1. In what ways does your media

product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of

real media products?

My music video was intended to use conventions from current and previous media in order to establish a recognisable image that would involve my intended audience instantly. For instance, from my research of inspiration for video, I noticed that artists' music videos were either narrative or performance based, which were a similar genre to my artist. I chose to use a performance based video as it complemented my artist and his style of music. A narrative based video would contradict with my artist as they are more of live performers who do tours instead of performing on chart shows and programmes. The song is fast paced therefore the cuts between camera angles are fast, emphasising the feeling that we are performing live.

Foo Fighters – The Pretender

Our Video

We used this shot to start our video as it is a typical convention used by many bands across the indie music genre. Starting the video with this shot establishes the lead singer straight away and allows the audience to see emotion and establish who the lead singer is, who is normally the most well known member of the band therefore they know which band it is as soon as the video begins. We found that this is a typical convention used in the indie genre as you can see our video and the ‘Foo Fighters’ video for ‘The Pretender’ are very similar.

Our Video

The Strokes – Last Nite

Another camera angle used throughout the indie genre are longshots showing the band. Longshots are used to show the whole band and the setting of where they are. This is a typical convention of any music video but particularly that of a performance kind, it allows the scene the band are playing in to be set and viewed by the audience as well as allowing the audience to establish themselves with all members of the band. The Strokes who have been a very successful indie band for a long time and are a band that inspired us to make a video of the indie music genre. Their music video to ‘Last Nite’ shows the conventional long shot showing the full band and setting and is very similar to the one used in ours.

Our Video

The Strypes – Hometown Girls

Our Video

The Crookes - Afterglow

Another camera shot we used whilst filming our music video was an extreme close up on the instruments. When the guitar solo begins you can see we zoomed right into Zak playing the guitar giving the impression that he is playing the music live, the Crookes also used this convention proving it to be that of a successful one. This is because in a typical performance video you need to have proof that they are actually playing their instruments.

Our Video

System of a Down – Chop Suey

Our Video

Green Day – Wake Me Up When September Ends

The use of our mise-en-scene in our video followed the typical conventions of an indie genre music video. Firstly, our outfits matched the conventions of indie bands, for example as you can see all three members especially our lead singer are dressed in simple everyday clothing, black jeans and a white t-shirt. We found this to be a convention used often throughout our chosen genre, we chose to follow this convention as we felt it would create the urban/working class feel nearly all indie rock bands do within their music videos, as they are not trying to dress smart or show off but simply just impress with their music. This would allows the audience to connect and relate to the band more as they are seen as more normal and down to earth therefore making our final product even more successful.

A particular music genre may have their own music video style and iconography (such as a pop video’s having storyline narratives). After researching I noticed that the Indie genre, typically used live performance video’s to give the feeling that the band are performing the song live and showing their musical talent. So I used this convention so that my target audience could easily relate to the images being shown, as they have seen this style of effect before.

Features of Goodwin's Theory - applied to my music video

We used the same image from our album front cover on our final promotional poster, we found this to be a typical convention of many digipaks we researched as you can see with the Arctic Monkeys album cover and poster for their second album ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not’. We felt that it would be successful as it would allow the audience to make the connection between the two. Also the idea is very simple but effective for promoting our digipak as it only contains the main image from the front cover, the release date of the album and the band name but at the same time our intended audience will also be able to establish that the poster is promoting our album.

Our album cover and poster

Arctic Monkeys ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not’ album cover and poster

The layout of the back cover of our Digipak, is very conventional using things such as the songs being placed in the middle of the cover, as well as the barcode being placed at the bottom left as people read from top left to bottom right . Also we included a record label name as well as our copyright label , these combined make our final product seem that more authentic. Also the house style is also the same all the way throughout our digipak allowing the audience to instantly recognise it. This is the same with the albums backs that we researched for example the Arctic Monkeys album back for ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not’ used the same house style throughout the digipak.

Our album back Arctic Monkeys ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not’ album back