A2 Media Studies - Use, Develop or Challenge

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

What are the generic conventions of Indie-Pop music videos?

When carrying out my music video analysis, I picked a selection of music videos to study, each of them for different reasons.

Each of the music videos shown, “Thinking of You” by Katy Perry, “Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey, and “You’ll Be Mine” by The Pierces; their genres are variations on Indie Pop, our song’s genre: “Is He Really Coming Home?” e.g. Pop (“Thinking of You”), Indie Rock (“Young and Beautiful”) and Indie Pop (“You’ll Be Mine”). The similarity in genre means that I can identify what the generic conventions are of Indie Pop and use the music videos as inspiration and deciding which conventions I want to use, develop or challenge in my own promo.

Katy Perry’s “Thinking of You” was also chosen specifically because our music video plotline is very similar e.g. a couple divided by war, with the female left at home “moving on” with another man. As a result the music video will be a great source of inspiration when filming as well as planning.

Generic Conventions?

Caucasian, female artist

When researching existing Indie-pop artists, we found that most are Caucasian, there being a minority of non-white artists within the genre. As a result, Phoebe, a member of our group and a Caucasian female, volunteered to act as the artist and we styled her as Cara Smith, choosing to use the convention.

Generic Conventions?

Combination of narrative and performance-based video

The majority of Indie-pop music videos are performance-based, however, quite a few are dually narrative-based, which is what we made our music video. Our music video drew inspiration from Katy Perry’s “Thinking Of You” in particular as the promos were both very similar in storyline and soldier-coming-home idea. As a result we used the convention, “Is He Really Coming Home?” being a strong mix of narrative and performance.

One example of the music video “Thinking of You” being narrative based is the shot below:

The video cuts to a panning shot of the female character’s new lover while the line “I guess second best is all I will know” is sung, referring to the fact that she will have to settle for someone who won’t ever really replace her past love.

Performance Shot; artist missing and thinking of her lover, a soldier gone to war Narrative Shot; flashback to couple

hugging at the end of a date

Narrative Shot; artist attempting to move on with another man but he doesn’t fill the place the soldier did Narrative Shot; soldier running

home

Generic Conventions?

Use of Effects

The use of visual effects and entrance and exits effects such as “Fade” was a generic convention of Indie-pop music videos. The Pierces’ “You’ll Be Mine” features a colourwash effect throughout the course of the music video and Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” has a fuzzy, aged, darkening effect which adds to the vintage, 1920’s feel of the promo. We used this convention, adding a range of effects to different shot sequences throughout the music video to show the differing time periods and separate shots, using effect like “Black and White”, “Strife” and “Teal Orange”.

Katy Perry’s “Thinking of You” used “Fade” to transition between a couple of shots, a convention we mimicked in quite a few transitions, such as the ending where the shot of the soldier hesitating to knock on the door fades to black. However, we developed the convention by using other transitions, such as “Bloom” when the shot sequence of the couple’s first meeting begins and ends.

Fade

In

In Bloom

In

Generic Conventions?

Performance close-ups and extreme close-ups

A demand of the record companies and a generic convention of most music videos as well as Indie-pop music videos is the need for performance close-ups and extreme close-ups. When carrying out my existing music videos analysis homework, I found this convention was followed through on every example we looked at, Katy Perry’s “Thinking of You”, Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” and The Pierces’ “You’ll Be Mine”, and realised it was one we had to include. The videos were filled with close-ups and extreme close-ups and they were often during performance shots of the artist singing.

Kirsty and Phoebe used the Friday of half term to film Phoebe (who played our artist) performing the song 3-4 times continuously, pure performance shots. Kirsty filmed her from a range of angles and positions, which meant we had a nice selection of shots to intersperse between the narrative shots, and used most of the close-ups and extreme close-up shots in order to use the generic convention.

Generic Conventions?

Neutral colour schemes

We used the generic convention of neutral colour schemes throughout our music video. A lot of the footage was shot in locations were there was natural light and toned-down, subtle colours on the set e.g. outside in gardens or parks, and Phoebe’s bedroom is very vintage and indie, feature neutral colours and a large window which let in the sunlight. We also added various filters to neutralise the colour scheme of the shots e.g. “Teal Orange” and “Strife”, although opposites, both made the colour scheme more natural and subtle, adding a dated look, furthering the realism of the video and following through on the convention.

Generic Conventions?

Shots of nature and scenery

When doing my Existing music video analysis homework, each of the music videos I looked at except for Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” had shots of nature and scenery interspersed throughout the music video. Both Katy Perry’s “Thinking of You” and The Pierces “You’ll Be Mine” had snippets of nature themed footage and scenery, and although that particular Lana Del Rey music video didn’t have any in it, a range of her other songs and their music videos heavily include nature and wildlife throughout.

In our music video, we knew from the beginning we wanted to use nature filler shots interspersed between footage of the narrative and performance shots and finding out it was a generic convention of Indie-pop music videos only cemented the decision. Some of the shots were shot on camera during the various shoots and other I filmed on my walk home, in people’s gardens or just filming the sunset as I walked up my hill.

Generic conventions of Indie-Pop digipack?

Digipack research, similar to my music video analysis, was crucial in identifying what the generic conventions of Indie-pop digipacks were. Finding examples of digipacks was a struggle as they aren’t a very popular way of packaging CDs, unlike plastic albums and, so rather than search for any random digipacks, I chose to research albums which were made by Indie-pop artists we’d used in the website research as well.

The continuation in genre meant that the similarities I found were definitely Indie-Pop generic conventions and I was comfortable that I gathering inspiration from products similar to ours, rather than random artist’s work which were a world away from ours. I found a nice selection of pieces, a couple of disc holders, a track list and a range of front cover which I could use to influence not only our front cover panel, but other panels which were mainly images.

Generic Conventions?

Colourful, vibrant design

I challenged this convention when designing our digipack. Although the various examples of Indie-pop albums I looked at did have colourful, vibrant colour schemes, our album is a little more subtle and classy, understated rather than shouting for attention. I chose to use very light, or dark pastel colours instead of bright, vibrant shades, like in Katy Perry’s “Prism” album or Gabrielle Aplin’s “The power of love”, and the images used, such as the merged photos of the Track list, Disc holder and Back cover panels are more delicate and minute than bold and all-encompassing.

I wanted to avoid the over-the-top bright designs convention due to the fact that our artist’s personality/vibe is more vintage and classy, understated than bright and bold. Also, as “Water On Glass” was her debut album I felt she needed to promote her style more obviously, not follow what the generic conventions of that genre are but present herself as an individual, which would also make her more memorable to potential fans being targeted.

Generic Conventions?

Album Cover: The Name of the artist and Title of the album are large and in the centre of the cover

A fairly obvious generic convention of most albums, not just those of the Indie-pop genre, is that the name of the artist and title of the album are large, bold and in the middle of the cover. This is probably due to the need to clarity and the producers likely are eager to broadcast the artist and her music clearly, attracting customers and general interest.

For our digipack, I did exactly this, using the convention by having the title of the album sat at the top of the front cover, with the artist’s name at the bottom. Both are written in Zapfino font, and while in Photoshop, Sir advised me on making the writing bolder using the various effects available on the program. I added features like glow, outline, and shadow to the words to make them really stand out against the image, rather than painting them in same garish colour instead, and the outcome was a really professional looking digipack.

Generic Conventions?

Images of the artist

Images of the artist are used throughout the digipack, I made sure. When researching digipacks, everyone of them included an image of the artist on the front cover, and then photographs of the artist in different poses and frames in various other panels.

In our digipack, we used this convention by using images of the artist on 6/6 of the panels. The Gallery panel includes a range of images of the artist in rehearsals or performing, the CD in the disc holder is a merged image of the artist performing and a Google Images picture of an umbrella, and the rest of the panels all feature blown-up images with a frame around them or some kind of effect added to image e.g. the back and front cover are both black and white.

Generic Conventions?

Plain, simple CD design e.g. Block colours and distinct repeated font writing artist name

When designing the digipack, I challenged this convention by having a detailed, delicate image printed onto the CD which completes the picture on the disc holder panel which inserted into the digipack. It is the exact opposite of what the two artists I looked at did for their CD’s, e.g. Nina Nesbitt had a block red coloured background on the disc and Eliza Doolittle's was grey. Both had a stylised, statement font writing the name of the artist in the middle.

In contrast, our CD has a merged picture of birds (found on Google.com/Images) and a photograph of the artist playing the guitar. It does have a stylised font, Zapfino, writing the name of the artist on the CD but also features the track list written in the middle as well as Copyright statement at the bottom of the CD.

Generic conventions of Indie-Pop websites?

Website research was carried out by Kirsty, who was also designing the website for our artist, Cara May Smith. When choosing existing products to study for inspiration, Kirsty went down a similar route to me, where she looked at artists who were of the same genre to ours. Artists she looked at, based on similarity to our genre, were singers like Taylor Swift, Nina Nesbitt and Eliza Doolittle, and the fact that they are all female soloist makes them more appropriate to study as they hold further similarities to our artist who is also a female soloist. Studying a male soloist or band might be harder to gather inspiration from as the target audience would be different and the generic conventions harder to identify.

Generic Conventions?Pages: “News”, “Music”, “Video”, “Gallery”, “Tours”, “Store”

Taylor Swift’s website

Eliza Doolittle’s website

Nina Nesbitt’s website

After carrying out the website research, Kirsty had to design various pages the fans could access on the site. The website research outlined the conventional pages most artist websites have, such as “News”, “Music”, “Video”, “Gallery”, “Live”, and “Store” as well as a Home page the visitor would be taken to when they first enter the website. Kirsty used and developed these conventional pages by designing “Gallery”, “Music”, “Tour” and “Store” pages, however, the “Store” page acts as a link to various ticket sellers whereas the “Gifts” page actually sells merchandise. Kirsty also added a “Fan Mail” page which fans could use to contact the artist and a “Bio” page which gives information about the artist e.g. her background and where her love of music comes from, in order to offer fans a feeling of closeness and paint the artist as personable and relatable.

Kirsty chose to challenge the convention of having a page before you enter the site, one which advertises the tours or has a blown-up image of the artist. Instead, she chose to have our artist’s website be direct, without any funky preview pages visitors saw before entering e.g. once they typed in the address, they are led directly to the site.

Generic Conventions?

Simple colour scheme

A simple colour scheme, centred around one main colour, we found to be a generic convention of Indie-Pop websites. We looked at various Indie-Pop artist websites and noticed that each had a main colour that stood-out on the page, with the information written in a black or white font. The colour scheme featured one main bright colour, followed by black or white, making the colour scheme simple. For example, Eliza Doolittle’s website featured Sky Blue, Taylor Swift’s was a Burgundy Red, and Nina Nesbitt’s was Lilac Purple.

Kirsty used this convention in our website, having the information written in white and main colour of the scheme Baby Pink. The use of the pink and white colour scheme also enhances the ultra-feminine aspect of Cara Smith’s personality.

Generic Conventions?

Square, grid layout of Gallery Page

Taylor Swift

Nina Nesbitt

Our website

When designing the Gallery page of Cara Smith’s website, Kirsty chose to use the convention of having the photographs set out in a grid layout, on a white background. This made them clearer, and look neater, organised and stylish. The plain white background also drew the visitor’s attention to the photographs as they look more colourful and vibrant by contrast.

However, Kirsty developed the convention of having a Gallery page with only one set of photos available on it. Taylor Swift’s and Nina Nesbitt’s sites, both have selections of photographs under different headings e.g. “Taylor’s Photo Tweets”, “Album/Single Covers” and “Instagram”.

Generic Conventions?

Photographs of rehearsals, performances and promotional images

Photography?

While researching existing artists in our genre, their websites and albums, we found a generic convention of the genre (though it spreads to most artists in the music industry), was to have loads of pictures of the artist in rehearsals, performing and in posing for photos advertise and available for public consumption.

As a result, before doing anything in terms of designing the digipack, shooting the music video or setting-up the website, we arranged a photo-shoot so that our group would have a large supply of photographs of our artist on hand for making promotional material with. These were then uploaded onto the Gallery page of the website, and some used on the panels of the digipack.

Posting images on Instagram was also a generic convention of artists in the music industry in general, as well as Indie-Pop artists, which we found through our research as well as just seeing who we follow on Instagram as 17-18 year olds (part of our target audience demographic). Social networking is a really popular way of communicating with your fan base and developing a close relationship with your target audience, one of the reasons why it has really taken-off with celebrities. We set-up an Instagram account for our artist and posted a variety of the photoshoot images as well as random photographs we took around the place, really pushing for our artist to appear like a normal adolescent female, more personal and relatable to her target audience. This is an example of using a generic conventions of not just the Indie-pop genre but artists in general.