Thursday, 9 January 2014

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

Our main production uses the conventions of real media texts and also challenges them. After looking at different music videos we came up with different conventions that we want to use in our final product. We looked at different music videos that were suited to our genre of music and realised that many of these music videos are narrative and so we wanted to do a narrative music video. Also we noticed that the narrative storylines of the music videos that we watched were very melancholy and downbeat and that’s what we wanted to show to the audience. Watching the different music videos, we saw that there were different ways in which we could show the title of the song and artist(s). Some music videos have the titles in the corner, which I feel could sometimes go unnoticed so we wanted it be obvious to the audience what the song was called and who the song was by. After observing the music video for the acoustic version of ‘We Are Young’ by ‘FUN’ I saw that they used a title sequence that was controlled by the beat of the music and we both thought that this was really effective in making an audience watching a music video as it challenges regular conventions of music videos which makes it stand out from the crowd, and so as a result we used a title sequence that was different from other music videos.

Another convention that we followed was images/cinematography. Most narrative music videos that we watched used cinematography that captures how the characters feel and what mood they are in and because we want to tell a story we felt that the best way in doing so was showing the characters emotion through the cinematography, as using speech would distract the viewer from the music. Using shots such as close ups, establishing shots, long shots and mid shots make the audience feel a connection with the characters, which we believe, is vital for a music video. We also used other cinematography techniques such as a focus pull as it makes the video look more professional.

Our music video challenges forms and conventions of real media products mainly by the editing techniques that we used. Most music videos use continuity editing but we wanted to use discontinuity editing, such as when the protagonist gets numerous text messages from people about the loss of his brother, as this would make our video be distinct from the other videos.

Our first subsidiary task, which was the digi pack, used many different conventions of real life media products. After looking at many other professionals products we could make our digi pack to be more of a professional standard, we used conventions such as continuously using the same typography throughout, so for example we used the font ‘Brain flower’ for both the title of the album and also for the list of tracks on the album. Another convention that we noticed was that many albums have a message to their fans on the inlay and so we thought this looked professional and so we added a message from the artists to their fans. We also have the website and company that produces the album, including copyright information on the back of the album, which gives a professional and realistic feel to the digi pack. Lastly with many digi packs that we analysed they have the artist or a person on the front cover that is making eye contact with their audience. We also have our ‘artists’ making eye contact with the audience, because we feel that this will make the album eye catching to the audience and draw them in as they feel the album is looking right at them.


Finally our second subsidiary task, the advert, used many conventions that real life media products use. Many adverts that we analysed have a small amount of information on them and so we followed this convention by only including the title of the album, the date of release, how you can buy the album, the website, the band name and two reviews. Like the digi pack we used a picture that shows the ‘artists’ looking straight at the audience, which grabs the audiences attention. Furthermore we added some critic reviews praising the album, as seen in the Plan B advert that I analysed, because it highlights to the audience how good the album is and that you should buy it, which is the main reason for a music advertisement.

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