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

When approaching the task of creating a music video and additional ancillary tasks, our first action was to research typical conventions of similar existing media products. When we had established the genre of music and style of video we wanted; that being not performance based, but more charcter focussed, we started looking at other videos of this style. We were inspired by and informed of many conventions of these videos in terms of mise-en-scene such as props, costumes and settings. As well as this we took inspiration from editing techniques such as split screen and colour alteration.  

In terms of our digi-pack we both supported and challenged conventions of real media products. We worked from our market research feedback that more often than not digipacks will feature the lyrics of the song, images from the particular video and information about contacting the band/viewing their other work. Our digipak features the lyrics to the song, written in a 'handwritten' format that challenges the usual typed appearance in most digi-packs, it features images of screenshots taken from our music video to work as the background to the lyrics and CD holder. We have on the back of our digi-pak a barcode, the institution logo and link to the bands website - we saw each of these features on existing digi-packs and knew they would be successfull being included in our design. The front back covers of our digi-pack challenge the conventions of most, as we do not use band imagery, but have taken the front and back of a book - this links to the intertextual links within our music of books.

 





A convention of many music videos, including 'Kickstart' by Example (from which the above screenshot is from), use visual aids when building up musically to the climax of a song. An example of this is having opening strong beats accompanied by some form of physical action matching the time and beat - in some cases implying the image is creating the sound, as in this case with the foot tapping. The 'Kickstart' screenshot was taken from the opening of the song where there is a strong beat, clearly building up to the later musical heights, and the beat is accompanied by the tapping of a man's foot as though he is listening to and enjoying the music. As opening strong beats like this are setting up for the rest of the song, they are introductory of what is to come - the use of showing the actors feet is beginning to introduce him into the video gradually, setting the audience up for what to expect from the video both aurally and visually. We have made use of this convention and technique in our opening musical sequence where there is a strong beat that aurally is building up to a musical climax in the song, therefore we wanted to use the idea of introducing the character indirectly to start with, by using his feet - to build up anticipation for what is going to be seen/heard later in the song - Once the music hits it's peak, the actor is then seen in full. We have the foot-tapping in time with the music, ensuring the fluidity of the shot and it's professional appearance, making sure it has similar effect to the atmosphere building foot tapping in the 'Kickstart' video.



A convention of most music videos is the use of performance shots by the band. We decided to not feature images of instruments or musicians, except for the protagonist singing, instead we used the image of a vinyl record player to serve as the source of music in the video. We decided this after researching typical conventions of the indie genre, and the iconic image of an LP record is something the is often wel recieved. The LP player connotes authenticty, traditional conventions of music, and gives the impression that the music is more accessible to the audience, in that the need for a full band isn't necessary, and they can enjoy the music as the singer is in the video. We use the record player to open and close the song, appearing as though it is the source of the actors music, and we cut in quick shots of it throughout the video, often on musical interludes to remind of where the music is originating from.



A feature we saw fairly often in music videos of our chosen genre, was the use of split screen. They were most frequently seen in the form of a two way split screen, ordinarily down the centre of the frame as seen in the image above from 'Kickstart' by Example. We inspiration from these split screen ideas and developed them by increasing the amount of windows in the split screen. For example in the shot featuring our stop motion books we split the screen into 4 windows rather than just two, giving the shot more impact visually. Also an element we developed from this the example music video was the fact that their split screen images, although different shots, were made to match each other in the action e.g. foot tapping at the same time - When we had placed the footage in the multiple frames, we then reordered the stop motion files to cause the books to build up and down at different times and paces in each frame. Which again worked to help us create a visually enjoyable shot, rather than one plain image in the standard frame.

This poster by the Shout Out Louds shows they have consistent design elements in all of their promotional work - from these images we can see their use of simplistic, basic colouring as their posters all focus on one main stand out colour, or little use of it. 

We also established that they consistently use simple, bold and clear typography in all of their work, to ensure immediate recognition and avoid misunderstanding and confusion. We have taken on some of these elements in our magazine advert design; we used the feature of clear typography as it is extremely important for the band to be immediately recognisable and the audience know exactly what the advert is for as soon as they see it. We have used these typical conventions of having the name of the band in larger typography than the names of the songs/other information on the page, having few colours on the image to ensure simplicity and recognition. We also have made use of the simple imagery they use, that doesn't feature the band or instruments.