Evaluation Question 1

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

forms and conventions of real media products?

When beginning the project I conducted research in to existing products to understand codes and conventions of different genres. Part of my research included the indie-rock genre and the poop genre. Our product is a mixture of both of these styles creating indie-pop. Therefore when creating our product I could apply these conventions of real media products.

In terms of camera, we used conventions of the indie genre throughout our video. For example, establishing shots were used at the beginning of the video. How ever, this contrasts the genre as in our video’s establishing shots show the setting and surrounding rather than band performance. Although, throughout the video shots are shown of the artist playing the guitar which connotes the indie genre.

Mise-en-scene was a key feature of representing of genre. Key props were used such as the guitar and peacocks. These were used throughout to link to the song lyrics and narrative. The appearance of the artist was also adapted to fit into our genre. We dressed the protagonist in basic style indie clothing such as black skinny jeans, a white tshirt and vans shoes. For the audience, this allows them to recognise the costume of the protagonist and link this to stereotypes that they recognise such as the indie genre. The appearance of the artist was significant in genre representation as if we had dressed the protagonist differently, perhaps in all black and red, a different genre would be deciphered such as punk or rock.

Indie artists tend to make music for themselves rather than the industry; therefore large-scale production videos are unnecessary. In relation to our product we applied this in several ways, for example in the album digipack and album poster. When selecting images to use we decided to use images that didn’t contain the artists face, instead we created icons through the scenery and props such as the guitar.

The narrative in our production both challenges and develops real conventions. In any music video the narrative is key to representing and explaining the song in a visual way to attract the audience. However, in an indie music video the narrative commonly takes focus on the band/artist musical performance such as playing the guitar. Large scale productions are unnecessary for this genre as the key focus and intention of the artist is to promote their music rather than their own image/identity. As we mixed genres with indie-pop our production contains features of this and develops the real conventions. Many parts of our video show the protagonist singing/playing guitar, however it doesn’t glamourize his image which would likely to be seen in pop videos. In terms of narrative in the indie genre it is usually deeper than those in pop music due to the more sensitive writing of the song. The narrative of the song is based around love and romance therefore the lyrics are deep and meaningful and this is echoed in the cinematography.