Before we began to start our own media project we researched into videos in the stereotypical drum&bass music video's, we looked at all the conventions that they used in them, Eg: the drugs, alcohol and parties. We also carried on looking at the other conventions the less popular ones but they still appeared in each video, we looked at this because we knew we could change them to make our video stand out and have an unique selling point, which will be more original to other video's.
We have a typical convention that is normally associated with Drum&Bass genre's, this is the drugs, alcohol and the minor bit of violence that appears in our video. We choose to keep this conventions the same because they are so commonly seen in these types of videos. At the start when I analysed my perfect target audience, I mentioned that most teenagers this age would be going out to parties, gigs and festivals, stereotypically drugs, alcohol and violence are involved in these environments, by using these conventions it helps us relate to the audience. All though, by using these conventions we do not promote the use alcohol and drugs, we show this by the protagonist sinking into deep depression and the end result is not well, we do this on purpose to show the negative view of drugs rather than the stereotypical 'fun' side that can be seen with drugs, we got this idea when analysing out main video, Let You Go - Chase & Status.
This photo is from a drum&bass music video, this shows straight away the bad effects of drinking alcohol as you can clearly see the depression on his face and the positioning of his body. This is what we try to imply when doing our video that the use of alcohol and drugs is bad and not a sensible road to take.
Most video's of the drum&bass genre also have the quick movement and high action, we also tried to copy the un-steady camera angles, by doing this hand held, by doing this it shows both the edge-y and hectic style and also we done this mostly with our point of view shots so we could also say that this is the bad view of taking drugs and drinking alot of alcohol.
Another common convention that is seen in drum&bass videos is that the band do not appear in the actual video, they normally have a set story that follows the lyrics of the song, we followed this convention as well by not having any sign of a band in our video, also we had no characters to mime the lyrics of the band. By following this convention we thought it would keep the audience more intrigued with the story and the music.
Our main inspiration came from one of our first minor analysis 'Prodigy - Smack my bitch up'. We liked the whole one shot throughout the whole video, the point of view shot made it more personal and intriguing to the audience, because of Prodigy being a well known band we expect these frantic and crazy video's from them, this is why this types of video works well for them. The camera the whole time is very un-steady and hectic, this is where we got the idea for having this angle of camera's. As we follow the protagonist of this story around we watch the person get drunk and do drugs this continues through a whole night, the main character does stupid things with touching and trying it with various woman and actually having sex with a woman at the end of the night, we the audience straight away come to the assumption that it is a man to be the protagonist, until the twist is revealed in the morning, that the protagonist is a woman.
Having a twist like this appealed to us. This is when we decided to challenge the conventions, by having a twist similar to this video but more serious. We looked at various drum&bass videos and there is always a key interest of romance involved, we try to focus our ideas around a relationship. The conventions of a stereotypical romance in a film is having the girlfriend/boyfriend leave them, and they begin the lonely story. This photo is from the video - Chase & Status - End Credits (Feat. Plan B), this demonstrates a typical romance drum&bass video, the couple on the left side of the photo and then the lonely story begins on the right side. This is what we want to demonstrate but challenge the convention with our very own twist at the end which is that our protagonist is in a homosexual relationship.
Another way we challenged conventions was that normally in pendulums video they do not set a story for the video, they have irrelevant videos to the lyrics, in the actual pendulum video for 'Water Colour', it is mostly wide shots of the band playing to a crowd and water is sprayed and fired everywhere. We challenged the convention by having a story line with our very own twist. We choose to do this because we knew trying to follow the conventions would be very hard to conceive and instruct, also opting with having a story line makes our video more original and modern, especially with our twist.
The main convention that we have changed challenged in our video is our theme, our video is mostly centred around the theme of love, and for a drum&bass video this normally does not happen. We slipped in the normal conventions of drugs, alcohol and mild violence to keep our audience involved and interested and not to change to much. We kept the audience interested by leading the whole story over the course of the day, with the usual items that are involved in the drum&bass video we kept the audience involved by always having them involved and sympathising with the protagonist, we keep the viewers on suspense with the quick and hectic shots also the two attempts of near death, that leads to a shocking blunt end. Most conventional drum&bass videos have a dark and gloomy edge to them, we kept to this convention but had our main twist of the main character being in a homosexual relationship, this challenges all conventions but also keeps the video modern and up to date and with the times which is accepted in this generation.
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