Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Harry Hitchcock

This first screenshot is taken from our final music video. This is the first shot the audience sees as the video begins. It shows the convention of our narrative, it’s about a couple who’s relationship collapses, this is seen in a lot of today’s mainstream music videos. In terms of our narrative we use this particular downfall of relationship convention.

This next screenshot is taken from Katy Perry’s ‘Part of Me’ music video. This mainstream music video demonstrates the convention as we see on-screen Katy fight and break-up with her boyfriend, identical to our first scene shown above. The use of our convention is backed up by popular videos such as this one for example.

Here we see our use of a black and white filter to show the emotional wreckage of the characters. Our use of black and white develops the general convention, black and white isn’t commonly used in music videos and when it is it’s commonly for different effects. We wanted the black and white show the heart-break of our characters.

Will.I.Am’s ‘Bang Bang’ shows the use of black and white used for a different effect. The screenshot on the right shows it’s used to create a more dated, vintage, old-fashioned feel to the video as it was created for the 1920’s-based film, The Great Gatsby. This further shows we developed a filter as a convention in our music video, I feel our use of black and white works really well.

The bright use of colour filters in our video challenges the typical conventions of music videos. The way we have highlighted our artist throughout the video with strips of colour is definitely not conventional and something which stands our video out from others. Our use of these colour filters effectively separate the artist and the characters- the performer and the narrative.

From Kanye West’s video for ‘All of the Light’s I’ve noticed a similar technique used. In the screenshot I captured you can see a bright colour filter used to highlight the artist. In this video we also see black and white to begin where the artist is not on screen. This is an identical technique used between our video and his. What separates ours and challenges the convention is that ours is only stripped across the artist and used throughout.

This next screenshot shows the kicking over of the bin in our video, the moment its kicked is the moment the beat of the chorus kicks in. This is very conventional and the main part of what a music video should consist of, editing on the beat. It’s a really effective use of prop and cut in our video which uses the convention.

This is then further shown in the video for Calvin Harris’ ‘Under Control’ with the fast-build-up to the drop when the beat kicks in for the chorus the visuals completely change to a view of many youths ‘moshing’ and dancing in an excitement. The convention and all-round main factor a music video should have is demonstrated in our music video.

Throughout our video not much of the camera is focussed on the female, we wanted more focus on the artist as this is quite conventional to sell him more. The screenshot shows a part of the video where we see the distressed female pacing. Whilst we want the attention on the artist we also want to show the audience the female character so they can relate and the narrative can be shown more clearly.

In Scouting for Girls’ ‘This ain’t a Love Song’ this convention is similarly shown. The lead singer is shown on-screen whilst the camera also leads the audience’s attention to other characters throughout the video of whom the audience can relate to. This example shows how the music video sells the artist by having him on screen a lot.

Many music videos involve a performance side in which the artist is seen to lip-sync, in many cases, commonly if the artist is a band, instruments are seen played in the video. This screenshot from our video is a close-up of a guitar being played, this is conventional for the genre of song we chose as in many music videos the band/artist’s instruments are shown on screen which shows the band’s dynamics and talent.

From looking at Daughtry’s video for ‘Crawling Back to You’ I can clearly see the convention of instruments being used in performance to show a band’s talent and variety of talent. The two shots are very similar in close up and mid shot of the guitar to emphasise on the use of the iconic rock instrument. This convention is successful in representing the artist as a band with instruments and not just a singer.

This screenshot from our video shows the male characters conventionally basic costume. We represented our character as a typical teenager who has fallen out of love and it was important to use the convention when it came to costume to maintain the representation. Here we see he’s wearing jeans and a plain jumper, keeping it plain draws the focus away from clothing and remains with the narrative and video on a whole. Our costume for him follows the convention nicely.

Showing the convention this next screenshot, taken from teen-band One Direction’s ‘Live while we’re young’, shows the similarity in costume. Both males from each video are wearing plain clothing with no brand label or graphics to keep the focus on the music and the video. This convention of teen male costume is important in an effective music video to keep focus on the song itself, its also important in representation, representing the characters or artist how we want them represented.

The resolution of our music video uses the convention and doesn’t challenge when it comes to a love-story narrative. Our video concludes with the male returning home to his girlfriend who we’d witnessed have a falling-out at the beginning of our narrative. Conventionally most love-story narratives, whether it be in a film, TV programme or music video, usually resolve in the reunion of the couple. A fairy-tale ‘happy ending’.

Our ending is iconic and recognisable, although very typical and predictable it works in a way to satisfy the audience making them emotionally happy with the couple’s resolving and satisfying getting back together. This use of love break-up get back-together narrative is very conventional and is noticed a lot in many media products.

The use of props in our video further showed the narrative and destruction the break-up caused for our lovers. The particular photo album shown has images of the couple inside, it shows their relationship and shows conventional teen-love. The audience are able to relate to our characters more as many public members have photo albums and images of their loved ones.

This is our digipak to link with our music video. It shows our artist’s name as a band and an album name with a track listing which we created. There are many conventions we used to make our digipak successful. The first main convention which is important in maintaining a theme. Throughout our music video, digipak and magazine ad we have the focus on the artist and his guitar.

The guitar is what makes the three media products link so nicely, the greenery of grass and trees then goes together with this in succeeding this effect. Vital conventions and necessities to our digipak include the record label’s logo, copyright information and barcode. The panorama on the inside of the digipak is quite unique and makes our digipak stand out. The panorama we captured for this is really successfully with Jason spread across three panes, it develops the digipak convention into a wider, different image. On our digipak we added a list of ‘Bonus Features’ this is very conventional of digipaks as digipaks are commonly extended editions of the original CD and therefore come with extras. Overall our digipak is successful in linking with the video in terms of use of artist and instrument and natural scenery and it uses and challenges different digipak conventions to result in a unique digipak which is recognisable with theme.

With our magazine advert, as shown on the left, we wanted it to conventionally match the digipak visually whilst also being different and attracting attention. As seen we used the same image in portrait version for our magazine ad as we did for the digipak front cover, this occurs commonly in the music video as the audience are able to recognise the digipak album easily once seeing it advertised in their newspaper or magazine for example. Our magazine advert holds the vital conventions of record label logo, where the digipak is available to buy, the release date, brief reviews, website name and artist + album name. The use of ‘iTunes’ and ‘hmv’ to show where its available to buy is important as the audience are able to then go and buy it more easily. Reviews are just as important, we included two 5 star ratings from magazines in which we believe would hold reviews of this genred music, this makes the music on the digipak look more attractive as it’s rated highly. The magazine ad we created I believe is successful as it displays the theme throughout the products and shows relation with the digipak clearly to advertise correctly the product we’d want to sell.

To conclude our music video shows clear conventions throughout, whether it be around the characters and the narrative or the artist and the performance. We have clearly made it easy for the audience to be able to relate to our video through these conventions.

Our digipak and magazine advert both work well together successfully in theme with conventions to sell the artist we represented. The magazine advert links well with the digipak to advertise it how it should be, effectively.

Overall our media products use, challenge and develop conventions to make them work in representing the genre of our music, the representation of our characters and the representation of our artist.