Q1: IN WHAT WAYS DOES THE MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS

Jason Garside

Narrative In our product, we use the convention

of using a narrative to be shown as the music video alongside with the artist performing. This use of convention is done in our video with the cuts of the scenes for the narrative and splitting them apart with various shot of the artist performing.

In this shot, we see the two characters arguing for the very first scene. This is to set the mood and the problem of the narrative straight away. This is a convention for a mainstream music video. It is used in music videos’ such as ‘break up’ by ‘Mario’ . The shot shows the male character being more dominant in the argument where he is making more action than the female character which is commonly seen in mainstream music videos.

The use of a relationship for a narrative is also using a convention for a mainstream music video as it appeals for the audience who watches it.

Male character conventions Our male character is shown to be a

teenager who has just walked out of a relationship in a angry manner. But his journey through a series of emotions is what the music video portrays. He is upset at the start but then he starts to think of what has happened. This then turns into regret and then his will to fix what has happened.

This series of emotion from him is developing from a convention for a male character in mainstream music videos as many music videos portray the male characters on screen as a strong character with a strong attitude and style. An example would be ‘Robin Thicke’ for the song ‘Blurred Lines’ he is shown as a confident person and one emotion and attitude.

However, we have the other side of the male characters’ range of personas with a character that is loving for the female characters on screen. An example would be the character for ‘Bad Day’ by ‘Daniel Powter’ where the male character is shown to be a ‘real person’ who shows care and courtesy for social surroundings…

Male character conventions Our male character

represents both sides of the personas’ range as he shows his angry side as a character but also his loving side which represents to the audience that he is ‘only human’ and this development of a convention means the audience can relate to him more as he acts just like what any male audience may encounter in their lives.

For this shot, we have used a high angle shot on the character to represent his low emotion and loneliness which connects with his action of looking up into the sky, a desperate way to seek for guidance conventionally shown on music videos and other media products.

Costume conventions for male character The male character is shown to be wearing

casual jeans and jumper. This is typical clothing that male teenagers would wear in day to day lives. This use of clothing is used to show that the character is comfortable with his appearance no matter what he is wearing when he is with his girlfriend. This shows the relationship was strong before the break-up.

This use of costume is challenging the conventions for a character in a mainstream music video. This is because characters in other music videos are shown with the latest fashion in order to set a trend for the audience. Or on the other hand, they are shown to be wearing ‘loud’ colours or clothing that is not mainly worn for day to day use. This includes sport jerseys’, extra large chains around their necks or tank tops.

Our character is used for a representation of teenage boys where the audience can relate to and not a character that the audience can aspire to. This is why we have chosen his costume to relate to audience members

Female character conventions

we have shown our female character as a pretty but vulnerable character. Her screen time is not as long as the male characters’ screen time. This is because the angle of the music video is mainly the males side of the break-up. This is challenging the convention for a mainstream music video as a mainstream music video normally show both sides of the relationship with roughly equal screen time.

She is shown to have upsetting emotions throughout the music video that gives the overall impression that she is upset in what has happened between her and her boyfriend and that she wants everything back to how it was.

Her persona and the way she acts, uses the convention for most female characters in a music video. Women are shown with a weaker emotion in comparison to a males emotion which is directly shown with this video. An example of this is the music video for ‘Give Me Love’ by ‘Ed Sheeran’ where the female character is shown at the start with sad expressions and emotions and wishing for a happy relationship which is what our female character acts and needs for her to be happy.

Costume conventions for female character We have chosen our female character to

wear a costume that shows that she makes an effort in what she is wearing when she is meeting up with her boyfriend. The costume she is wearing is also something a typical teenager would wear .

This is challenging the convention for women’s costumes on mainstream music video as they are typically shown with lack of clothes or showing off parts of their body that are known to please men. This convention is not used at all for our media product as we are representing the band to its franchise to be clean for the music industry which is reflected on the costume we use for both characters. Examples of this are ‘Britney Spears’ music video ‘Work’ where the women are wearing hardly any clothing.

In this shot, we have the female character lying on the sofa with the eyes fixed on a point on the other side of the room showing that she is in deep thought and worrying which is showed with her crossed arm. This conventional pose goes with the emotional conventions of a female character who has just broken up with their boyfriend. This high angle shows how vulnerable she is when she is like this and alone. This uses the convention of a women who is in need of company or love.

Conventions in relation to the artist For the shots of our artist, we have given him

interior and exterior locations where he performs in the same location as where the narrative is being taken place. This gives the effect that the narrative and the narrative are connect by his appearance that split the narrative scenes.

The use of the artist in the same scenes as the characters, uses a convention for mainstream music videos. An example of this is ‘Bad day’ by Daniel Powter.

This scene features the artist in a long shot of him performing on his guitar. He is shown slightly to the left of the centre of the screen. This is another use of a convention.

Showing the artist playing the instrument that is heard on the soundtrack is also another convention used in our product. Many other music videos feature the artist showing their talent on the musical instrument that they can play.

We have used a coloured filter that overlays the scene that covers the artist in a particular colour. This shows that the artist is bringing out the colour to the music video where the narrative is mainly black and white. It symbolises that there is light in the world even if it seems grey and sad at times. This effect is challenging conventions for a music video as it is rare to see a mono colour being shown on screen like we have placed. However, it is put in to bring colour and interest in the music video.

Solo conventions For a rock group, the solo is where the

musicians can show off their talent even more. This is what we are aiming for this shot shown. We can see the artist is shown with a canted angle tracking shot in a semi circle motion where he plays throughout the solo in front of a car with the headlights at full beam. This shot is conventional as many bands uses a backlight behind the members to bring light into the shot and also highlighting the members giving them a great lighting effect. The brightness of the shot is used very well as mostly the shots before this one appears is black and white and so that emphasizes this shot greatly when the negative transition is also used between the narrative and the solo.

The movement is also conventionally used to show all angles of when the musicians are playing. Moving the camera from left to right is conventional by letting the audience feel welcome to watch and draws them in to see what else will be in shot.

The artists’ costume is the same costume as he uses throughout. This is casual clothing like the male character. This shows that he is no different to the male character which is what we are trying to show. This is a strong challenging convention as many artists wear branded clothing or outspoken clothing that is not normally shown in the ‘real world’ the artist we are portraying is not used for trend setting either but used for relation purposes with the audience.

•The use of the house in the background also connects the artist and the narrative together as it’s the same house the female character lives in. a good convention that is emphasised even in the solo.

Effects This effect being shown is the same shot but the black and

white fades away when he realises what to do to fix his sadness. The colour of the screen reflects on the characters emotions so this shot is perfect for the change in emotion for the male character. The use of effects to reflect on the characters’ emotion challenges the conventions for characters’ emotion portrayal as many music video wants the audience to work out what they are feeling and want them to guess what is happening. Whereas, we are using symbolising for the emotion that may not be a clear connection for the audience, but it is there.

The change of the colour in this scene works well as it changes pretty quickly at the end of the cut which then combines with the next shot of the solo where the negative beginning is shown. Both use of the colour on film works well when they are cut together as it fades the colour in and not a sudden change.

The bottom shot on this slide shows the start of the solo which features the overlay of the scene becoming brighter than any other shot on the music video. We used a negative overlay to go with the start of this cut which gives an original effect. This effect is a development of a mainstream music video convention as many videos features creative ways to add colour and effect to a shot in a ‘real’ music video. The use of the negative matches this convention but only for a limited time. This is because we wanted to feature an introduction effect to the solo shot but not an effect that lasts throughout the cut.

Throughout the video, we have used a transparent layer that shows the video with an iris effect around the screen. This is to give the professional effect that many music videos use to separate an amateur video and a professional one as the surroundings are darkened which gives focus to what is being shown in the centre of the screen.

Goodwins’ points Goodwins’ points are used as part of the

mainstream music videos’ conventions. We have followed with his points throughout our media product including the one featured on the right with the lyrics: ‘can’t let you turn the page’ the combined lyrics and the actions on screen fulfil the lyric-visual relation point where the lyric that is heard and what is shown on screen relate. This is also featured for our two shots of the artist and male character walking in the same scene but the artist singing the lyrics: ‘I don’t wanna be left behind’ as he walks behind the male character.

We’ve also used the music visual relation point from Goodwin in when we introduce the solo. Where the music brings an upbeat to the song, the video also upbeats with extra colour and brightness and the unique camera angle. This means we are using one of the conventions for a mainstream music video.

We have attempted to sell the artist with the wide variety of shot angles and appearances throughout the video. This includes many close ups of the artists’ face which would help to sell the artist which is another Goodwin point

Using shots of the artist performing with the guitar depicts the rock genre out of the song as these fulfil parts of the rock genre conventions. But also adding the narrative, we are also fulfilling conventions that are used for slow songs in the mainstream genres.

However, we have not used any voyeurism or intertextuality as we believed this is not suitable for our target audience or the theme of the song.

Digipak conventions For our digipak we have used all images taken by our group. We have

cleared each image with unwanted objects such as goal posts and white lines on the field. This is to keep the image as natural as possible to relate to the band as a clean and friendly band which sells the artist well which is one of the conventions of a mainstream digipak as it is used to sell the artist as much as possible which we have done with the multiple images of him in a similar surrounding.

The use of the guitar is used as a symbol that relates to the artist and therefore sells him even further as many audience members would recognise this guitar and relate it to the band ‘daughtry’. Maintaining to keep the audience remembering the artist and objects that are related to him is a good way for more sales which makes this a good convention which we used.

Most mainstream digipaks feature around 12 tracks from the artist and bonus features which relates to the making and inside material about the band which is what we have followed.

Digipak continued…

For the back cover, we have used the guitar for recognition for the band except the image is blurred and darken in order for the text to stand out. However, the guitar can still be seen but it is subtle. This use of blurred images for the background for the back of the digipak is used for many mainstream digipak images. For example, ‘ellie goulding’s ‘ album back cover for ‘bright lights’ gives an image of lights but it is blurred so that the audience doesn’t know what the focus is. (shown bottom right image)

This also shows that the image of one face of a cover is carried on for the spine of the cover which is what we have done for our interior of our digipak.. We have used this convention of following the image for the spine.

All the images used are related to each other which is another convention for a digipak where all of the faces of a digipak have the same theme. We have used a natural theme of a field and the sky and the viewing of the artist with his guitar. This theme is used throughout the digipak.. An example of this convention is used for the digipak where the image of the mask and the colours are used throughout the digipak.

Magazine advert conventions For our magazine ad, we have used the digipak’s album cover

as the advert. This is to ensure the audience would recognise the album cover when it is available in store by the use of the image on the magazine advert. This uses the convention for a mainstream marketing campaign as shown in the examples (shown left) as they use their digipak cover as the magazine advert.

We have shown directly where the audience can buy the digipak by using the logos of retailers such as ‘hmv’ and ‘iTunes’ this is a development of a convention for a magazine ad as they mainly tell the audience that it is available on CD or as a download but it is uncommon to find a retailers logo on a magazine advert. We think this works well as it is a direct way for the audience to buy the product.

The text that they use for their magazine advert is used for their digipak and album cover. This is a convention for most genres of music in their adverts and products.

We have featured reviews of the digipak at the bottom of the advert from magazines that would be related to the genre of music. We have used ‘Kerrang’ and ‘Q’ these two magazines are related with the rock genre as their focus. This is challenging a convention for a magazine advert as they are not common to be found on magazine adverts as they are reviews from other magazines. However, we believe that these magazines that gave a review would be the magazines that the magazine advert would feature in and therefore it is suitable. The good review would make the audience believe that the digipak is worth buying and therefore will be encouraged to buy it.

The spacing of the text is also conventional as most of the information is featured at the bottom of the magazine advert as it gives the image the limelight of the centre of the magazine advert as it is the eye catching part of the advert.