Evaluation Question 1:In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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

The task that I had to undertake was to create a:

·         Music Video for a song

·         Digipak for the album

·         Magazine advert for the album release

To create my music video successfully I referred to Goodwin’s Six Points

The first point states that music videos demonstrate genre characteristics.               

This means a successful video will use conventions of the genre it fits into. From my research of existing music videos I found some reoccurring conventions of the indie genre are:

·         Grainy filters to give a gritty home video feel

·         Black and white or de-saturation filters

·         Instruments being played and band performance elements

·         Low budget

·         Everyday events

·         Indie dress sense and hair cuts

·         Narrative running with lyrics

·         And sometimes a mixture of narrative and performance by the band

I think I succeeded in using these conventions in my music video as:

·         I used a mix of narrative and band performance: the first half used everyday activities like the singer waking up and brushing his teeth etc. the second half being like most indie videos and containing a performance element by the band with some narrative cut into it.

·         I applied a black and white filter to the start of the video to emphasise the dull nature of the singers lifestyle.

·         I think I styled the band members appropriately for the type of music that they produce and I used plenty of different shot type and angles of the performance including close ups of the singer’s mouth to put emphasis on the lyrics and of the cymbal hits to highlight the drum line

·         I filmed it using a commercially available camcorder so the quality is not comparable to industrial standard footage that is often used in pop or hip-hop videos, this gives a grainy quality when seen on a full sized screen so matches the gritty, low budget home- video sense which links to the homemade, indie ethos.

·         The video was low budget as the only expense was for the alarm clock which I bought, as I didn’t have a clock like this to use already. I could have used any type of clock but I thought that it would be more memorable if I used this iconic style clock and the image of this clock could perhaps later form part of a brand image for the artist.

Goodwin’s second point states that there is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting):

For my video I thought it was best to interpret the lyrics very literally as I thought this would make better footage and would add a slight light-hearted side to some of the video for example the intertextual reference that I will touch on a bit later on.

• In the section of the song that says "everyday I seem to turn around, I'm on my back again" – If someone is described as being on their back, it usually refers to them being in some kind of helpless situation, or stuck in a rut but this would be difficult to portray in a shot so I took a literal stance and used the imagery in the lyrics to represent him on his back in bed. I therefore got the front man of the band to roll over in bed to switch off the alarm clock, and then roll onto his back again. Hence reflecting the lyrics.
• For the lyric "looking outside and the sky is black" - looking out of the window onto landscape, dull sky, rows of houses- council houses.
• I used some interesting camera shots one of which for "this room I'm living in" - transitional camera spin in a circle, camera positioned centrally to the room, spun so whole room is seen but room/walls blur together
• "if these four walls keep closing in"- transitional shots, zooms from medium shot of singer to extreme close-up so the shot is now plain/obscured. Repeat from the other sides of the singer to imitate the room getting smaller
• "we're wasting time and space"- time lapse film of alarm clock, seeing the hands move through many minutes and hours in a few seconds of video
• "As Groundhog Day comes round"- interpreted as a reference to the film of the name "Groundhog Day" in which the protagonist gets stuck waking up in the same day over and over again. Here I repeated the footage from the beginning up to the current point with the speed increased. This gave the impression that his is a monotonous, repetitive daily routine that we are fast forwarding through.

Third point- There is a relationship between music and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).

The music will intrinsically link with the video as the shots will be edited to change on the beat of the song therefore tying the song and the footage together into one piece nicely and it is just that bit more effective when the beat of the video matches to the shot changing.

Fourth Point-The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style).

• I have used lots of shots of the artists in the video, especially of Chris the front man in the video. He is the most dominant person in the band therefore is seen the most so the audience will create a closer, more personal relationship with him than the other band members and he will become the representative image of the band. To do this is used lots of close-ups, when the singer is lip syncing. The performance would satisfy the record label as the audience would get to see what the members of the band look like very quickly and will gain an impression of what the personality of the band is like from the video

Fifth point- There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.

• I considered including a shot of the singer picking up a photo frame containing a picture of a girl in the first half of the video, therefore the audience will assume this is the person is dreaming of better days with- "cause I dream of better days with you now". However this will not appear voyeuristic, but create a sense of longing by the male singer/protagonist.
• I decided not to include a shot like this as I didn’t think it was necessary and brought in a whole new aspect to the narrative and I wanted to keep it simple I also didn’t include voyeurism because this is not a feature of indie pop videos that I have watched

Sixth point-There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV programmes, other music videos etc).

• The song lyrics include the line "As groundhog day goes round" - I interpret this lyric to be referencing the film Groundhog Day, in which the protagonist gets stuck in a loop, waking up and living the same day over and over again. I believe the lyric is referring to that meaning of the phrase, as the term Groundhog Day has to many people, come to be a synonym for repeating something many times, instead of the literal meaning of the day of celebration on 2nd February.
• For this part I skipped back to the beginning of the video and repeated the footage up to the current point speeding up the footage. This gave a sense that his life is monotonous and repetitive

Digipak and advert:

From looking at existing digipaks I found that the most common format is the plastic Jewel CD case.

I used this format to make my front and back cover. Existing digipaks I noticed had little things on them that make them more trustable and authentic like barcodes, copyright notices, record label logos and producers, compact disc digital audio label etc.

I made sure I used these on my covers to increase reality of the media product.

On the Advert I included retailers logos on the bottom as well as the twitter name of the band so that fans of the band can follow them on twitter and add them on facebook etc. as well as visit their website.