In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

In Dancing in the Distraction Factory Andrew Goodwin stated the key elements of a music video are different for different genre's. For example Rock and Metal bands usually have a stage performance whereas girl or boy bands would usually use a dance routine instead. Usually artists link the lyrics with what is going on in the video and we used this element as the song almost directly went along with what was happening in the video. He also stated that the record labels demand video's to feature close ups of the band to help get them publicity, we didn't use this in our music video as we didn't feel the need to promote the band as we felt that the group should be known for there music, just like Alt-J are as they don't show there faces in any official photos. We also used the common theme of looking for something as the main male character is looking for the female character when they enter the woods, we didn't use it as much as other artists do because it didn't fit the video all of the time so we used it when we could. Our video did feature intertextuality as it uses a similar theme to the Alt-J - Breezeblock video but with our own twist and style added to it to make it unique.

Our music video and digipak don’t follow the classical conventions of normal bands but they follow the conventions of Alt-J and use a similar idea to them. Alt-J are known for being alternative and different band and we have displayed this style in our digipak. In our audience research we found that our target audience liked things that are not mainstream and not too common amongst most people. We obviously followed this convention and designed the digipak to be different to everything else that is available from other artists. This then fits what the audience want as it isn't mainstream and this should help it appeal to them.

In music videos there are two main types of videos, one has a storyline is similar to a short film and the other is the band playing the song out live. We decided to challenge the live band performance idea and created a video with a storyline as we felt this is more popular amongst the genre of music Alt-J perform.

As a group we realised that the best way to help attract the target audience was to establish a recognisable image as this would help involve the them straight away. As we didn’t want to completely copy an existing video we changed some things to make it our own and the unique touch would also help attract the audience. Most of Alt-J’s and other bands in this genres videos feature a narrative plot or storyline that sometimes matches the lyrics of the song.We decided that we would follow this with a video that has a storyline that follows the lyrics of the song which will help the audience understand the song.

The music video

As the bottom screenshot show we have used the domestic violence and relationship issue as the main theme of the video. The top screenshot is a part of the Alt-J which uses violence between a couple too, our video does have the same theme as the Alt-j video for Breezeblocks but the story line is very different. This demonstrates us following the same convention as Alt-J but also shows us going against conventions at the same time. We felt that the theme Alt-J used was different, controversial but successful. Love is a very common theme in music videos and music in general, we didn’t want it to be like every other video as this would misrepresent the band image of Alt-J.

The music video continued..

Throughout the video we challenged and conformed with several aspects of Andrew Goodwin’s theory that is in the book Dancing in the Distraction Factory. We used the common theme of the characters looking at/ for something in the video as do many music videos, however we only used this theme a little bit. As to stick to the music genre we didn’t use the visual aspect of the female body to attract viewers as we felt that this would be inappropriate for our target audience and wasn’t a feature of music videos in Alt-J’s genre of music. Our video contains a lot of intertextual references to horror films such as the chase through the woods and some of the violence scenes where confrontations in the relationship and arguments feature.

The music video continued..

As you can see on the posters we have followed the convention of using the album artwork on the poster to draw in any fans that might recognise the artwork. It also links them together in a sense as they are both using the same artwork and this shows that they are by the same band. We haven't used the artwork in the same way as we decided that the cover would look better as the background instead of completely copying the Alt-J tour poster.

During the research stage I found that most tour posters featured the album artwork for the album they were promoting on the tour, this helps link the tour and the album together to encourage their audience to purchase both.

The other features of the tour poster are quite basic and standard for tour posters such as dates of the tour and where you can buy tickets from. In small print at the bottom of most posters they include information of how to contact the band and all their social networking sites.

We actually followed most conventions that the tour poster displays as their isn’t much room for variation and as they have one purpose, to sell tickets for the tour, it would be silly for us to change something that proves so successful for almost every band in the world.

The tour poster

In our digipak we followed the conventions of Alt-J by using abstract art on the album cover. We feel this is a good representation of the image Alt-J have as they appear to be an abstract band producing abstract music which proves to be very popular. We also have very little text on the actual cover and display minimal text on the back cover with only the list of the songs, a barcode and information about the record label and producers. This is a common convention that we have followed and the back of most album covers are the same. The pictures below show that any album covers have the same features no matter what the genre of music.

Digipak