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

real media products?

Genre Characteristics.• There are 3 characteristics for a music video;

narrative, performance and concept based.• Narrative tells a story.• Performance is the band playing.• Concept contains an abstract notation, it doesn’t

really tell a story or link visuals to lyrics.

• As you can see at the start of our music video, we have a male character singing, (this is the concept) which then cuts to our characters going about their lives; this being the narrative of our music video. Within our music video, we have tried to tell a story of how me and my partner Kirsten have interpreted them. We both thought that the lyrics could be talking about how our chosen artist may feel towards another person, therefore we decided to base it around a couple that may like each other. However we didn’t want the whole music video just to be a story so we therefore decided to break it up with the performance, we took the idea from Eliza Doolittle’s song ‘pack up.’

A Relationship between visuals and lyrics.

• According to Goodwin a music video should contain a link between the visuals and lyrics.However music videos can be seen to go along with this principal or challenge it.You can see that in our music video we have tried too take the line ‘You make this feel like school,’ me and Kirsten have included a shot of our school as the camera comes down from a point of view at an angle. You can see this at 1 minutes and 15 seconds.Secondly where the lyrics read ‘And all I missed of my Christmas list was you,’ our video cuts to a shot of our female character, so that our audience identify what our character is missing. This can be seen 15 seconds into our music video.The reason we have done this is so that it puts an emphasis on the lyrics, this way our audience is injected with what is happening, so that they don’t question this; known as the hypodermic syringe.

1 minute and 15 seconds.

15 seconds.

Looking and Voyeurism.

• Looking at our music video I wouldn’t say that there was a notion of ‘voyeurism;’ the notion of looking, present within our media text. We were focusing more on ‘love,’ something that I feel we wanted to represent as something innocent; even thought our male character seems to find his feelings complicated. Me and Kirsten felt like we wanted to keep it secluded and not give the impression that someone else was watching. Our idea felt like it should be kept private.However 35 seconds into our music video, within the reflection of the car, a silhouette can be made out, which I have hi-lighted, and you can see that the figure is looking.

Brand Identity. • Across our music video, digipak and magazine

advert, me and Kirsten have tried to keep certain characteristics running through our three products. For example within our music video, in our performance shots we have tried to keep the background light, so that the environment that characters are in feels clear and calming. We have tried to reflect this in our album cover for our digipak, you can see that the album cover isn’t busy. You have the legs that appear to be walking out at a calm rate and the background; white and black floral pattern, which feels relaxing and comfy. Something we wanted our audience to relate to when listening to our chosen artist. Over our three products we have used the same font; Pristina, this is so that the audience recognise the font and begin to associate it with the Artist. The way we wrote Frank Hamilton was to have ‘Frank’ quite bold and then ‘Hamilton’ a bit under to the right and fainter than ‘Frank,’ we felt it looked visually appealing and professional.

My interpretation of The Who’s branding.

Intertextuality.

• Now when it came to the possibility of addressing ‘intertextuality’ within our music video or 2 ancillary tasks, me and Kirsten came to the decision that we didn’t want to include this aspect. We wanted to go against Goodwin’s Principals on this section because we felt that we wanted our products to be completely original; from the pictures I have included you can see that in our digipak, we have followed the conventional design to a digipak but the images and text used are off our own.Our magazine advert features a design which we feel is original, obviously we used the same layout as other digipak’s offer, but we didn’t make a reference to other media texts.Lastly within our music video we never intentionally meant to feature intertextuality, however I feel that other people who view our music video may consider that a certain aspect does reflect on incorporation of another media text.

Type of editing.

• To edit it our music video we used imovie on the Mac computers at school.

• We didn’t bulk out our music video with copious amounts of transitions or effects because we didn’t feel it worked well with our music video, therefore we decided that we would use enough that would make the music video run smoothly. In the end I think me and Kirsten had to use a ‘cross-blur’ transition from one shot to another in two parts of our video. The reason we used this was because it was a big jump from one shot to another and we didn’t want to startle the audience, so we made it ‘softer’ to view, by this I mean it wasn’t a harsh cut it just felt it built up to the next shot quite slowly when in realist it took 0.18 of a second.As you can see to the right hand side, this is the first section we blurred to make the transition process run smoothly, it can be seen at 16.18 seconds into our video.

Screenshot of our first cross blurred transition.

Conventions followed for our media product.• As you can see to the right side

of this slide is a collection of digipak’s, taken from www.google.co.uk/images, they are all fundamentally the same. By this I mean you can see that the CD is on the right hand side as the digipak is open. You have pictures with a small amount of writing on the left hand side.You can see in the ‘roadtrip nation’ digipak there is also a booklet inside, maybe something me and Kirsten could think about including?Then of course you have the front and back cover, which I imagine will reflect on the genre and way the artist is trying to be promoted.You can see in the digipak called ‘Groove’ the inside matches the outside design, it shows consistency, the same with ‘The Make Believe Band,’ with the simplistic white and black design and the white inner design, but the CD stands out because of the colour, maybe this was intentional.

For our digipak we took a template from the internet so we could work out the measurements and where things should be placed.

Front cover would be featured on the front of our digipak.

Artist name and album name would appear on the front, in our case the bottom left hand corner.

On the inside we wanted to have a bit of information about our record label, what song(s) is featured on this digipak and the Artists’ name again.

We decided to put the name again in the top left hand corner.

More of our record labels disclaimer rights.

Barcode.

CD will go here.

• As you can see from the previous slide, me and Kirsten have tried to keep our design simple to suit our genre. We will be trying to keep all of our products as simple as one another, but not so they look bland, we want our products to look appealing to grab an audiences attention.

• You can see from the image above that we have stuck to the plan we had which was shown on the previous slide. In my own opinion I feel that this design looks quite effective. You have the clear image on the front cover, with the artist name and album name on the front at the bottom left hand corner.Then on the back cover you have the artist name and album name featured again, with the record producers information followed by the barcode.

• As the previous slide shows, me and Kirsten specifically designed our digipak so that it would contain a small amount of information and look appealing.

• You can see that we have included the artists name again towards the top of the left hand side, followed by the track features on the CD. Then we have more information on the CD provided by the record producers. This is seen in the bottom left hand corner.Of course we then featured the actual CD with our track on, on the right hand side of our product.

Conventions followed for our magazine advert.

• These images to the right have been taken from www.google.co.uk/images, these three magazine advertisements I took are basically the same, they contain an image, or theme which takes up a lot of the space, the name of the band which is bold and stands out more than anything else, the album name near the Artist name and a few reviews.Looking at the pictures in depth, I would say that ‘Linkin Park’ has a rebellious feel, with the male character who looks to be spray painting something; you can’t make out what because of the angle the picture was taken at.Then when looking at ‘The Verve,’ I feel that their music would be upbeat in a sense because the picture is above the clouds, it looks as if it suggests a higher nature to the music. Like there could be more meaning to it.Finally looking at ‘The Vines,’ the theme of ‘vines’ are present, maybe to emphasise the bands name, it suggests to me the band are down to earth and that this may reflect within their music.

A Magazine layout.

We will make the image cover the whole advert, so it’s the background and then build up from there like in the other adverts we have looked at.

Looking at the other magazine adverts it appears as if having the title in the middle of the advert and album name is conventional, so we will most likely conform and do the same.

In the magazine adverts on the previous slide it has its information and reviews in the bottom left hand corner, which looks to be common so we are likely to do the same again, unless it doesn’t stand out from the background image.

• The image on the right is mine and Kirsten’s magazine advert for Frank Hamilton with You, Your Cat and Me. As you can see from the previous slides, we used the image as the whole background, then included the Artists name and Album name towards the middle of the advert. Also we included quotes which we made up from big established magazines which are heavily involved with music, we felt it was more believable that a magazine had commented on our Artist that we are trying to promote rather than an actual Artist.

Star Motifs• In our music video, me and Kirsten tried to include

a lot of close up’s of our ‘artist,’ this is to that our artist becomes recognisable. Record labels are seen to this a lot.

If you take the band ‘Coldplay’ for example, you can see that a lot of their songs include close up’s of the band members.

-Viva La Vida-Violet Hill-God Put a Smile On Your Face-Lovers In Japan-The Scientist

These are just a few examples.

As you can see from the images to the right the Coldplay band members all have close ups within their music video and you can see the same in ours’ the image in the bottom right is an example of this.

Overall

• In the end I feel that me and Kirsten have conformed with Goodwin’s principals in certain area’s, for example we have linked our lyrics to visuals within our music video, with the school and shot of our female character who is supposedly missing of our artists Christmas list.But on the other hand however we also decided not to incorporate some of the principals that Goodwin proposed into our music video. We just felt like we wanted something simple that the audience could understand without them having to figure out a deeper intention. As I said earlier I felt like me and Kirsten were trying to give the audience everything they needed to know, so that they didn’t question it, which is what the theory of the hypodermic needle is meant to achieve.