Question 1

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

DigipakDespite artists such as katy Perry and Avril Lavigne’s debut cover being a long shot, we decided to instead follow the convention of their more recent album covers of being a close up as we wanted to follow the conventions of more modern products.

However instead of the artist directly looking at the camera we instead wanted to have the artist looking off into the distance to give a more serene tone. We made this decision because we wanted to give a different side to the artist than we had shown in the video. Also we acknowledged that within the pop genre not all songs are happy and upbeat therefore we reflected that with our digipak.

WebsiteWith the website we generally followed the conventions of other artists websites as the homepage consisted of an image of the artist, similarly to Katy Perry and Avril Lavigne, however while they used their album covers, we used an image associated to the debut music video, as our main product.

Our website included features such as the music video, tour dates, behind the scenes pictures, the debut album cover and photo shoot images. The features that were shared by the Florence and the machine site were music videos, albums and images, which were also features on the Avril Lavigne and the Katy Perry site. The Katy Perry site also shared tour information. Therefore we followed some of the features of real media products.

Music VideoOur music video displayed pop genre characteristics as the video displayed both narrative and performance aspects.Within the main performance aspects where the artist is in front of the coloured walls she is fully made up, this corresponds with the conventions of the pop genre as she is represented as glamorous, this links to other artists such as Beyoncé and Rihanna. However during the narrative the artist was portrayed as awkward outsider, linking to videos such as Black magic by little mix (bottom right).

In contrast we moved away from the convention of a polished and professional artist in our video by representing the artist as more clumsy and down to earth. This brought an element of fun and comedy to the video, which moves away slightly from the modern glamorous pop we see from artists like Beyoncé.