EVALUATION Q1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

MUSIC VIDEO

One convention of a music video that we used is the singer looked directly at the camera which we wanted to involve the viewer in performance. I believe that this worked very well as it captured the attention of the audience. This is very commonly seen in music videos and it works very well in attracting attention so this is why we were influenced to use this in our own music video.
Another very conventional technique that my group used is a base track, which meant that we kept coming back to the artist in more or less the same place. We repeated the same shots of the performer (some from different angles) in order to establish her as the artist. This is very often used in music videos, so that the audience are aware of who the performer is. An example of a music video that inspired us is Christina Perri's 'Jar of Hearts' where a base track is used in order to establish a new artist.

         Our Music Video                                                                          Christina Perri - Jar of Hearts

Me and my group were influenced by different videos, incorporating different editing techniques. One video that particularly inspired us from the start is Jay Sean’s ‘2012’ music video. Even though it isn’t the same genre, we believed that a particular editing technique they have used will look good in our music video. In ‘2012’ they use a zoom into the city, and we included this kind of idea at the beginning of our music video, from the outside of the house into the living room. As we got this idea from a music video of a different genre I would believe that this would be challenging the conventions of our own genre which is indie pop. We decided to do this in order to make it look more interesting to our audience. 

Carole Vernalis observed that edits in music videos come more frequently than they do in films. Many stand out as disjuncture and their editing seems to have a rhythmetic basis closely connected to the song. She believes that the usual rules of ‘continuity’ editing are broken in order to draw attention to what is on the screen. We follow this convention in our music video. An example of this is when we used split screen editing, we used this perticular edit as we thought it would grab the viewer’s attention. We were inspired to do this by Beyonce’s Countdown.  I think ‘Countdown’ was definitely very influential as the split editing was done very well, and made the music video itself more interesting and eye-catching.

Andrew Goodwin feels that traditional narrative analyses don’t apply to pop videos. He believes that there are three types of relations between songs and videos. Both illustration and amplification are involved in our music video. For example we use amplification through our mise-en scene which was influenced my Katy Perry’s ‘Thinking of You’. The lyrics in the song portray a relationship break up, which is exactly what our song is based on. So we decide to take the idea of setting out music video inside a house, as this would make it more personal and it portray the message we wanted. Amplificationis when a music video introduces new meanings that do not contradict with the lyrics but add layers of meaning, which is what we are doing with our choice of mise-en scene.

DIGIPAK

My digipak was inspired by Adele’s ‘21’. This is mainly because the design was very simple and elegant which portrayed the artist as serious, which is the message I also wanted to get across. Also the image the used of Adele was simple, and through the soft and graceful make-up she was wearing they convey femininity, and this shows her as a positive role model for females. Even though the music Adele makes is a little different, I believe that this was a good way to represent my own artist.

Another digipak which influenced me was Amy Macdonald’s ‘A Curious Thing’. I particularly liked this digipak because of the colour scheme, as it is very mellow and peaceful, it runs throughout both panels which I really liked. I tried to interpret this in my own work, as I believe that the colours portray the artist as normal and simple. The design is very simple but effective which is what attracted me to it. The image they have used of the artist influenced me as it was only of her face which showed that she wasn’t interested in attracting the male gaze, and it portrayed her as elegant and a serious musician. This is exactly how I wanted to represent my own artist. I tried to make my digipak conventional for its perticular genre, so this is why i tried to keep it elegant and not to clattered. I believe that i succeeded in making my digipak conventional judging from my two inspirations

ADVERTISEMENT

I wanted my advertisement to follow its genre convention. So i looked at number of different advertisement which were of the same genre. The one that influenced me the most was Ellie Goulding's as it very simple but at the same time it stands out. In her advertisement you cansee that they have included her achievements such as a number one album in the UK. Unlike this I included tour dates, which is also conventiol information. The image used is very simple which another thing i tried to take in on my own advertisent. I also followed all the normal conventions of advertisements, like including the record label, the artist name, when the album would come out and an image of the album it's self.