We are challenging this theory by being our video with the protagonist about to commit suicide. The rest of the video shows the protagonist being depressed.
My Advanced media portfolio had therefore used as well as developed the conventions of Real Media texts. I achieved this by researching mediums which contained forms of conventions which are similar to the conventions of my A2 product.
This research took place in the pre production stage of our music video's production.
My team developed a story for our video and then compared it to the elements of similar real mediums in order to find inspiration for our product. We then listed the conventions that we planned to include in our A2 product once we felt we carried out enough research.
My A2 Music video is about a young man who has bipolar and attempts to commit suicide as he is very depressed with his life. The music video then flashes back to this character's life prior to this point in the video's narrative. The song that my group is using is the hip hop song 'Beautiful' by Eminem.
My research consisted of viewing music videos on Youtube which were also performed by our song's artist. I also developed conventions from the 2010 song 'Not Afraid' which is from Eminem's seventh album Recovery.
The music video for 'Not Afraid' begins with Eminem standing on the roof of a tall building. While Eminem is on the roof, he proclaims that he had suffered in the past but has now recovered from his past tragedies and is now a better person.
I challenged this convention by beginning my music video with the protagonist on the edge of a high bridge with the intention of jumping off of it.
This character has allowed his depressing past to make him give up on life. This contrasts from Eminem in 'Not Afraid' since Eminem is being optimistic despite his tragic past life.
In addition, I expanded my research by gaining inspiration from other media texts such as films. An example of one of the films I researched was the 2011 thriller Limitless directed Neil Burger. I viewed this film last year when I was researching thrillers for my Foundation portfolio.
The introduction of this film begins with the protagonist as he is about to jump of the roof of a building. The video’s narrative will then show a series of flashbacks of events which occurred before the protagonist is about to commit suicide.
The introduction of this film inspired me and my team members on how to form our Music video's Narrative.
We used this convention in our music video by beginning it with our protagonist in a similar predicament. The rest the music video will then show events which lead to our protagonist wanting to commit suicide.
I also looked at music videos which belonged to other genres but contained similar conventions to our music video.
One of the videos that I researched was a pop song called Bulletproof by the British pop duo La Roux.’ Bulletproof' is a concept based pop music video which was released in 2009 and primarily focuses on its special effects and art direction.
This video shows La Roux's lead singer Elly Jackson as she walks through various futuristic settings as she performs the song.
I noticed that the Jump cut editing technique was used frequently in a segment of this video which depicts Jackson rising up from a chair. The camera cuts to different shots of Jackson as she is in the process of getting up from her seat. This form of editing shows Jackson from the same angle while she is at different stages. The jump cut editing technique helps to convey the impression that the artist is physically moving without actually showing any of her movements. This technique worked well in this video since the fast paced editing created an illusion that Jackson was appearing and disappearing of the screen. These visual images had matched with the fast pace tempo of the song.
We decided to develop the jump cut editing technique by incorporating jump cuts in our products post production stage. The majority of our video shows the protagonist as he is walking in various different locations.
We mainly used this technique when the protagonist is walking on narrow pathways to create the illusion that the protagonist has been walking very long distances in a short space of time.
The main focus of my music video is a young man who has bipolar and is shown to be suffering from depression as a result of his mental illness.
I researched films which featured main characters with mental illnesses. This research drew my attention to the 2012 film Silver Linings Play-book directed by David O Russell (2012).
Silver Linings Play-book has two protagonists which both suffer from bipolar. There are various points in this film in which these two characters have angry outbursts when they are emotionally distressed.
There is a scene early in this film in which the male protagonist 'Pat'(played by Bradley Cooper) is reading a book by Ernest Hemmingway.When Pat finishes the book he is suddenly enraged as the book contains romtantic themes which causes Pat to be reminded of his previous unsuccessful marriage which resulted in his unfaithful wife divorcing him.
This irritation then causes Pat to take his anger out on the book by angirly throwing it at his window. He then proceeds to enter his parents room and complain about his distaste for the book's romantic elements.
I found this scene to be a clear representation of this characters bipolar illness as he is shown to be calm while he is reading the book and is then suddenly enraged once the book reminds him of his previous unsuccessful love life.
I was able to draw inspiration from this character since I found him to be very similar to my music video's protagonist as he is is also a young man who is visually depressed with his life due to his bipolar illness.
We developed this convention in our music video by filming our protagonist expressing his anger by throwing home objects in his house.
There are two parts of our music video which feature our protagonist having angry outbursts due to his bipolar disorder. Both of these segments take place in the protagonist's home.The first is when he violently hurls his medication on the floor in his bathroom. The second incident takes place when the protagonist is working at a computer and suddenly throws paper off of his desk.
Another film which I used for inspiration was the 2002 film Lord of the rings: The Two Towers directed by Peter Jackson. I both and developed and challenged the conventions of this film.
This film features a character called Gollum who a fictional creature has a split personality similar schizophrenia. In the film's sequel: The Return of the King, it is explained that Gollum was previously a hobbit named Sméagol who had become corrupted by a magical ring. His corruption had deformed his appearance and caused him to become mentally unstable. This character then developed a new personality called 'Gollum'. In addition Gollum gained a habit of shifting between his two personalities by talking to himself as both Sméagol and Gollum.
This film features a scene in which Gollum has a conversation with himself (or his original personality: Sméagol). The film’s cinematographer uses the 180 degree rule in this scene and jump cuts to highlight Gollum's mental illness.
During this conversation, the camera pans around Gollum to show him from two different angles.
When this character is shown from the right angle he speaks as Gollum and when he is shown from the left angle he talks as Sméagol. The use of camerawork reflects how this character is shifting between his two personalities. The camera operator then stops using the 180 degree rule and presents Gollum by using jump cuts.
This shows that this character is no longer shifting between his two personalities as they are now fully separate from each other. This use of cinematography enables the audience to perceive Gollum and Sméagol as two separate characters despite them belonging to the same entity.
We found that this editing technique was used very effectively for highlighting Gollum's split personality in this film. We developed this film convention by incorporating the jump cut editing technique into our video.
These editing techniques were applied to our video to emphasize the mental illness of our protagonist in a similar manner of how Gollum’s mental illness was highlight through camerawork.
We developed this convention in our music video during the post production stages.
On our sixth day of filming we filmed our protagonist sitting on a bench in a park. In this segment character imagines that he is having a conversation with himself.
We filmed the protagonist speaking from both the left and the right side of the bench.
Afterward we had then edited these shots together in a sequence which appears that Leyon’s character has transitioned from the left end to the right end of the bench.
When these clips were played together they created an illusion that the protagonist was talking to himself since it appeared that he had exchanged dialogue with himself from two separate angles.
Furthermore we also painted the protagonist’s face with clown makeup. This is evident when he is shown for the second time on the right side of the bench.
The use make up helps to audience to perceive this as the negative side of the protagonist as well as the fact this conversation is taking place in the protagonist's
In the Sméagol/Gollum conversation, the 180 rule is used as the camera pans from Gollum's left and right sides to reflect his two conflicting personalities.
In addition to developing real media texts we also developed the motifs of our video's artist: Eminem. When I researched Eminem’s past music videos I noticed that he often wears causal clothes with either black, white or grey colours.
In his videos for Lose Yourself (2002) and Till I Collapse (2002) Eminem is shown to be wearing a Grey hoodie and tracksuit bottoms.
Eminem's informal attire can be seen as a way of symbolising this artist's upbringing in an urban environment. Eminem was born and raised in Detroit which is an american city that is known for having urban and gang culture.
We challenged this motif of Eminem by making our protagonist wear smart clothes in a similar colour scheme.
There is a segment in our music video which features the protagonist getting dressed by putting on a professional grey suit. This shot is played along with the chorus 'Don't let them say you ain't beautiful'. This segment signifies that there is a part of this character which is optimistic that his life will eventually get better.
The attire of the protagonist consists of a grey suit with a red tie. The colour grey connotes boredom and also that the protagonist is depressed with his life.
This formal dress code is almost consistant throughout the majority of the music video. The only times when the protagonist is not wearing formal clothes is when he is wearing his house clothes and when the protagonist is in the gym.
The segment of the video which takes place in a gym features our protagonist wearing a grey hoodie and tracksuit.
We also used as well as challenged the conventions from Eminem's past videos by allowing our protagonist to wear informal clothes such as grey hoodie and tracksuit. Eminem has had a tendancy for wearing informal clothes such as a hoodie and tracksuit in his past music videos.
I developed a convention from the 2004 horror film 'Saw' directed by James Wan. This film is about a small group of people who are forced to take part in serve physical torture by a serial killer. I noticed that the fast editing technique was used in the film's climax which highlighted all of the main events which occurred earlier in the film.
I saw this editing technique as an effective method of providing a great amount of information in a time efficient manner.
I developed this editing technique by editing a segment of our video in a similar manner as this technique. In our project's Post-production stage, we included a selection of brief shots which were recycled from the previous scenes in our video. We shortened every shot to about seven seconds and then played them in synch with each other. All of these clips were included to highlight all of the negativity that the protagonist has experienced in his life.
Narrative theory-
This theory is based on narratives which involves different states of Equilibrium. The story begins in state of Equilibrium which is a state of peace. Later in the story this sanctuary is disrupted by a dilemma and the state of Equilibrium transitions to Disequilibrium.
This Dilemma is then acknowledged and then the remainder of the story will be focused on resolving this problem.
In the dilemma which caused the Disequilibrium is then resolved and the narrative concludes in a state of New Disequilibrium.
Our music video can be identified as belonging to Tzvetan Todorov's narrative theory. We developed this theory in our video by having the introduction begin with the protagonist attempting to commit suicide. This shows how our video begins in a state of Disequilibrium rather than Equilibrium. The rest of the video will show the protagonist living his daily life.
The video will then transition into the state of develop of Disequilibrium when then protagonist decides to commit suicide. This problem is then resolved when the protagonist is saved by his friend.
Digi pack-
We also further developed our methods of research by gaining inspiration from real media texts. The front cover of our music video features a close up of the protagonist's face. The face is divided into two halves. The right side being painted to appear like a clown whereas the left side is made of a collage of pre prescripton pills.
The effectiveness of this digi pack design is that it contains elments relates to the orginal Relapse album cover as well the music video that we had created.
The protagonist's face is divided into two halves which connotes that he has two sides to himself. This reflects this character's bipolar mental illness.
We made intertextuality between our album cover and the relapse album cover by depicting one side of the protagonists face in a collage of mediactio pills.
The Relapse album cover depicts a close up of Eminem's face which is made from a collage of pre prescription pills. This reflects Eminem's past and previous drug addition since the inspiration for the Relapse album came from Eminems own 'relapsation' to drug abuse.
We also used the Playing in the Shadows album cover as inspiration. This is a 2011 album which depicts the artist 'Example' as his face divided into two halves: A dark side and a light side.
My team saw this album cover as a useful media text to inspire our own digipack. The theme of the artist's face being divided into two halves had conveyed the impression that there was two sides to the artist: A positive side and a negative side.
My team and I decided to develop this design in order to depict the protagonist of our music video having two different personalities due to his bipolar disorder.
In regrads to the side of his face which is depicted as a clown, we gained inspiration from a poster of the 2008 film the Dark Knight. The orginal poster from the Dark knight presents an image of the Joker who is the film's primary antagonist. The character of the Joker is a criminal who wears smeared clown make up throughout the majority of the film and is also shown to have a psychotic sense of humour.
We chose to illustrate half of our protagonists face in clown make up because there is a segment in our music video in which the protagonist identifies himself as 'hiding behind the tears of a clown'
