Essay Question

How far were generic conventions a consideration in the planning and construction of either your As or A2 media production work?

For my A2 media project I chose to create a music video. To define a music video into a certain genre is difficult because surely a music video is a genre in its self. When researching my product I found that there wasn't so much genres within a music video, but that the type of music that was being used effected the conventions of the video. Pop and rap music had very sexual videos with half naked women and big cars. Rock and metal music was focused more on the bands actual performance. When planning my own music video, I looked at the genre of music that my song was and then focused on other things within that genre of music rather than film.

Some might say that genre is dead, however I think that this is a very general term. Nowadays in the film industry it is clear what sort of genre a film is as they are all churned out for a greedy audience rather than having time taken to create a real piece of text. Every now and then there is a gem that defies a a genre and makes a memorable film. I think it is more that conventions of a genre have changed rather than genre itself, by changing the conventions of a genre the genre itself evolves, not dies. Genre itself is a hard term to define as in our modern society it seems to be ever changing and different genres have been merged together to create a sort of hybrid genre, for example documentary style fiction films and lengthy music videos that could questionably be called short films such as Lady GaGa's video for Telephone.

Within my own music video when I gathered audience feedback it was said that "I though it would be better as a short film" due to its narrative nature. This could be seen as an example of the above mentioned merging however I think that I was just following the conventions found in the genre of music I used. It was sort of folky pop and I researched bands like noah and the whale and their video which was a music video for their entire album and followed a narrative through out.

Overall I would say that conventions and genre were considered however, when creating a music video the creator isn't really limited to a genre as much as in other media formats like video and literature therefor generic conventions are not a major point of consideration when creating a music video.

Steph Becker