EVALUATION QUESTION 1:

In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For this coursework, we needed to provide a

music video, digipack and an advert promoting an artist of our choice.

Each of these media texts have codes and

conventions, which set specific guidelines in

producing such products. 

When I first began this assignmen, I did lots of research towards how and where I would create a music video, and ideas

for the Digipack and the Advert.The first part of the research I did was about the different types of Genre in a music video - observing and taking notes of a series of Youtube video's, noting

whether it was narrative/performance/concept, and what

were the expectations of the music video.

I researched the History of the Music Video, and researched the 100 Greatest Music Video's. Once I had gained further knowledge of how and what to expect from

a music video, I began to decide on various artists and start the research for filming. I researched into where I should shoot the video, how I would

shoot it (with what equipment), who my target audience is, but above all, the

different conventions that I would develop or challenge in making my music

video.

ON THE NEXT SLIDE YOU CAN SEE MY RESEARCH ON VARIOUS CODES AND CONVENTIONS, AS WELL AS GOODWIN’S THEORY.

MUSIC VIDEOGOODWIN’S THEORIES:A link between the imagery and the audio (illustrative, amplifying or contradictory)Record label will make sure close-up’s of the artist and particular styles (motifs) to be shown throughout videography.Frequent reference to the notion of lookingIntertextual referencesStereotypical representations of the artist according to genreNarrative, Performance or Concept based videos.

FOLK/INDIE MUSIC VIDEO:Editing on colour, texts and saturations are usually subtle and in small doses throughout the video.There isn’t a direct narrative or relationship between the lyrics and image.There is a relationship between music and imagery, artists will be seen playing instruments or singing but not throughout the entire videoThe artist is not the main part of the video, it is more about the imagery.

DIGIPAKThe artist on the front cover

The album name A tracklist

Institution informationsBarcode

Multiple panels with images to complete the style of the digipackA message to the fans or Note of thanks

ADVERTAlbum title

Date of releaseLogos for institutions

An image (generally the front cover of CD, if not then a recognisable image of the artist)

Although I really enjoyed watching the concept based, I thought that these would take the most time, money and people to

complete this project and I knew that I would prefer making a video which involved more of a focus on different camera shots, angles,

editing and acting from an artist. I decided that my music video will have a lot of performance as well as the narrative,

moreover, I wanted it to be a mix of both. The narrative is based in two time sets: past

and presence, so there are a lot of flashbacks and therefore this means that the audience would view the video more than once to fully understand what was going on and

what the real message was, thus making more of a hype around the video, making the

potential audience more likely to view and then buy the song and album.

It is important to note that I went against one important

convention: the original band “BOY” consists of 2

girls, however, I only have 1 girl in the video.

The reason why I chose to show only 1 singer is because I wanted the

audience to clearly see the storyline without getting confused about the second girl. Moreover, during the research of the band, I realised that the second

girl in the band doesn't’t sing, however, plays various

musical instruments. But since my aim was to show a mainstream narrative love

story, I wanted the audience to concentrate on the plot of the video, rather than just on the performance.

The first part of my research was about the different genres of music and their videos, I made notes, observed and discussed in class a series of YouTube videos and other

student's work as well.

The band I chose to work with was “Boy” and the song I picked for the music video is called “Boris”. Before I started the

production of the music video I’ve looked at their other music videos like “Drive Darling”,

“Waitress”, and “Little Numbers”. This research helped me to pick up various tips and ideas for my own video. Their videos have also

helped me to realize genre codes and conventions. It wasn’t hard to establish the genre of the song as the band has a mixed

genre of indie and folk. For instance, indie and folk music videos are not high budget as the performance usually are relatively young and not yet famous, therefore their music

videos are usually based on the streets, cars, cafes, record studios or forests - places

which are available for them.

Once completing my filming, during the course of editing I

started to then think about what I would be doing for the Digipack and Advert. Fortunately for me, I thought ahead and already had taken a variety of photo's that I knew would be useful when it came to the designing of the ancillary texts.

 The main inspiration for both my digipack and advert became the Xx album cover, which has a

white background and just an X on it. I decided to use my Iphone to produce the

designs for the digipack. I used several apps for editing photographs and then continued to

work on the photoshop to finish all the details off.

Finally, the advert research was very simple as I had learnt so much along the way of the coursework process. I knew what image I would

be using, and how I wanted it to look. I researched 4 other adverts of various artists and noted what their adverts featured on the cover. In my advert, I decided to use the same image as I used on the back of the digipack; I stuck to all the same texts and font I had

used throughout this process, showing a link between the Music video, the Digipack and the

Advert.

The Digipack research I felt was much easier than the

research I had done before, because I had a better

insight to which images I would use since I had already

completed my filming. Firstly, I researched what a typical Digipack looks like, and how I wanted mine to look like. Then I researched ideas for the Digipack, looking at previous images of The “BOY”, getting more of an idea of what a typical girl band looks like. Once I knew

roughly my idea, I began to sketch out what I hoped my Digipack will look like.

To sump up and conclude, here are some bullet points on whether the three products I produced fit the general

codes and conventions of the genre.

My music video supports the general codes and conventions as there is a link

between the illustrative imagery and the audio, I also included frequent reference to the notion of looking and close ups of the artist as a way of

promotion.

Both digipack and the advert follow the codes and convention too, as both of the products have all the

features they ought to have.