Evaluation question 1

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

Music Video• Our music video was intended to use and develop

forms and conventions of real media products to try and involve our target audience straight from the start. The genre of our music video is Indie Pop. From carrying out our video research into songs from this genre of music, we found out that most videos used narrative and performance so we decided to follow this pattern. For example, in our music video we chose to have narrative between the lead singer and his girlfriend, and also performance of the band and their out-takes.

Conventions of real life media products

Our music video shares the convention of performance with ‘The 1975’ music video of ‘Girls’. We carried out our audience research on bands from the same genre and we liked this performance effect. We decided to use performance in a studio and some narrative.

From carrying out our audience research on clothing we also decided to base our style around the genre stereotype. We styled the band to wear skinny black jeans and dark clothing to follow the conventions made by real life media products.

Conventions of real life media productsOur music video also has narrative. We chose to use this as when we carried out our audience research, they said that they would enjoy the video more if it used narrative as well as performance so that they could understand the meaning of the song. This was important as we wanted the audience to be able to connect and relate to the song and its lyrics. We also looked to include some

out-takes of the video so that the audience can see humour and gain more enjoyment from our video. We go this idea from another of The Kooks songs and we felt that it fitted in with the song extremely well.

Chandlers theory• Chandler suggests that conventional definitions of

genres tend to be based on the notion that they constitute particular conventions of content and/or form which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them.Our music video could be

seen according to this theory as conventionally, indie-pop/rock band wear dark clothing and denim and tend to have a lot of performance in a music video rather than all narrative.

The convention is emphasised in our music video when we see the band listening back over their performance in the studio.

Goodwin's Theory• Goodwin suggests lyrics will make constant

references to visuals on screen. Visuals will reinforce what lyrics say. An example of this can be shown in our music video of The Kooks – She Moves In Her Own Way.

In this particular part of our music video the main singer is singing about his love for his girlfriend whilst looking and dancing with her. This enables the audience to see the emotion in the performance and gain an understanding of what the lyrics actually mean.

Altman's theory

Our music video shares the convention of real life media products by using a narrative story of love throughout. This allows the audience to gain an emotional pleasure as they may be able to relate to this story or perhaps want to go and find love after watching our music video.

Altman argues that genre offers audiences ‘a set of pleasures’. He believes that this is through, emotional pleasures, visceral pleasures and intellectual puzzles. Our music video can be linked to this theory as it offers the target audience an emotional pleasure through the means of love.

CD cover – convention to real life products• When we created our CD covers we spent a huge

amount of time looking at existing CD covers from a range of different artists so that we were able to gain a good understanding of what to put on our final cover to make it as close to real life media products as we could.

• We looked in extremely close detail at all of the key aspects on a CD back cover and tried to use key elements on our final piece.

• For example we wanted to include a barcode and record labels.

CD Covers - ComparisonsThe 1975Our CD Back

Cover

We wanted to base our back cover on a CD cover from the same genre of music as our song. The chose to look at The 1975 album and use real life conventions on our own CD cover, as you can see from the example above. We felt that by including these elements on our CD back cover it would share conventions of real life media products and create the effect we wanted with the audience.

Website and CD comparisons• When creating our website we looked at a variety of

famous artists websites from a range of genres. Examples we looked at were, the 1975, Olly Murs, Passenger, The Wombats, One Direction and Bastille. Although these are artists and bands from a variety of different genres of music, they all have one thing in common. All of these have a distinct colour/theme coordination between their websites, logos, and recent CD covers.

• When it came to designing our website we wanted to keep the theme we used throughout all of our ancillary products. We felt that this would be a recognisable feature when audiences may be looking for new albums or visiting the band website.

As you can see from our website and CD pictures here, we chose to use the theme of black, white and faded colours. We felt this was a suitable theme for our genre of music and felt that it was something we could apply to all aspects of our work. We also carried out audience research and showed them a range of examples that were possible choices and 82% voted for the black, white and faded theme.