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

Our music video, "Bacalao" by The New Town Centres, is of the "Rockabilly" genre and contains many of the generic conventions of that genre such as an major key, upbeat tone and comical lyrics. Because of the more alternative genre of the song we chose, it enabled us to be more creative and experimental when editing together the video as the genre is aimed at a niche audience rather than mainstream.
The paradigm of Mise-en-scene in our video links most closely with the intended audience. The actors within the video itself act as indexical signifiers as opposed to iconic, due to the connotations of synthetic personalization between the “band” on screen and the intended audience. The five boys in shot are all young, white, middle class teens, which already connotes an assumed understanding; however the furthered indexical link comes from their attire.

The inconsistency of their clothing which is both smart and casual and the added combination of black trench coats and shades connotes a sense of individuality and rebellion; commonly associated with the indie-rock music genre which is the genre of my music we are showcasing in our video. I have not stated the actors as being iconic signifiers because I feel that the connoted meaning rather than a denoted one means that the link could depend entirely upon the audience of the video, I feel that the intended audience would make a connection with the choice of actors on screen whereas their mothers would not make the same subconscious connections if they watched the same sequence, as they are not aimed at their age demographic.

Once again within the paradigm of Mise-en-scene, iconic signifiers are created through the use of props such as electric guitars and old drum kits to help create the overarching syntagm of the traditional rock genre as the instruments are iconic symbols for the genre.
The song we chose is stereotypically aimed at an older audience as alternative rock was more common in the late 80’s and early 90’s than it is today therefore we signified the traditional roots of the rock genre through our use of editing; within this paradigm we chose to desaturate our shots to black and grey which stereotypically connotes the past. We also did some research based on rock videos of a similar genre and the black and grey colouring of the shots seemed to be a consistent convention in many videos and we wanted to follow the conventions so that our video was congruent with the iconography of rock music.

However within our sequence we chose to break the mould of convention slightly by using our cinematography and editing skills to appeal to our more contemporary audience. We filmed some of our narrative shots along a wide, deserted road which connoted freedom and independence which we hoped our audience would indentify with as freedom is a main component in the life of the average teen. We also used posterizing techniques when editing to both keep the “retro” image of the music alive whilst also appealing to a more artistic and creative youth demographic as alternative rock is seen as being marketed at a niche audience in today’s music industry.