In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Molly Baker

Conventions: Website

There are many codes and conventions for website for music artists. One of the most important in my opinion is the artist name and logo, this instantly shows the audience who’s website it is and then when referenced in the future the audience know exactly who the artist is.

Another key and common convention is gigs and upcoming events that an artist is going to be at. This is so if the audience enjoys the music they can quickly look and find out where they can go and see them

Conventions: My Website

To follow conventions I studied past student examples to see what is possible to create with Wix. They created pages such as galleries, merchandise, up coming gigs and artist information pages. I also had a look at some professional artists websites to see if there was anything else I could include to give a more professional element to my website.

I concluded that I was going to include pages such as: info, gigs, gallery, and a contact page. I decided to include a limited number of pages to make the website easy to navigate around and to keep it simple.

I have also included the common convention of advertising an upcoming release so as to promote the single even more and so everybody knows about it.

Conventions: My Website

I have included a reoccurring theme throughout of autumn, all background are of the autumnal theme

The use of a logo and quote is used on the homepage, this establishes Hattie as an individual artist and it shows lots of thought has been taken into consideration when making this website. The quote is ‘Bring Music To Life’ which links to the fact that she is a musician and her music means more to her than just making money. Also this quote was used on the promotional poste/advert and website building synergy linking to the artist and her new release

Conventions: My Website

The use of a photo gallery with the events that Hattie has played at shows to people that she is a popular up and coming artist who is in popular demand. I included events such as Reading/Leeds festival and lots of festival photos as the age range for my target audience can relate to these more as they are they age range that go to festivals generally.

I have also left links on every page of social media that Hattie uses, again this will be so that the target audience can have a personal involvement with Hattie’s life creating that link between them

Conventions: Poster The album release poster has the reoccurring theme of autumn and

the use of the ‘eyes photo’ this occurs throughout our music video as it is of the two girls in it, but also so everything builds together in synergy to the final product which is our music video. The poster contains the same font as on the website as I wanted everything to flow together and not be disjointed. I used the conventions such as music companies on the bottom of my poster to make it seem much more professional if many well known companies were backing it. The font we used was called Arton, which was available on Wix however it is not available to download for free. I had to use the sample text box to type what I needed and then screenshot the words, when in photoshop I then used the magic wand to select the text that I needed and enter it onto the advert, it took some time however it was worth it for the final effect.

Conventions: Poster For my first draft on my poster this was the

result:although pleased with the results there were still some slight gaps that I thought needed to be filled. When looking at other previous examples they had included reviews, these were perfect to just apply and easily fit into the space to make it filled out more but not too crowded.

The final result is on the next slide

Conventions: Poster Finally the other convention I used when making my

poster is to make sure all products and all information links together and don’t overlap or contradict themselves. For this I put the website in which you can purchase tickets from and also Hattie’s personal website which means that people who see the poster can automatically find more information about the artist, who she is and what she does. It is a common convention to include information such as this and to publicise the artist as much as possible without it being directly noticed. So having it in the bottom tab makes it subtle but also noticeable if people want to look for it.

Conventions: Video The video fits the conventions of a typical

pop music video.

Pop videos are known for their narrative storylines, but also for the performance of the artist.

My music video fits this as it combines both together. There is a clear divide between each section with the performance element being in black and white with narrative being in vivid colour

Conventions: Video My music video fits the conventions of a stereotypical

music video, as it contains lots of close ups of the artist and she is always the focal point throughout the music video.

The shots of the flashbacks are fluid within the action that is happening on the screen this is so that it feels more like a story fitting the narrative part of the music video.

The use of colour to show mood is present during both performance and narrative part of the video. The flashbacks are bright and vivid to show happiness and the performance is in black and white showing a darker time.

Goodwin’s Theories There are links to the lyrics and visuals

within my music video, for example the lyrics ‘look into my eyes’ is shown with a shot of Hattie looking into the camera on the beat. We are going to turn that shot into a split screen with Maddie looking into the camera a the same time.

There is also a link between music and visuals, throughout the music video there are beats which are chords played on the piano we use this to change shot and also to actually show the chord being played on the piano

Goodwin’s Theories The use of close ups is a Goodwin theory

that the record label will require lots of close ups throughout the music video. This shows the audience who they should be looking at as they are the most important on screen.

There are lots of reoccurring themes such as love, friendship, also family shown mainly through the flashbacks when Hattie and Maddie are together and when Hattie and her mum are arguing.

Breaking Stereotypes

We tried to break the stereotype of lesbians being big, butch and looking like men.

We chose Hattie and Maddie to star in the music video as this meant that people weren’t suddenly going to assume they were lesbians they had to watch the music video to find this out.

We dressed the girls in ordinary clothes (Hattie – Skirt and Shirt. Maddie – Dress) this gave the impression the start with that the girls were just friends however as the video progresses the audience finds out the Demon is that they are together but Hattie’s parents aren’t happy with it.