Evaluation Q1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
    
   My production is a music video for the song ‘To Build a Home’ by The Cinematic Orchestra. It was inspired by other media products such as Ben Howard’s ‘Keep Your Head Up’ and Birdy’s ‘Skinny Love’ due to the similar themes and setting. The idea of using an old abandoned house came from the Skinny Love video. The singer can be seen walking around the big, empty house which portrays the singer’s loneliness and insignificance which complies with that video.
   
   The countryside theme of my video references the song and its lyrics “Out in the garden where we planted the seeds, there is a tree as old as me” and “Branches were sewn by the colour of green”. This is conveyed by the various landscape and nature-filled shots throughout the video. The video’s colour scheme presents shades of green and brown with multiple shots of the sun being shown too. There is clear synergy between my video and my digipack as these colours are used on that too to reinforce the image of my product. The inspiration for my album cover came from the Satellite Stories ‘Pine Trails’ CD cover. The circular shaped image placed on top of a similar background creates an effective visual and the colours illustrate my ‘English countryside’ theme which is evident in my digipack and video.
    
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The video has a slow pace which reflects the tempo of the song as it is a piano ballad. The idea for having various landscape shots taken round the UK came from BICEP’s ‘Glue’ music video, this creates a sombre effect and portrays the peaceful mood of the song and I filmed in areas around Leicestershire to attain similar looking shots to this. I chose not to include the artist in all the shots because I wanted to express the importance of the house and the rural surroundings which is what my artist turns to when leaving home in the narrative of the video. Despite this, the artist does appear in some shots where he is singing to the song, I did this because it shows that the character in the video is an actual artist and also because it is a common trope in music videos of all genres.