Evaluation Activity 1 Georgia Briggs

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

In this still frame it demonstrates the use of costume and props. The most obvious costume that was used was the gorilla costume. It was one of the most important parts of our video as it tied the whole concept of the video together. Using the gorilla costume was quite a big step because it meant that whoever was wearing it would have to wear it in public with people watching, I was the lucky one who had to wear it. We thought that using the gorilla costume would be a unique twist in the video as the lyrics of the song say "Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street." So we took a literal approach to the lyrcis by creating the story that the gorilla was in a relationship with another characters person of interest. Like a love triangle involving the gorilla. Another costume that we used was Matt's smart outfit, we had to build this costume around his character and what his character would be doing.

We used different costumes for Megan aswell, the outfit pictured above was for when she went on her 'date' with the gorilla where Matt would walk past them and see them together. We put her in pink because it is a playful colour. We had to think about the costumes for each character in alot of detail, this was because throughout te video our characters would be placed in different situations and their clothes needed to be appropriate for each scenario. When we filmed in Holborn we were aware that people in the public would be wearing suits and workwear, we knew that where we were filming there would be people walking in and out of shot which meant that we needed to co-ordinate the costume of our characters with the workwear of the public. This is reflected in our video when Alex is acting as a 'passer-by' in the street and he blends in with everyone else who walks past.

Props that we used included; flowers, glasses, a banana, a cup of coffee and a picnic basket.

The flowers were important as they helped to symbolise the fact that Matt was going on a date. Later on in the video he gets stood up so he throws the flowers on the floor which reinforce the fact that he is angry, which would happen in a real life situation. The glasses are part of Matt's costume which fits in with his whole look. The banana is key in the scene with Megan and the Gorilla when Matt sees them together and they are a couple.

There is an element of performance in our video, when Matt mimes the lyrics throughout the video. We felt that this was an important aspect as most successful music videos involve the artist miming their music, it shows that they have mad an effort to make the video look professional. We also decided to use extras in our video for example, for each part of the song when Joe Jackson sang 'Where?' we decided to involve the same two characters to act over the top and dramatic when miming to reinforce the humour element/spoof element to our video.