GENRE CONVENTIONS

EVALUATION Q.1 - GENRE CONVENTIONS

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

·      Our treatment of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers track Californication combines narrative and performance.

·         The video opens with the narrative strand as a Chilli peppers fan listens to the track on his iPod, a conventional device of a 'screen within a screen', often used in music videos. He then falls asleep which is represented through a fade edit and is seen to be dreaming himself in the band as they begin to play the song.

·         We see the band begin to play and the singer/bassist begin to lip sync with the lyrics.

·         We see several effects used to represent the dream like state that we are trying to convey. The Opacity tool is used throughout the video to create the image of a dream like state which ensures the ideas associating with the music video - opacity involves layering a video on top of another one so you can see both at the same time. 

·         This sequence continues until it changes to another chili pepper fan whom we see watching the TV and the original video for Californication comes on. We see her fall asleep and in keeping with the lyrics, see her dreaming about the wonders of plastic surgery, to become the image of beauty and perfection that American media portrays.

·         We then see the grim image of a doctor/surgeon in white, looming over the camera with a scalpel, about to perform some kind of surgical treatment.

·         This matched edit follows with the female fan also watching another screen is an example of intertextuality. The repeated motifs characterize music video form.

·         During the course of these scenes the video cuts between band scenes and the loose narrative. During the band scenes we used intricate close ups of the instruments using a gopro camera to get intriguing camera angles.

·         We also make use of images from various cities and famous sights to establish the idea that the world is based on materialism which the RHCP’s attempted to do through this song.