Evaluation Q1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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

During my product research I realised that more mainstream singer-songwriters like James Morrison tend to 'perform' a lot more in their videos when comparing them to more independent singer-songwriters like Laura Marling.

Although more independent artists do tend to use performance in their videos, they tend to portray this performance in a very different way to those like James Morrison for example. More mainstream artists tend to show themselves performing on stage, with a crowd for example, whereas artists like Laura Marling tend to show themselves performing in the comfort of their own home for example - they seem more humble whereas the mainstream artists seem more eager to flaunt their already large fan base.

 As the artist I chose to use, Phoebe Hibbert, isn't already famous, I chose to shoot the video in the style of vidoes made by more independent artists. Laura Marling was a big influence of mine, although her production costs weren't as large as others may be, she made sure she had individual and wacky ideas behind the video to make up for the limited production budget.

As I don't have a large budget, I decided to really think about what the lyrics were putting across, and as you know, I came up with the idea of sand reflecting time (sand timers). I knew I wanted to do something to do with sand, but after my first idea failed (model singing the song with sand constantly falling out of her mouth as if the more she talks/sings, the more time she wastes), I found it hard to think of another idea that I felt would be more successful.

Eventually I came up with my final idea - filling a bath up with sand until my actress' body was completely submerged in sand. I think this is a similar kind of idea to something that Laura Marling would have created - it's quite shocking and would stand out compared to videos of more mainstream singer-songwriters, despite the low budget. In some ways I think artists with low budgets create artistic and eye-catching videos to try and get themselves noticed - more mainstream artists don't feel the need to make themselves noticed as they already have a large fan base.

The one thing I wanted to challenge about the stereotypical 'singer-songwriter' music video was the performance aspect of it, so although my actress was singing/miming the song throughout the video, it looked more like her going over the trail of thoughts on her own rather than trying to influence others with those thoughts, which differs a lot from many other acoustic artists.