Question One: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

Cristina Shaw

Music Video

• Before making my ancillary tasks and music video, I did research into websites, digipaks and music videos. There are various different codes and conventions present in them all. My research became very important during planning, when thinking of narrative, locations, features of mise-en-scene and house styles. It also helped me to plan the synergy that I applied to all three of my tasks.

• I started with researching music videos, in which I looked at Goodwin’s seven theories to begin with. They are:

1. Music videos demonstrate certain genre characteristics 2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals 3. There is a relationship between music and visuals 4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots

of close-ups of the artist 5. The artist may develop motifs or iconography that recur across

their work6. There is frequent reference to the notion of ‘looking’ and

particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body 7. There are often intertextual references – mostly to film,

television and popular cultureI also researched into the three different types of music videos

which are narrative, performance and concept.

Performance• Performance, obviously, features a performance done by

the artist or artists. • Sometimes they will use clips of actual live performances

that the band or artist have actually done. There is a sort of hierarchy between band members. The lead singer being the most important and the lead guitarist being second. Performance based music videos have many, many shots (mostly close-ups) of the instruments, and often feature close-ups of the lead singer.

Narrative• A narrative music video is

when the video tells a story. This means it will usually contain a beginning, a middle and an end. In some ways they're like a mini film. They can also promote films with clips from the film telling a story. Narratives in music videos have become more complex overtime. However, a lot of narrative music videos tend to be very similar e.g. boy meets girl.

Concept• Concept is when a music video is based around a

single idea or concept and are usually seen as unusual or obscure. Even surreal. The unusual content is an attraction and can be more entertaining for an audience. There are two types of concept music videos.Thematic: Revolves around a single theme or idea, but it often depends on the genre.Symbolic: They use lots of symbols to build up meaning. They often use montages and images to create meaning. Sometimes the images can be contradictory with the song.

• However, during my research I noticed that a fair few music videos aren’t always just performance, narrative or concept. Sometimes they’re a mix of two or even all three types. I decided to construct a video that features performance, narrative and concept.

• During my research I looked at codes and conventions specific to different genres. The genres varied massively and I found this research was really useful when creating my own video.

RnB, Rap and Hip-Hop• I found that there are lots of low angels and

close-ups of male singers, to show their power, status, wealth and dominance. They look down upon the audience and the audience look up to them and almost want to be in their position. Women in these type of music videos are represented as being objects of desire and wear lots of revealing clothing. The women surround the men, giving them lots of attention, whilst the man is in the centre of the shot, showing the men to be appealing and attractive. Wealth is shown as an important and positive thing through clothing, location, objects and even stacks of money. Sex, money and drug abuse appear to be common themes.

PopArtists are usually dressed in mainstream fashion,

with clothes not being too revealing. It tends to have a very happy feel and are usually

colourful and bright. The artists are usually doing a typical teen/young adult activity such

as parties and with quite a few people. Women are still shown as being overly sexualised,

particularly through provocative poses, but they’re shown as being oblivious and innocent

towards it. Women also wear heavy make-up and have their hair done up so they look

“beautiful”. The artist has lots of close ups and they have prevalence.

Dance

• There are also pop dance music videos, where everyone wears similar clothing and dances in sync with a formation. There is usually a lead dancer.

Rock and Metal• Rock and metal are very different genres but

share similar characteristics.• There tends to be a more equal distribution

of power between men and women. Women tend to conform to more male stereotypes and vice versa. For example, both men and women will wear makeup and men will have longer hair. Women are not typically shown as objects of desire. Most feature whole bands and lots of performance, with the typical band hierarchy. Quite often it will be performance with an intercutting narrative or concept. Clothing and style is very different in rock and metal and it depends on what era the music video is from. In metal typical clothing is dark and partially revealing, with “spikes” and “chains” attached to it. Rock tends to be more dressed up and colourful.

• I then looked at the genre I had chosen in more detail. Indie music videos differ greatly, but they still have codes and conventions.

Costume• Costumes in indie music videos tend to be

fashionable, plain, casual and fitting within a “hipster” style. One of the most common clothing items are jumpers so both my lead singers wore jumpers. Something that stood out for me was that there was no voyeurism or sexualisation of the female or male body and I made sure that I conformed to this convention. My male lead wore a variety of jumpers and a tweed jacket.

• The costumes were simple and fit into the typical “hipster” thing to wear.

Costume• Females tend to have

simplistic, old fashioned makeup and they have their hair down, tousled. I made sure that Shannon only wore mascara and had a very natural appearance with lazily put up hair. I think I used conventions of costumes in my music video pretty well. There are also a lot of wrist accessories worn and I ensured that my female lead wore bracelets and that there was a close-up of this.

Settings• Indie music videos seem to have

similar settings. Natural and outdoor settings are popular, for examples: fields. I used a field as one of my main setting in my video. Other popular settings include forests, houses, somewhere obscure and unusual, or open spaces. I tried to include as many of these as possible. Parties are also common setting; these are usually of exclusive teen parties. In my music video, I featured a tea party, challenging this convention of indie music videos.

Lighting• Lighting in indie music videos are usually very bright

and feature lots of natural light. Sun flares and sunsets are also a prominent feature in indie music videos, so I attempted to use both of these in my own video.

Colours• Colours in indie music videos tend to feature a

theme, typically with natural and pale colours. I didn’t really use this convention and instead used an array of colours, usually very bright. I feel like I could have thought about this more and had a theme of pale colours throughout the video.

• They don’t tend to match the lyrics apart from the odd few lyrics. I did this at some points but not as much as I could have done.

• Characters in indie music videos tend to be friends or lovers. There are usually lots of people featured in. They tend to have interaction with other characters. I feel I could have had more people for Shannon and Ed to interact with.

• When looking at indie music videos, I realised that it usually features. I tried to include this by having running water from the tap. I feel this is something I could have included more in my own.

• Another thing I noticed is shots of feet and shoes. So I made sure to include this as you can see here.

• Sometimes these music videos include musical instruments due to acoustic nature of the song. So I used the ukulele occasionally in some scenes, to show the original. In the original video they use one. The ukulele is yellow, a prominent colour in the original video.

• The majority of indie music videos, particularly this type of song are feel-good and full of smiles. I tried to get this across in my music video by having bright colour and close ups of my actors being happy.

• Indie music videos feature Goodwin’s theory of “the demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist”. I’ve included this multiple times for both Shannon and Ed. The other characters did not have so much prevalence.

• Also using the rule of thirds, the artists in indie music videos tend to take up centre of the shot (the middle three squares). I managed to include this in my own video quite a bit, conforming to this particular convention.

• There is the use of typography or a logo of the band early on in the music video, usually overlapping the footage.

• I had this in my own, following my colour scheme. It’s the same typography used on all of my website and digipak.

• One convention of indie music videos is the continuation of a theme and set colours. They also seem to have a very “clean look” with quite minimal and organised sets. I didn’t have this in my own video and challenged this because the video wasn’t as “clean” as it could have been and there wasn’t a continuous theme or colour scheme. I could have done this much better.

• My video has an unusual narrative compared to most real indie music videos. I was inspired by John Mayer’s Queen of California where he goes to different places simply by walking through.

• I also had some inter-textual references (tea party scene, Alice in Wonderland). This is not a common thing in typical indie music videos unless they set out to make lots of references. Usually it’s all new content.

• I didn’t make it anything like the original because it’s already quite popular, borderline iconic. I wanted to do something very different to the original and make it unrecognisable. I feel like I was able to use and convey quite a few codes and conventions in my music video, but the more prominent and bigger conventions not so much. The fact that the song is indie and that my audience fit into the sub-culture “hipsters” has had a huge influence on my work. I really wanted to work with how Indie videos try to be different and creative. I like the Indie genre because of how much variety there is and how you can do something very unusual and it still fits within the genre

Website

• I looked into a variety of existing websites for real bands, but mostly indie band websites, including Noah and the Whale’s actual website. These websites have their own codes and conventions I noticed during my research of websites.

Title

• Firstly, there tends to be a header containing a large title with the band name at the top, acting like a logo. It is present across all pages on the site. I feel I managed to get this across really well because it fits into this convention. It’s also bold and stands out, like titles on real websites. Here are some examples of real website titles and my own.

Menu• Beneath the title and linked to the header is usually a menu allowing you to

navigate to other pages with links. Each link is evenly spaced out and easy to find a page. It also has a consistent style including font, colour and capital and lowercasing. The menu is very central to the website. During my research I noticed that there was almost an order to the menu. Home is always first, followed by about. The rest will depend because not all sites have certain pages, but the gallery is usually in the middle and store and contact are last. I feel I managed to use this feature quite well and it was easy to navigate through my website. There was a consistent style and had all the features of the menus used in real websites as I’ve described. I feel that I managed to have all the common and necessary pages on my own website.

Background

• The background on these websites tends to be a texture, pattern, picture or even a video. I tried to pick something that wouldn’t detract from the text on the page, but still look clean and effective. It may not be the most typical background for an indie band’s website, but I thought it suited the website and the image I had created for my band the most.

• A common thing to include in real websites is gallery with thumbnails which expand to be a bigger picture when clicked on. The pictures they use can be of photo shoots of the artists or shots from the video itself. I feel I did this successfully and I was pleased how my gallery looked like something you’d find on a real website, indie or not.

• Embedded videos (usually of the band’s music videos) are also a common thing to have, so I included this on my website. I found that some websites have sound clips or music somewhere on the site, but I didn’t include this because it wasn’t a strong convention and there wasn’t really anywhere to have it.

• Every website I looked at has small print at the bottom of the page for legal reasons. I feel I managed to do this quite well giving the website a more professional feel.

• Overall appearance tends to be clear and easy to navigate with appropriate information. When I asked people to look at mine this was something people picked up on so I was happy with that. Another thing is consistent style which I believe I managed to do. I did this through having the same layout, colours, fonts and styles on every page. This is crucial and probably the biggest aspect of websites. I used a sort of “house style”, assisting to band image and recognition. I feel I used this convention well on my work. My colour scheme could have been stricter and in this aspect it would have looked more professional had I stuck more to the codes and conventions of real indie websites layout and colour schemes.

• Some websites I found have adverts or sponsors but sadly I didn’t include this in my own work when I probably should have, again giving it a more realistic approach.

• The final convention of real websites I noticed was the links to external websites, usually social media, where to buy music and ticket websites. I used the most common social media sites and links to iTunes/Amazon, following this convention. I probably used too many social media sites but I wanted to use a lot as my target audience are heavy users of technology.

• I think I did much better at sticking to my codes and conventions in this part of the project and managed to incorporate many features of real products. I could have, however, been more pernickety with a few aspects of the site. Overall I’m very happy with my work and feel that I managed to make something that abides enough codes and conventions of existing websites to give it a realistic feel.

Digipak

• Like the website and music video, I did research into codes and conventions into digipaks. Using the research and work we did in class I made my digipak, aiming to fit in with codes and conventions.

• Probably the most important feature of digipaks is having something that allows you to identify the artist instantly. This can be done through images of the artist, the name of the artist (typography) or some form of logo or symbol. Some bands become so well recognised that they don’t need pictures or text on their albums, for example, the XX.

• Images of the artists are very common to include on the front of digipaks. During my research I noticed this was less common for indie bands and more common for indie solo artists to have on the album cover, so I challenged this and did it this for two reasons. The first being that this band was not already established and I felt using their faces would have made it more effective. The second was because the common front covers for bands were usually effects or cartoons that I wouldn’t have been able to recreate myself. And some bands use the picture of the band on the front cover.

• Pictures of the band members or relevant visual imagery is used to sell the album can be used throughout the whole thing, not just the front cover. The images are often manipulated in some way. I used this throughout the digipak.

• Lyric pages within booklets are a common asset of digipaks. I made sure I had lyric pages, all in the same style to each, like existing digipaks have. I feel that I conformed to this convention quite well, apart from not using a tiny font size, like most do.

• Digipaks tend to have a credits and thank you page at the back of the booklet, because indie tends to be more personal and the artist/band gets more involvement but I didn’t actually do this for mine so challenged this convention.

• A prominent feature of digipaks is the name of artist. For most genres, the title is large and eye catching. I spent a while on the title for typography for various reasons. It acts as a logo and gives a band instant recognition. I found that on indie digipaks, the text is much more simplistic. Here I challenge this convention as in my own work the title was bold and quite “loud”. It was simplistic in the fact it was simply coloured and there was not much intricacy. I chose that particular font because it had a “doodle” or drawn feel, something I found was very common for indie bands during my research. Some bands also have an actual logo, like a symbol, that they use throughout their work. This is why I used the whale on my digipak and website.

• Another common feature of digipaks is the name of the album being on the front. I found that the name of the artist is more important which is why I made the name of the album much smaller and not all in capitals.

• Digipaks also usually have a song list on the back cover. It tends to match the front cover and the text on the page stands out from the background. There is also usually the name of the album as a title above the song list, in the same style as on the front.

• Other features of the back cover of digipaks include small print, website addresses and barcodes. All of which I used on my own to make it conform to real digipaks as much as possible.

• Digipaks also usually have a house style, similar to other products of the band. I’ll go into more detail in question two about this part. For this I used the same font and colour scheme throughout, like real digipaks do. This made my product look much more professional and realistic.

• I feel like I could have included the price of the digipak on the back and I could have made the front cover better. It doesn’t feel simplistic or indie enough to me but then again, that’s just my opinion.

• So, overall for all three products I feel I managed to use many codes and conventions of real media products. My work needs more refinement and I should look at the details in order for it to look professional and “realistic” as my work definitely challenges some conventions of real indie media products. I didn’t always conform to the “simplistic” and “pale” feel of the indie genre and feel I should have more. I am; however, pleased with what I’ve managed to achieve and feel it has some sort of indie feel to it and all the necessary features of a digipak.