Exam practice 2

How far have you been influenced by existing media products?

Research into existing media products has been a massive part of my A2 production piece. Using the internet to look at videos for a similar genre of music to ours has given me a lot of inspiration and original ideas. The main text that influenced our final decisions on our video was ‘The Cribs’ video for ‘Another number’.
It uses stop-motion animation with props, including toys, which we have chosen to do as well – no actors are involved in either. Both videos, I feel, complement the music well and portray the indie style genre successfully.
‘The Cribs’ video is challenging usual conventions of the genre as most indie music videos are gritty and always feature the band. So creating a light hearted video with no actors portrays the bands independence and makes them seem fun, friendly and not image conscious. The elements of disjuncture that come from this make the video interesting and original. I feel we have achieved this with our video as we have taken the homemade, child-like look of ‘The Cribs’ video and portrayed it in our own way. However you could say that our video is conventional to the indie genre as expectations are that they will be a bit different and alternative- so we are conveying the indie genre successfully.
In parts ‘The Cribs’ video portrays the lyrics very literally. In contrast ours concentrates on the idea of disjuncture and the actions have no particular meaning or don’t tell a story. We thought this would make it more original but also gave us more options of what we could do and what props we could use.
In both videos, I feel the target audience have been addressed successfully. The ‘indie’ audience – young, independent, hedonistic, radicals - expect videos that are a bit different, qwerky and original and the simple, but effective stop-motion and use of fun props and bright colours, in both, attract this audience as it appears unique and alternative.
The song choice for our video is a bit more upbeat and ‘heavy’ than ‘The Cribs’, however I don’t think this effects the impact of the video and the way it complements the music. The only thing that may change due to this is the target audience. People that are into the slightly more rocky style of music may also be drawn to our video – expanding our target audience.