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

Overview

Typically for a unknown singer song writer, their music video is more likely to be of them performing or starring in a partial narrative based video. However I decided not to take this rout, partly because the artist and I live too far apart but also because I wanted to be able to be creative and challenge conventions of the genre with the fairy tale parts of my video, while also conforming to others i.e lots of close up shots of the person staring in the video and other items in the mise un scéne

Mise en scène I used mise en scène in my video

to help set the mood of the scene. For example you can see in the top picture, by the objects being shown that the character still has a little hope in her life even though this is contradicted by the back and white filter. The bottom picture, with the fairytale pictures stuck on the mirror are very deliberate and add to the plot and character development. I think my product uses and develops the forms and conventions of real media products by similarly, carefully placing the props to aid the imagination of the audience

Mise en scène – real media example

In Ed Sheeran’s video ‘give me love’ mise en scène is used to convey the idea of loneliness and pain which adds to the development of the story. This is similar to my music video and the effect the mise en scène has on the story.

Hoziers ‘Take me to Church’ also uses mise en scène to help the audience interpret the story. It uses wide open spaces to convey freedom and over the shoulder shots with smashed up scenery and fire to convey fighting/danger. Its use of mise en scène really adds to the understanding and interpretation of the song. This, I believe is similar to my media product. Both this video and my video are narrative based and quite open to interpretation, the use of camera shots such as close up, long shots, over the shoulder and pan shots help to tell the story and convey a specific tone. I feel I have mirrored the way ‘Take me to Church’ does this.

Developing Conventions In my music video I develop the

conventions of the genre with my narrative video which follows a story line from the beginning to end, by having one character showing her self and also the multiple characters from fairytales that she believes she is like. This is like other products of this genre for example in Ed Sheeran’s ‘Give Me Love’ he has a female character who is her self at the beginning but later we see her acting out the story as cupid. My video is like this but perhaps more complex as you are getting to see many more sides to the character.

Most music videos in this genre aren’t well lit, the scenes are quite dark and this is often done on purpose to convey the emotion with in the lyrics. However this want really possible when filming my video and so I think this goes against the typical forms and conventions. I have scenes that are well lit as I wanted to convey the image that in the characters dreams, even though she was lost, trapped and scared there was still light and hope. This was harder in the night sky scenes but I feel the starts do also portray this. In the ‘reality’ scenes of my music video, everything in the characters world is black and white. This is rather typical of the genre and an example is of Ed Sheeran’s “A Team” in which the majority of the video is in black and white.

Intertextuality In my music video I also followed the conventions of fairly

tales – a ‘good’ character and a ‘bad’ character, trickery, betrayal, trapped, escaping etc. – as my music video relied heavily upon fairytales/children's stories such as ‘Little Red Riding hood’, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’

I adapted the conventions of fairy tales to fit in with my music video by changing parts of the traditional stories, e.g Sleeping Beauty waking up with out a prince kissing her. I showed my character taking control in each of her fairytale dream situations and this in turn led to her ‘real life’ character taking control.

Magazine Advert The main bulk of the text on my

advert is central to the poster, this is like other products I have seen. This is good because it draws attention to the artist and the album. The background of my advert isn’t a typical image you would find for this type of advert but I thought it fitted well with the album name and the coulors make it easy to see what is being promoted. The logos at the bottom are aspects you would find in real media products and help the audience to find the artist online.

This is a similar product to my magazine advert. As you can see the colours make it easy to read and see what is happening in the advert. The artists name is centered and larger than the rest of the font. Also at the bottom of the advert, like in my poster, are the social media logos letting you know where you can find the artist. I think my poster mirrors the conventions of this advert and perhaps develops it a little by adding features such as the digipak

Magazine Advert – Real Media Product

Here is another advertisement. Again you can see that the artists name and the album is central to the poster. This poster is a little different to mine as there is a clear split between the imagery and the information. This poster also features more information about the track list. My poster also originally had the same sort of information but after responses from my focus group I shortened it to suit what my audience wanted. You can also see on this poster, at the bottom in the conventional place is the logos and links on where to find the artist/purchase the album.

Forms and Conventions of Digipaks Front Panel - Main image, usually of the artist/band or something that

iconic/symbolic of them. Name of artist and album (in big font, to catch audiences' attention).

Spine(s) - Names of artist/band and album, institution.

Back Panel - Usually track list, and printed on in contrasting colours so its readable.

Fold in Panel - Often a image of artist/band, however if its a long fold out, the fold in panel would be a continued from the Front and Back Panel.

Inside Panels - CD, maybe even a booklet. Often images of artist/band or something symbolic/iconic printed inside, behind the discs. There may also be information about the album and quotes by the artist/band written inside the digipak.

Colour Scheme - Usually reflects the mood of album or the genre of the tracks/songs on the disc.

Digipak

Here you can see that my artists is being represented as purely by her talent as an artist, she isn't being sexualised in any way, which goes against the typical forms and conventions of real products. There are features of the digipak, such as the biography parts that arent always found on digipaks can be found on some. I think my product fits the forms and conventions of digipaks, as stated on the previous slide.

In this digipak, Beyoncé is being shown as quite sexualized in her leather outfit and images showing off her body. This is quite typical for the pop and RnB genre. You can also see a large body of text which is a biography for the artist. This is similar to my digipak and the biography I put on it.

Digipak – Real Media Product

This digipak is more abstract than the typical digipak but it is suited well to the artists. It also shows that digipaks don’t necessarily have to have pictures of the artist on them. However I chose to put images of my artist on the digipak as I feel it is more suitable for the genre and for a new unknown artist