A2 Media – Connor Hutton

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

Music Video ConventionsR & B genre has a lot music videos that follow a lot of conventional patterns.

• Most of the music videos have a linear romantic narrative.

• Display of different luxury costumes which is something that attract the audience to the artist

• Narrative story is linked heavily to the lyrics within the song

• Interaction with the camera such as hand gestures and eye-contact is a big feature that allows the artist to relate intimately with the audiences.

•A range of locations are used, from public and private environments such as a bar to a bedroom. This again allows the audience to have a wider variety of features to relate to

Interaction with Camera

This is something that the audience appreciates and makes them feel involved with the artist. We felt interaction like eye contact and repeated gestures and movements made a much better performed video for the audience to relate to. We felt this created a much more engaging video and we have seen this same thing done in successful music videos from the same genre.

Theme of Romance

In this shot we addressed the intimate themes of love and romance which is conventional of the genre. These shots were made as flashbacks to create our narrative and we wanted them to suggest a break up with the girl the artist loves. We feel that the action in this shot is something the audience can relate to therefore we felt it was most effective to get an emotional response from the audience. We wanted to create this more emotional narrative to compliment the performing scenes as we wanted to include features that made our artist seem more vulnerable as this is very relatable to our target audience. This use of narrative is seen throughout the genre.

Use of Narrative

In these mid shots we suggest the emotions of the character feeling regret for breaking up with the girl he loves. We know this is a successful narrative from other videos we have seen. We wanted to include this narrative so our video wasn’t one dimensional with just performance. Again we feel that this very conventional narrative shows a clear image and representation of our artist that we know is already successful within the genre.

Location & Costume Change

Our range of locations present different atmospheres. We compliment the location with the costumes of the artist to show off a fashionable style. Shown here in these screen shots we see two different contrasts in both costume and location and which both represent different moods the songs suggest. We tried to do this by using a focused colour corrections which is conventional of R&B music videos. We feel the audience appreciates the change in costume and location and we aimed it to be trendy and something the audience enjoys.

Lip Syncing

We shot a number of different scenes repeated, some of which were not used, just so we knew we would have enough footage to create perfect lip syncing. We used post production time well to create fast and on the beat editing which is a feature of many R&B music videos. We were able to cut to many different sequences but still keep the conventional lip syncing continuity. We felt confident with the fast tempo song ‘Can You Feel Me’ as we knew the rhythmic editing on the beat would keep our audience entertained throughout our music video.

Digipak Conventions• Digipaks always have the name of the artist and album name (usually on the front)

• Tracklist is either used on the back of the digipak or on one of the inside panels

• Promotional record label image is present

• Credit to composers and producers of the album

• We felt for more recent digipaks we should include:

• Social network information such as links to Facebook an Twitter pages.

• Promotional offers and deals to engage the audience and artist.

Album Cover The front cover of the digipak conventionally has an artist image in which we tried to present a clean cut stylish artist with the edited image and use of a suit.

Evidently there is just use of white coloured font so we again allow easy focus for the most needed details for the audience

We feel we created a mature and confident artist with this image and this is conventional of the genre as a lot of R&B artists are known for their style and have many people aspire to them.

Back CoverThis shows the back of the digipak which includes both the tracklist and also a promotional DVD list which is a more modern feature of Digipaks

We followed the obvious convention to include the barcode for pure authenticity of the album

The simple background and text with contrasting colours allows an easy focus for any audience.

Inside

These are two of the inside panels in our digipak that show a edited close up shot of the artist which we felt looks like a modern photo compared to raw images, this again added to the image of our artist which is key in branding him. We included social details which is new convention as it much more common for the audience to have a much more involved and intimate relationship with the artists they like.

Magazine Advert Conventions

These magazines adverts main use to promote the artist and sell his albums to as wide of an audience as possible. Artists do this a lot to gain as much coverage as possible. Some conventional features are:

• Release date of the album

• Record label to add promotional value

• Information on purchasing

• Artist image

• Artist name

• Album name

MagazineWe used a star rating to add an authentic review of the upcoming release. We wanted to keep spotlight on the image so we chose a minimalist yet effective quote. The remaining text is the conventional release date a album name/artist name. Eye catching image to be attractive to the audience. Same image and style of font that links to the digipak. Emphasis on the very mature looking image as we realised it was conventional to display a clear spotlight on the representation of the artist through his looks.