In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? - Part 4

One element that have to be considered when planning were the location our performance and narrative shots. As we needed to film in a house, a pub, a country road and access to a small river for the narrative shots we felt it would be beneficial to travel to Haconby, Bourne as we could access all three places in this village.

The first location is the marital house which is one of our actor’s homes, we decided that this house would be a good location for our house shots as it is tidy and fairly rural styled inside which will fit stylistically with the pub location as well as the running scenes through country lanes. The kitchen, hall, and bedroom will all be used, and the only issue that we felt we might have with this location, was an issue with the lighting due to the dark walls, however with an extra desk lamp we were able to solve this problem by lighting up the shot with the desk lamp. Typically the houses that are used in music promos tend to be big houses with spacious rooms and expensive furnishings however this was difficult to scout, and as we were using a rustic pub and country roads a rural styled house would fit in better than the typical house that we see in promos.

The second location we used was a country road leading out of Haconby and as it was a back road and not the main road out of Haconby we were able to film the shots we needed from the middle of the road without having cars having to go by. We also decided to choose this location as we needed to locate a small river for the shots were the phone gets dropped in the river and this location is also able to provide a small river further down the country road.

The final location we chose for the shooting of the narrative shots were the village’s pub, The Hare and Hounds and this was the only location that we had to seek permission for, however the bar owner was happy for us to shot our poker scene that we have planned. This location was chosen mainly because it was located in a quiet village so we thought that it wouldn’t be that busy so we would be able to film, whist if we was to film in a pub in a town it would have been harder as we would have to control the background of what was in the shot as well as the particular shot in the foreground we wanted.



For the performance location so we followed the typical performance shot location we felt it was necessary to film the shots in an enclosed empty space, which had either a plain black or a plain white background so we could follow the characteristic conventions for performance shots as well as having a plain colour that doesn’t denote any emotion that could be linked with love such as a colour in the red colour palette. These performance shots are important to the music video as it gives the audience access to the band performing which they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else.

In music video the right ‘image’ had to be created for the costume for the actors was somewhat important. I felt as the costume was important as it had to think about, so the right image could be portrayed. By looking at the pictures available of The Colours I felt it was necessary to use the image they have already created for themselves as an unsigned band. They seems to have a smart casual look, so I searched through the shirts, ties, blazers, t-shirts, belts and coats that were available from local high street stores that fitted the image we wanted to portray. The clothes below show the type of costume that I felt was required for the music video, however when filming we wanted to make use of the actors own clothes if they are owned anything similar that also fitted the look we wanted to portray.

After researching around how narrative and performance are used in music promos of the Pop Rock genre I was able to compare how narrative and performance is used in this genre than other genres. Before editing our promo together we decided to have the ratio of narrative to performance as 60:40 as that was the typical ratio I saw in other videos that were the same genre, however while editing it ended up a bit more balanced although this still fitted the genre. For the performance shots it showed all three band members performing in a close proximity which enables the audience to get close to their band playing which wouldn’t be possible unless they got front row tickets at their gig. This makes the band organic, and it is necessary that in the performance shots although mining they give a convincing performance. Also with the use of a narrative has given the audience something to follow and the story the narrative has helps give the video it’s unique selling point and it also helps with the repeatability of the video which is vital for the promo.