allows the video to be linked back to the song. Furthermore, by linking the video back to the song, it can be made into a potentially memorable line, which means that when the song is being listened to the audience would remember that shot.
The shot in which the camera rotates clockwise around Lucy, whilst she turns counter-clockwise looking confused and dazed, was designed to add to the element of curiosity we hoped the audience would be feeling as they would wish to know what she seems so frightened of, and why is she so alone in the woods? In relevance to the whole of the video, it helps add to the cliff-hanger ending as it could have been the moment when something potentially horrible happened to Lucy. It adheres to the conventions of music videos to an extent, as it displays similarities with the previously mentioned Don Broco music videos, although they present their work in a more satirical manner.
This shot links the entirety of the video together at the end. It allows the audience to understand how Lucy got the rose, and why she would be depressed, but it fails to explain how she reached the woods, what happened to Glenn and what happens to her. This is why I believe the final shot to be so effective because it leaves the audience asking many questions, which if I were to do another music video by Joshua Radin I would continue this storyline on.

We filmed our music video in many locations. Primarily we used the woods and surrounding fields in West Kingsdown. The woods were very effective as the dull natural lighting provided by the British weather adds to the eerie nature of the music video, and it also helps keep the tone of the music video depressive.
Furthermore, a lot of the filming was conducted at my house, as it was convenient. It allowed us to effectively portray the couple as being very happy and content together in the early memory shots, and the lighting in the house was the normal house lighting so it added to the genuine nature of the music video. The only lighting we did fake was in fact for the television shot, when we turned the room lights off and used a bedside lamp to replicate the light of a television.
The only other places we filmed were opposite my house, in which a streetlight provided the lighting at night-time; a park for the swing shot and a cul-de-sac which allowed for us to film the shot in the car without disturbance.

The editing proved to be the most important part in trying to adhere to the conventions of our genre. We had to use slow editing techniques because a fast paced video would not fit very well with the tempo of our music. This is why we predominantly used cross-dissolves as these are much slower than straight cuts and they allow for slower transitions between shots.
Furthermore, we used slow motion at a couple of points in the video, slowing it by up to 50%, as this helps add to the tempo of the music and it suits the music video quite well, adding a dramatic effect at times, such as when the beer bottle is slammed down.
Finally, we used edge blur and motion blur for the memories as this allows for the audience to clearly see what is a memory, and the motion blur also conveys the idea that perhaps Glenn is starting to forget these memories.

To conclude, I believe that our music video adheres to the conventions of the genre and of music videos in general, but in some places it challenges them, but I believe this just adds to the whole memorable nature of the video.


The ancillary task was difficult to plan as we struggled to find many real life media representations of magazine adverts for CD digipaks. However, in Metal Hammer, a magazine from a different genre, we found several. We tried to keep to the styles and conventions we found in these, and we attempted to include all that was included in the real life magazine advert.





For the CD digipak, we researched many album covers that allowed us to create an idea of a product that fits in to a real world convention. We discovered that there are normally two types of album cover, ones with some sort of picture of the artist on them, and ones with no relation, but normally are memorable. We decided to go for a picture of the artist, as we could then easily link this into the music video, and this allowed for us to complete the creation of our multi-platform brand.

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