Laura & Mae A2 Media

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

In the research stage of the coursework I looked at a lot of videos, album adverts and CD covers within the rock/pop genre. Because the song I was going to use is on the borderline between rock and pop it actually gave me a lot more freedom because I could look at products from two different genres. Whilst looking at the videos, adverts and CD covers I looked out for conventions that I would also be able to use. This gave us ideas as to what would make our media products look realistic.

Whilst looking at music videos the first thing I noticed was how the aesthetic of the video created a mood to fit the genre of music. A lot of this was to do with costume. We had originally decided to use a white lacy dress paired with Doc Martens for the feminine grunge look we saw in many other videos such as Flyleaf's 'Sorrow' and Christina Perri's 'Jar of Hearts'. We eventually decided to develop the convention of costume and instead of our original idea we used a black lacy dress paired with tights, Doc Martens and a leather jacket. To choose the costume we created an audience profile and within it we talked about the shops that the consumer would shop at. Using influences from clothes available in these shops, music videos that we researched and images that have previously been used to promote albums we created a look for the artist and the band. We found that in many bands with a female lead singer and an all male band a lot of the focus is put on to the female in terms of costume. This may be because of the male gaze theory. This means that the males wear very simplistic clothing, usually jeans and a tshirt in a dark colour. We used this convention, putting our the two male band members in black jeans and a black tshirt, and one also wore a denim shirt over the top. Their look was casual but slightly alternative to fit with the genre of music.

We also saw that in most of the videos and album pictures that on the female dark eye make up was used and we also wanted to use this convention. We decided on mainly natural looking make up apart from around the eyes, which were made dark and striking with eyeliner. We used a face powder and very little eyeliner on the male band members. This was a development from the conventions we had seen because although males would wear facial make up for professional videos so that they don't look washed out under the lights and the camera, they may not wear eyeliner. We did this because it gave more of an alternative look.

Another part of the look of the video that was important was the lighting and colouring. This also applies to the advert and digipak. In the video we used the convention of gloomy lighting and tried to make the colours of the video look dull. We did this by filming the outdoor shots when it was cold and overcast. This also made sure there was no glare from the sun whilst filming. Obviously, within big budget music videos they could use smoke machines and effects but we worked with the natural setting we had. Something that links to this is the use of black and white. The videos for Evanescence's 'My Immortal' and Automatic Loveletter's 'Hush' are completely in black and white but we developed this by using black and white shots in between full colour shots. The black and white shots in our video were used for flashbacks. Using a different effect made it easier to understand that they were a different part of the video and made the narrative easier to comprehend.

I carried this over to the digipak and adverts by using mainly greys and blacks rather than bright colours. I felt that this captured the feel of the song and the genre of the music. I found that a lot of rock genre album covers used very little colour, some being completely black and white such as My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' and Black Stone Cherry's 'The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea'. I developed this convention because although my advert and digipak were mainly grey, black and white I used a deep red/pink colour to add interest. I was inspired by some album artwork from My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' album to do this. Overall, I wanted my media products to look saturated in colour to set a mood that fit with the genre of music. I think I used and developed the conventional use of colour within pop/rock music videos, adverts and album covers.

Using both narrative and performance shots together is a convention we saw in nearly all of the videos we watched in the research stage. We used this convention for video, filming the narrative flashback and field shots as well as the band shots. Videos such as Flyleaf's 'Sorrow' and Evanescence's 'My Immortal' use separately filmed shots of both purely performance shots and narrative shots. These shots are then interspersed with each other to give variety. In both of these videos the narrative shots are of the lead female singer walking and portraying a lot of emotion to the camera. We were heavily influenced by this, our field shots being based on the same idea. We were also influenced by the structure of Taylor Swift's music video for 'Love Story'. The narrative and performance shots come together at the end, showing that there was a link between them all a long. We used this idea in our music video, making the band and the singer meet at the end of the video. We developed upon the narrative/performance idea and also added flashback shots to create a fuller storyline that was easy to follow and ran along side the lyrics of the song.

We also used the convention of emotive close ups of the artist that we saw in Evanescence's 'My Immortal' and Ellie Goulding's 'Starry Eyed' and 'The Writer'. We felt that these shots allowed the artist to interact with the audience and emote to fit with the lyrics of the song. In our own video we used a range of shots but we shot a lot of close ups based on this idea. We liked that there was a large range of camera shots and angles with the 'My Immortal' video, including extremes. Because of the slow pace of the video a wider range of shots were used to give variety to the video. The song we used for our video was slightly faster so we didn't feel we needed to use such a great variety, in fact this may have made the video look messy. We did, however, use a few different shots and angles such as long shots, mid shots and close ups. We used high and straight angles shots for most of the video. These are the main conventional shots and angles used in music videos. 'Jar of Hearts', for example, mainly uses these shots. A specific shot we were inspired by from the 'Jar of Hearts' video was the close up of the artists feet while walking, I have seen this before in a few videos and we used it in ours.

The mise scene varied in each video we watched, their didn't seem to be a particular convention that ran throughout the videos. However, in performance shots such as in 'My Immortal' and 'Sorrow' very limited lighting is used and there aren't many props apart from the instruments. The performance shots were focused more on the band and the pace of the music rather than what was around them. In other videos in which the only performance shots were of the artist or of just a pianist the mise en scene was more detailed, like in Birdy's 'Skinny Love' the setting was an old looking house, decorated with props such as paper, an antique chair and everything was covered in dust. In the performance shots of Avril Lavigne's 'When You're Gone' the scene is set up to look like an abandoned house, with a settee, a fireplace, bookshelves and ornaments. Because we were using both guitar and piano but not a full band we wanted something in between these. We decided to use the convention of quite a plain room but develop the idea by using chairs for the performers. This made sense for us because the pace of the song wasn't suitable for the band members to be jumping around like in 'My Immortal' and this way we could focus more on portraying emotion.

When researching for the digipak and advert I created a list of the conventions I saw used on professional products. This way I knew I could make my products more believable. I feel that my advert and digipak used the conventions of the genre quite well because of their imagery. I decided to use a picture of a skull and a skeleton. This fit in with a lot of the dark imagery I saw on real CD covers and adverts such as My Chemical Romance's 'The Black Parade' and Halestorm's 'A Strange Case Of ...'. I thought that the image of a skull would be quite striking for the front cover and then inside the digipak I used the image of a skeleton which clearly links but wouldn't work quite as well for a front cover image.

My digipak and advert are very closely linked and use the same colour scheme, text and images. Though I saw that a lot of artists simply used the album cover image for their advert (Florence and the Machine's 'Lungs' and Kings of Leon's 'Only by the Night') I developed this convention by using images that were linked and used in my digipak but that were not the front cover.

A lot of the fonts used on the albums and digipaks that I researched are quite bold and recognisable. My Chemical Romance's logo seems to suit the genre of music because the font is jagged and messy. Flyleaf's logo is simpler but uses a bold, distressed font to fir the rock genre.

I knew when choosing a images and a style for my digipak and advert I needed to mirror the style of music in every aesthetic, fonts included. I used www.1001freefonts.com to find a font that I liked and initially came up with four. I chose to use SF Phosphorus and Helvelticrap for both my digipak and advert. For the fonts, I used the convention because it made sense for my digipak and advert.

I wanted my colour scheme to be quite simple because a lot of the products I had researched used a black and white colour scheme and there was usually only two or three main colours used. I used mainly grey for the background, and then used black and white a highlight. I wanted some colour for the line that runs through my digipak and advert and for this I used red because it stands out. When finishing off my digipak and advert I looked at the official wording and logos used on real products so that I could use these and make my product look realistic. I used a wesbite name, the record company logo, a barcode and copyright information to acheive this.