Evaluation Question 1: Conventions

Evaluation Question 1

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

Music video:

. Goodwin’s theory:

Music videos often nearly always follow either one of the 3 categories in Goodwin’s theory Narrative, Performance and Concept.

Narrative- for example the narrative in a music video would often follow a story based on the lyrics like in the music video Waterfalls by TLC, Like the song itself, the video tackles issues of illegal drug trade and in the video a young man goes against his mother's advice to stop selling drugs and is killed before a drug deal. And as for our music video we follow this concept because the lyrics are talking about an insomniac not being able to sleep and this is signified in our music video in multiple scenes where our main character is stressed but in particular when he’s seen in a multiple layering scene in his bedroom not sleeping (show bedroom scene).

Performance- then with the performance aspect in a music video there’s often a band playing or a singer directing the music to the audience and this could either be throughout the whole video like in Disclosure’s song F or F You where the 2 dj artist are seen throughout as well as the singer at parts, or the performance footage could be shown at specific parts in the music video as well as a narrative for example with Plan B’s song Playing With Fire where the singer Plan B is shown singing at various parts in the song, and this is what our music video also follows because as well as a narrative going on there’s also performance footage with the singer singing directly to the camera.

Concept- Goodwin’s final category was concept where a music video would often have an abstract feeling to it where it’s quite random and has no direct meaning to it, for example the artists Bondax often follow this as they demonstrated in their music video Giving It All as throughout the video there’s no real connection between the music lyrics and visuals, and this is common within that specific genre which is vital for our production as we are using a track from the same genre ‘house’ which is why we demonstrated the some of this concept aspect in our music video as we have quite abstract footage at time which could be seen as quite random towards the music (abstract clip from music video).

. Narrative:

Also for the narrative structure of a music video it is common for there to be an opening and a closure for example in Coldplay’s song Paradise visuals signify an animal escaping from the zoo by having the elephant character run away from the zoo to the train station which was the opening, and then the closure was anchored when the elephant was reunited which the other elephants and walking off into the sun set, and our music video follows this stereotype convention as we have an opening signified by the character starting his day in bed then the closure is also signified by the nightmare girl character locking the male character in the wendy house.

. Star treatment used:

Clean bandit don’t use star treatment and instead the focus is on the whole band for example in their song Rather Be all the band are shown throughout the video at equal lengths so there’s no star treatment used. However Faithless do use it for example in the song God Is A DJ and focus on the singer even though there’s a band behind every song, we were heavily influenced by this as we used the same start treatment towards our singer.

. Titles Used:

Also another common convention used in music videos is titles at the start and the end this is because it give the cinematic feel to the video and as most producers of music videos go on to produce films it’s no surprise that this is a common convention, a good example of this is in the song Paradise by Coldplay as at the start titles are used to introduce the music video in a cinematic approach. However with our music video we preferred to go for the countertype and not include titles as we didn’t feel they worked well with our structure for the intro or the ending.

. Nightclub Scene:

This stems back to when house music videos were first used to advertise clubs and a good example that we looked out was Martin Garrix’s song  Animals as there’s nightclub scenes throughout also with this comes the continuous use of flashing lights throughout the video which is also common in house music videos, however our music video is a countertype of this aspect as we did attempt to film a dance club scene but didn’t think it was effective enough to use for our final piece so therefore we went for the countertype in this case.

Genre Specifics:

. Multiple Locations Used Is Common:

For our genre in particular it’s common to see a variety of locations used throughout the music video and this is mainly because as the videos are mostly concept based a variety of locations are needed in some cases to keep the audience interested and engaged, otherwise it could provide some oppositional reading and start to get boring for the audience, for example in the music video Rather Be by Clean Bandit they use a variety of location throughout, and this is was we aimed to do in our music video to which we achieved by making sure we filmed in a variety of locations, for example we filmed in the woods, a river, park, moors,fields,streets,café,bedroom,bathroom, etc.

Digipak:

.Stereotypical Conventions:

-Front:

Titles bold on the front so they stand out from the background images, these titles consist of the artist’s name or band’s name, then the title of the single or album, and the arrangement varies but usually they follow the stereotypical convention that the artist’s name is larger and above the title of the album or single.

Then the sticker on the front is also a common convention used to notify the audience of what the digipak had to offer, and usually the text in this stick is bold and stands out from the background and the text used in these tickers stereotypically reveal limited edition tracks or a DVD with live footage from a tour or behind the scene, this way the audience are drawn in and appealed in a way that they’d purchase the product.

-Rear:

Digitisation has formed the more regularly used QR codes now which are displayed on the rear side of digipaks which lead to the website of the artist this way the audience can access the artist online instantly.

And the barcode if also commonly found on the rear sides of digipaks.

Copy right print is also a main convention used in digipaks and is usually in the form of small print in the lower part of the back with the copy right and produced by logos.

Also record labels being displayed is stereotypical for the rear side of digipaks and these are often shown as logos for each individual label as there could be more than one with conglomerate companies being displayed also.

And the track listing is always displayed on the rear side as it’s important for the audience to be notified of the tracks that the CD consists of, usually the tracks will be numbered with the title of each track, and then the details of each track will be furthered in the lyric booklet usually.

Another common convention usually used it to tie the front of the digipak with the rear and this is effectively achieved when they use the same image but stretched out over both sides, or when the colours match up and flow.

As well as the CD and DVD logo which are found on all products that consist of DVD or CDs

-Spine:

Usually on the spine you’d find the title of the album horizontally positioned out down the side with a unique catalogue number specific to that album, also the record label’s logo is normally displayed also here.

-Our Digipak:

Ultimately our product consisted of all these common conventions as it had a unique bolb font on the front specific to the artist which we researched, and here we had the titles of the artist larger than the title of the album. Also our sticker works effectively because it notifies our audience of the bonus DVD that would appeal to them and make them more likely to purchase the product. We also used a QR code for the rear side of the digipak along with the barcode both specific to our product, and the record labels are also found here which is common also, along with the CD and DVD logos, more importantly our digipak flows from front to rear which is significant in qualifying for the common conventions in this way because it works so effectively. And the track listing is also positioned well with the tracks numbered appropriately. Along with the small copy right print that’s in the right font size and worded correctly.

Mag Ad:

Stereotypical Conventions:

During my research and planning I looked at a range of magazine ads from different genres and used this to round up the main magazine ad conventions. Firstly what’s commonly used are the titles of the artist in large bold with the titles of the album bellow, and these usually flow quiet effectively with a range of different fonts and font sizes. For our magazine ad we downloaded fonts from websites such as ‘DaFont.’ These fonts were easy to install on to Photoshop. They also include brief information on the artist, concert dates or tour dates, The release date of a specific album or DVD, an image of the band or artist, a twitter feed, a QR code, a reference to the record label. The information included on a Mag ad differentiates between genres for example on a dance magazine ad there would usually be bright colours and a large image, in contrast to a rock genre magazine ad where dark colours would be used. Also the focus changes for what the magazine ad is promoting whether it is tour dates or promoting a CD, which I where the variation of fonts plays a key part.

In terms of our magazine ad I would say that we challenged as well as followed the forms of conventions of real media products. For example a conventional method we used was an image of our artist on our front cover which I used a filter on to change the temperature of the image to give it an orange effect. We challenged the conventions of using bright images for the dance genre because I incorporated a lot of black onto a magazine ad but this was to link in with both our video and digipak. I would also say that we developed the forms and conventions of media products because we included two promotions one of the digipak we created and the tour dates we promoted, my research showed that most magazines ads only promote one of the two. So in some ways we have developed this form and convention.