1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. Music videos in themselves are part of their own huge media empire, they can be anything from an advertising tool to a source of entertainment, with the premise that they are eye catching, remember able and really sell what the song (and sometimes the band) is all about. Which is why when it came to coming up with an idea for the music  video,  I wanted to create one which really captured the essence and nature of the band I was using, especially because it’s a band that’s a personal favourite of mine, so there was even more or personal incentive to do it justice . In order to do that I looked through all of Pulled Apart By Horses music videos to gain some ideas and quite a lot of my influence, for my very own.  The common theme with the band, and this was reflected in my research of their past music videos, is they use multiple references  to different horror movies, which is featured in things such as their song lyrics, song titles and of course their music videos. It was this aspect that I decided to use as a main focus, which in a way allowed me to play with my strengths, given that I worked on a horror film for my AS project, it was something that I had much experience and understanding of. The main movie that became a big influence for the video was “The Evil Dead” franchise, in particular the first two movies, “The Evil Dead” and “The Evil Dead 2”, because in these movies there is certain feature I wanted to use in my video, which was this supernatural force that is never shown on camera, with whenever this force being used in the film it was shown from a point of view shot, so the audience could see through the “vision” of this force but would never see it. This is what I used for my video, as the horror aspect, but to have a character being chased by it. I think this is something that challenges the usual codes and conventions of a music video as it is something that is so stripped back and simple, as it allowed us to use a horror aspect but without all the usual make up and costumes associated with horror, creating something that is imposing but simply done, and all it required was a simple effect over the footage to highlight that it was some kind of force that was chasing the character. The setting of the video is something I really wanted to be key with the video, because once again drawing back on influence from “The Evil Dead” and one of the bands past videos for single “Back To The F**k Yeah”, both were set in a very cliché woodland, one that is mainly compiled of trees without leaves, surrounded by fog and all the dead foliage on the ground. So the original premise was to have it set throughout a similar style woodland, however this proved to be too difficult and time restraining to do in the end, with the main issue being getting musical instruments to and from the woods, with the drum kit in particular being the main cause of issue as I don’t own one or knew anyone close enough that they would let me use it. Something else I had to factor in here was the fact that shooting took place from around October time to January, so if that had remained the location, weather would have most likely caused issues in terms of continuity mainly because that would have been winter time we filmed and snow fall and rain would have been a regular occurrence. The setting we ended up with in the end, in a way changed the forms and conventions of the video, especially from a horror point of view, as the setting of this whole suburban area, part woodland and building setting, is something that, although used as frequent horror settings, was changed in terms of the fact the video is set in broad daylight, obviously something that would be an intentional choice as the quality of the cameras we had at our disposal would have been really poor. But the broad daylight aspect of it gives  it a different take on the usual setting that a horror would take place. One aspect of the forms and conventions that the video does follow, is the fast paced editing used. Given that the band are a mix of bits of punk, hardcore, indie, grunge, classic rock and  many other similar styles of guitar driven music, the video required a fast paced edit in order to keep up with the speed of the song. Meaning that it required mainly short shots that constantly kept on jumping to the next one, with each one lasting roughly about 3 – 5 seconds, so there was this constant flow maintained, as if it was a very slow edit with lengthier shots, then it wouldn’t have the same drive or charisma, and wouldn’t fit with the style and genre (or in this case genres) of the band.  The overall point of the video was to make something that was to draw people in and make them want to watch it again, creating a sense of mysticism about the video, brought by the content of the video i.e. the unknown force. Something which has seemed missing in most recent music videos, rather than just being straight forward, we created something which adds a sense of mystery doubled with the fact it has an ending where it just abruptly ends, with no showing of what happened to the character and what was actually chasing him.