Evaluation question Q.1

Q1. How does your product use or challenge the conventions and how does it represent social groups and issues?

The Advanced level portfolio task for us was to create a music video either following or breaking the general conventions of the existing real media texts, allowing us to explore and eventually produce what would interest the mass audience.

I believe, our product uses most of the conventions of a typical music video but also, in a few parts of the performance the rules are also challenged to an extent that it gives us an edge. Our music video is on the song “Saayian” which means “lover”, the overall feel of the song is about a sad love story which ends with a death. ; the video is just  narrative based. With a female artist based song but the video has no performance of the artist.

For the performance of the music video our major  references included Boyce , Rihanna and  kitty perry.

high budget, good lighting, different locations like haveli, shahi qila (the Lahore for) and a hospital, and  artistic sets at the locations. This was our situation as well. Hence, we followed the example of our reference videos and decided to go with something that would be somewhat similar to their mise- en- scene especially since it would be easier for us to pull of as well. The final cut of our music video shows how our location has warm, soft lighting with maximum consumption of natural lights, it definitely gave an amateur locations- like feel to it. It also complimented with the narrative of the video and the lyrics of the song giving it a deeper understanding and emotion to it which happens to be the convention of  music videos.

The narrative of our music video seemed to be very simple but had to be understood on a deeper level relating to the social reality. The conventions for the narrative were followed and referenced from a popular Pakistani music video, “saayian by qurat ul baloch”. Generally we see that most narrative based music videos essentially cover a very typical narrative but for our video we chose something to which the audience would have to connect with the entire society and link their interpretations to it. There are various concept based videos but those are difficult to understand by the audiences. We turned the concept of hopelessness into a narrative which gave us a chance to play around with the conventions of the music video.

Our music video represents an entire society in terms of the narrative. According to our music video survey we had more of the teenagers targeted since we also have a wide access to the elderly- however, we feel that it can be enjoyed and understood by everyone especially lovers. Since in the narrative there are two protagonist like a young girl and a young boy, we would have a greater audience attracted to it to find out what the music video is about. If we have a closer look at our society, in Pakistan we all are going through a stressful phase in the society with so much disruption and hence, the video allows audiences to relate to the reality through the music video; especially by the lovers who are unable to understand what is love and to to survive without love.

One very important relation of our music video was with the different dressings of the young girl, wearing traditional eastern wear cloths with beautiful  hijab/scrafs. This shows that the girl is from a middle class family as shes living alone.

A major  issue represented in our music video is “hopelessness” and “ girl suffering through cancer” , as there is nothing positive happening in the society as there is no real love around.. The social issues represented in the music video are easily relatable to the reality and society giving viewers a chance to have more emotional attachment to it.

In a society like that of Pakistan where there are so many issues, hopelessness in various situations is very common and hence, this is an extremely relatable topic for our society. With the use of the elements of the cancer , shrine , sad moments for losing love it made the narrative stronger as each element has its own representation and depth to it. For our entire music video to express a certain meaning, these elements added their own essence to it as all three

In conclusion to this, the social issues targeted are universal and the only way to counter these is to not lose hope and keep loving your  lover after the death. Love is not to spend time with him ?her , but it is to love him even after he/she passes away to be for him till the death is love. we just showed the real face of love to the society and make them aware what is love. elements are extremely important for a lover while losing the love..