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

real media products?

Music Video:

Narrative
As one of the first decisions to be made as a part of commencing the production of our
music video, we decided on the genre conventions we would be following. From looking at
songs we thought would be both suitable for our genre and a convenient song to produce a
conventional video to, we decided on an alternative pop genre music video. From this initial
research, we could depict that the majority of these videos were narrative. Therefore, we
wanted to use this convention in our own video. Additionally, the representation of our
artist in our video follows the common conventions of pop genre music video conventions.
We wanted to portray our artist in an idealistic manner as this is what we found in most
other videos from our genre. The artist is always shown to be aspirational through the use
of mise en scene, camera angles and shots and lighting. Not only would this satisfy our
‘trendy’ audience but it would also conform to Laura Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze.
Since our genre may appeal to a predominantly female audience we used ideas proposed by
Mulvey which demonstrates that by presenting our artist in an alluring manner, it will
attract more male audiences.
We also correlated the lyrics of the song with the narrative in our video. We listened to the
lyrics and used our own interpretation to create a story. The lyrics seem to be talking about
a break in a relationship, an issue with trust and other problems surrounding this situation.
However, although in the lyrics the artist appeared to be sad we wanted to contrast this
representation by portraying our artist in a stronger and more empowering light therefore
appearing idealistic to our audience. This would be more appealing as opposed to watching
the artist break under the pressure of relationships.
Location
In order to use the conventions of the pop narrative genre, we have chose our locations
accordingly. We have chosen locations that appear to be used in videos of a similar style
(the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen). In order to further use the convention we made sure
the locations were predominantly white, this gave a clean and crisp aesthetic feel which is
once again featured in many other videos of a similar genre. This was important to us as the
colours and objects featured in our video will be the difference between our audience
finding our video appealing or not and forms the basis of the mise-en-scene as a whole. The
theme of plain and simplistic backgrounds allowed all attention to be focussed on the artist
and her style as the predominantly white backgrounds prevents the audience from
becoming distracted or influence by other colours that are part of the mise-en-scene. To
avoid our video from perhaps becoming a little too simplistic we added a contrasting
location that will perhaps challenge the convention of traditional alternative pop styled
videos. We steered away from our simplistic feel and chose the city location as it would be
busier. The mise-en-scene of the shots included objects in motion with the public walking in
the background and the leaves of the trees moving in the wind – thus creating a more
energetic shot. We used this to further develop our narrative story to correlate with the
emotion – the shots where she is presented as being powerful and independent.
Additionally, due to the time we were filming (October) there were many vibrant autumnal
colours form the leads and the golden toned light from the sun. Although this was not a
planned feature of our video it .. to our advantage as this further developed the aesthetic
feel of our video.
Camera Shots
Camera shots was something that we thought was very important as it would form the basis
for the full narrative, it would be critical when presenting the aesthetic feel in our video and
it would determine whether our video mimics that of a real product. We started by using a
very common convention that occurred regularly in almost every genre of music video, an
establishing shot. This could be found in videos such as Dua Lipa New Rules video (up until
0.10), where they use a panning establishing shot to set the scene and the location of the
where the music video will take place. We used a similar technique when we used a pan
down establishing shot in our city location. Additionally, similar to the Dua Lipa video, we
used this establishing shot to display the artist’s name. Many artist’s use this technique and
use this through out every video, they also stick to a particular font which almost creates a
brand for the artists themselves therefore whenever a product that they are featured in or
created is released, audiences would use this to identify them. We also used a lot of close-
up and mid-shots do demonstrate the artist’s lip-synching and style, which is a convention
commonly found in music videos. Our exterior shots were also filmed predominantly with a
long/mid-long shot as we wanted to incorporate as much of the surroundings as possible to
add to the aesthetic appeal to our video. Additionally we could also demonstrate the full
style of outfits that was and once again capturing our audience. These shots are
conventional in our genre of music video and were developed through our narrative.
Costume/Props
This was another crucial element when producing our final product as it would represent
the artist visually to the audience. As previously established, our audience takes great pride
in their own appearance and like to see this same stylistic attitude reflected in their idols.
Since we are attempting to idolise our artist we needed to ensure that her costumes and
props demonstrated this. The costumes we chose through our research and demonstrated
in our mood boards. We felt that each costume should be different in each location to help
develop our narrative. In the Bath scene, we chose a simplistic white dress to reflect the
minimalism of the shot and further draw the audience’s attention to the emotion portrayed
through lip-syncing and close-up shots. This can be found in music videos of a similar genre
such as Demi Lovato’s Stone Cold music video. Additionally, it also compliments the
minimalistic aesthetic demonstrated in our mood boards. Further choices for our costumes
such as in the city scene location, we chose a pink fur coat to play as the statement piece of
the costume as this was often found in artists such as Mabel. The research for our costumes
came heavily from research we conducted of our genre and additionally our target audience
therefore following the common codes and conventions and these were developed through
the alternative edge that our artist had.

Digipack:

Prior to producing my digipak, I conducted in depth research of other artists and their
digipacks and also researched a lot of intertextual references such as posters, photography
and collage material which I found on social media picture sharing applications such as
Instagram and Pinterest. Although my digipack, from an exterior perspective, may appear to
conform to the common codes and conventions of alternative pop genre digipacks, in many
ways it also challenges these ideas. Since I was catering for an audience who preferred to
stay ahead of the trends, it was important that my design was innovative and original –
introducing new ideas to the alternative pop scene. From my research conducted, I came
across the Photoshop artists Chloe Sheppard and Georgia Hawkins. These artists inspired
me a great deal and gave me the idea to play around with the album name: Handwriting.
Opposed to common conventions of many digipacks where they want to create and
simplistic and clean look to their digipack, I challenged these conventions by using a lot of
text and images. However, I did not want to challenge this convention completely as I still
wanted to attract a large mainstream audience as well in order to make my product most
successful. Therefore, on the front cover and CD disc of the Digipack I maintain a fairly
minimalistic theme. I continued the theme of tying my front cover and 3rd side together by
including a statement colour such as – orange. It was also evident that these where linked
due to the coloured image opposed to a monochromatic theme. Meanwhile I kept the other
sides monochrome and creating a image more heavily inspired by my two intertextual
artists. Here I challenged the conventions. The busy and almost accidentally placing of my
text to give the impression of realistic ‘handwriting’ – challenged the popular minimalistic
theme evident in many pop culture videos. However, in many other ways I conformed to
traditional conventions when placing the barcode, terms and conditions and the record
label logo in common places such as the back cover in the bottom left hand corner and the
record label logo in the spine of the cover.

Magazine Advert:

My magazine advert is overtly unconventional as I have played around with the cropping
tool in a unique manner that may not be recognisable by many consumers. I was inspired
for this design by images I found on Pinterest and Instagram, I love the monochrome trend
and used the pop of colour to further individualise my product and appeal to my alternative
audience. Simultaneously, I would also link this to my digipack design and music video
through the colour palettes. I have used popular conventions of pop culture magazine
adverts by using the tradition of including text which explains the advert and promote
further links to get information about the promoted product, however I then developed this
my experimenting with a quirky and unique layout. I have also flowed a common
convention by lacing the artists name at the top of the poster in a bold, forthcoming font
which draws the audience’s attention the name. this further established the artist’s ‘brand’.