1. Question 1 -In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products? –
We went with DIY conventions, which are a part of punk rock music. We didn’t
go with star image as we felt it was too much of a convention of pop music and
not punk rock.
We had our characters wear casual clothes which could be seen as a convention
of hardcore punk rather than punk rock, it also challenges the conventions of
normal music videos as they tend to have more glamorous clothes, which again
fits with the anti star image theme we went for.
We again challenged conventions of normal music videos, this time with our
narrative. Where as most music videos follow a narrative of partying, drugs and
fast cars, we went for a narrative that followed a frustrated person who isn’t
enjoying his life, rather than a person or group of people who are shown to be
enjoying their lives and having fun. Although, anger is a convention in punk rock
music so even though it challenges the conventions of pop music videos, it uses
and develops ideas from punk rock. We developed the narrative, as punk rock
music is normally angry towards an authority or people in power rather than
angry and frustrated inwardly and towards yourself. Our narrative clearly shows
our main character being angry at himself and his situation which shows anger
and frustration but not in the traditional sense of punk rock, which shows how
we have developed conventions but how people who are fans of traditional punk
rock will still recognize the ideas of punk rock within our video.
Again in our music video we challenged conventions of normal music videos.
Where as a lot of music videos use sex appeal of women in their videos to try and
attract men to watch it, we didn’t, as we felt it to be irrelevant to the narrative of
our song choice. This is called ‘the male gaze theory’ which is a theory that was
developed by Laura Mulvey about how the camera puts the audience in the
perspective of a male looking at a woman.
Another convention that we used, challenged and developed was the setting of
our music video. We used the convention of live music performance within our
music video, which showed the entire band playing and signing. This a
convention of punk rock and rock music videos. The way we challenged this is
that we didn’t make it the most important and shown part of the video, which is
a convention of punk rock and rock music videos. We made our narrative the
most important part of the video, showing the story of our main character and
his frustrations, this also challenges conventions because punk rock videos don’t
usually don’t have characters and just have the band playing. This has developed
the conventions of punk rock as even though it is slightly different to what is
considered normal in punk rock music videos it is still clearly a punk rock video
and the new conventions that we have used can still be recognized to be a part of
a punk rock music video. This is shown in the music video ‘God save the Queen’
by ‘The sex pistols’. This video is mainly the band playing live and only cuts out a
few times to show other images. (Show video on green screen) We have
challenged this idea and added more of a narrative within our video but is still
recognizable as punk rock.

2. We also used conventions of punk rock within our camera use. As punk rock has
a DIY ethic, some of the camera work isn’t very professional. We had a lot of the
camera work be handheld as we felt it perfectly reflected the DIY look we were
going for but also worked for the narrative as it showed shots from the
characters point of view.
We also used convention within our use of editing. The pace of the shots are fast
paced which fits with common conventions of punk rock and rock music videos,
am example of this would be in the green day video know your enemy, which has
very facst paced shots which fits with the beat of the music.