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

It is always a necessary process to study the codes and conventions of a media type or specific genre when creating your own media product. These codes and conventions are what the target audience will associate with, and they are essential to allowing for said audience to make identification with the product. Codes and conventions essentially create a set of project specifications, which should ideally be followed when creating a media product in order for it to conform to existing examples and the way that they too were designed and produced. In most cases, producers will follow the codes and conventions of their media product in order to create something familiar for the target audience, in order to ensure that they react well. However in some cases, producers may decide to develop or challenge the conventions in order to build on their creativity and to put a personal spin on the work they are creating; this allows for audiences to recognize specific elements and associate them with a particular producer or director “that’s a (…director/producers name…) music video!” MUSIC VIDEO:

With my music video, I mostly wanted to follow conventions as I didn’t feel it was a media platform suitable for endless experimenting, especially with filming techniques and the editing, whereas something on a much bigger scale, such as a film/film trailer has the ability to hold dramatic editing techniques and experimental camera angles and movements. My music video was an indie/acoustic genre, and was a hybrid of both narrative and performance-based plot. Not only was it essential for me to understand the codes and conventions of a music video, but also to look at those associated with the specific music genre, and also the two different types of music video. In general, music videos conform to the following conventions:

• Close-Ups and Extreme Close-Ups for performance elements • Panning and tracking shots if there is more than one performer • Edited footage to match the lyrics of the song • Edited footage and cuts to match the pace of the song • Split-screens and CGI • Specific props associated with the performance • Mise-en-scene elements to work in accordance with the specific music

genre • The performer/actor will usually directly communicate with the

audience by looking straight down the camera

Most of these conventions come from Andrew Goodwin’s theory on the

production of music videos. He also stated that music videos demonstrate genre characteristics such as dance routines for a boy/girl group or strobe lighting effects for dance/club music. These were all important elements for me to take into consideration, as I wanted to create product that was realistic and would be easy for my target audience to connect with. Essentially, I started to look at the location for my music video. In a lot of indie/acoustic music videos that I analysed during the research and planning stage, I discovered that the locations were all very natural, with a rustic/healthy feel about them; such as forests, cottage houses, traditional pubs and also locations which made the artist feel at home. For example, I analysed Ellie Goulding’s ‘Your Song’ music video, which included a lot of forest scenes as well as the train station and buildings from her hometown. The same rule applied to Ed Sheeran’s ‘Lego House’ and Emeli Sandé’s ‘My Kind Of Love’ music videos. I thought this was a really nice convention to follow as it projected a homely, warm feeling for the target audience to react to, despite the use of lyrics often connoting a sadder, negative

emotion. I therefore decided to use nearby woodland areas for a lot of my exterior filming, as it also reflected on the theme of the song, ‘Autumn Leaves.’ Whilst I wouldn’t have been able to travel to the artist (Ed Sheeran)’s hometown of Suffolk, I know that he has spent a lot of his musical career living in London, hence

why I also did some location shooting in the Capital to add a more realistic touch to my music video. I also thought that filming in this location would also add something more modern and exciting to my music video, as it is an easily identifiable location for any target audience and is a highly conventional location for British artists to use in any of their music videos. To also use real conventions of music videos, I thought it was important to match some of the cuts to the pace of the music, as this often helps an audience to understand the product better. Not only that, but having a slower-paced song like I have chosen, the video would have looked unprofessional and out-of-place if I had used clips which cut to one another at a fast, rhythmic pace which didn’t match the beat of the song. I particularly used this technique in parts of the video such as when the camera cuts to the character’s feet walking along the path and when the image flashbacks fade in and out so that they matched each strum on the guitar as it played. This allowed for the beat of the song to be more

identifiable for the audience as the visuals help to get the pacing right and also allows for the video to be more memorable, which is essential in helping to sell the song.

With my music video, I felt it was really important to sell the emotion in the song to the audience, and I felt like one of the best ways to do this was to edit the entire product to black and white. I felt like making a black and white product emphasized on how serious the tone of the song was and minimized any other emotions that could potentially be present within the footage. Black and white is often associated with documentary work, and as the narrative of the video was essentially telling the characters’ story, I felt like it fit in well. However, editing the colours in a music video to such an

extreme is highly unusual for a music video, especially one that is mostly narrative-based as colours are often applied to express the genre of the music, such as red, black and silver/grey for Metal music videos and bright pinks and purples for Pop videos. Nevertheless, the idea of a black and white music video is not an entirely new concept, as the idea has been utilized by more

serious artists of our era such as Amy Winehouse, Adele, Michael Bublé and The Script. As the technique of black and white editing is not the most conventional element for a music video, I decided I wanted to develop this idea as I feel it should be utilized more often in this media platform as an effective way of expressing the art of emotion found within music.

Alternatively, I did initially experiment with mixing footage in full

colour with clips of black and white footage to completely challenge the conventions of modern music videos, but this idea looked untidy and unprofessional, but I merely wanted to see how I could possibly define my name as a producer and director within my music video. Instead, I decided to challenge the conventional storyline of music videos, especially those associated with my chosen genre of indie/acoustic music. During my research, I found that the majority of music videos of this genre followed two distinct characters essentially looking for love, and the ultimate conclusion is them both falling in love with each other. In this case the artist or band normally makes a cameo appearance as either a performers in the background or assisting characters. As my song was essentially about losing someone, not about love, I wanted to play with the ambiguity of the lyrics. It is never defined in the lyrics how the person is ‘lost’. Whether they have died or fallen in love with someone else, we as the audience don’t really know. The specific lyrics “my song carried you out” would suggest that the

song was played in the background as someone’s coffin was carried away; so I kept this idea as the main key-point for the plot, but I still decided to make the entire production very ambiguous to keep my audience guessing as to what has happened - acting as an enigma code to hook in the audience and keep them watching. In order to do this, I purposely used very little actors within my music video as I didn’t want any identifiable characters as this would have given the plot away; that’s why I used plenty of point-of-view shots and close-ups to hide most evidence of any characters being involved, apart from minor mid and long shots where the faces of the characters aren’t clearly visible and shots of the photos throughout the footage, which only contains the ‘characters’ at a much younger age. Although a complete challenge of conventions, I still think it worked in the sense that even at the end you don’t know who the song is aimed at, but at the same time the footage does make sense, and I am really proud of what I have produced and the messages that have been put across to my audience, and I hope that this creativity can be associated with something that I am capable of producing.

During my research of existing music videos, I also interestingly noticed the use of brand and self-advertising. This is essentially where the artist(s) incorporate products related to themselves within their music videos to help also sell these. These might be in the form of their own music products or merchandise, or the branded products that they perhaps sponsor or advertise. One of the biggest examples of this was Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s video for ‘Telephone’, notorious for the product placement of Diet Coke, Virgin Mobile, Chevrolet, Polaroid, and Heartbeats earphones that Gaga herself co-designed.

Although more common in pop and RnB music videos, this technique of product placement was even noticeable in Ed Sheeran’s music videos, which considering he conforms to the indie/acoustic genre, was quite unconventional. So, as it seemed to be that most music artists will at some point use the technique of product placement in their music videos, I decided to do the shameful deed and include shots of the Digipak that I created to advertise my chosen song, within my music video.

ANCILLARY TASKS: With my ancillary tasks, I decided to create a website and a Digipak as I felt they both worked well together alongside the music video itself in order to promote the singer, the song and the album from which it came from. The conventions of both ancillary products were much simpler to understand and use as there are far less applicable types and genres to also comprehend; it is simply just a website and a Digipak. Looking at exemplar websites before I started production, I took

inspiration from the same three artists I analysed when researching for my website; Ellie Goulding, Emeli Sandé and Ed Sheeran. I did this in order to understand brand identity better and the conventions associated with this also. It is quite conventional for artists to sell their image as a

brand, using similar colour schemes and imagery in their music videos as they do on their website, and also on their Digipaks and other merchandise. The websites I analysed all used images as the main backgrounds in comparison to perhaps having a plain, solid-colour background. This made the pages look more full and grabbed the audience’s attention – a method used quite conventionally across all types of websites; not just artist promotional websites. I decided to conform to this as I wanted something which would really catch the audience’s eye, as well as creating a link between the image and what I was essentially trying to sell, the ‘new single’ and the music video; Autumn Leaves, hence why the background image was of a field of leaves. However, additionally to this I noticed that websites would include bright, contrasting colours for the different types of text to allow certain elements to jump out to the target audience, such as merchandise sales and titles of news articles. I wanted to challenge this convention more than to conform to it, as I felt it was more applicable for the low-key genre of indie/acoustic music to have complimentary colours rather than contrasting, whereas that typically works better for dance or pop artists. On the other hand, I did decide to stick to conventions in terms of the types of pages available on a musician’s website, as I wanted my audiences to find navigating quite easy and familiar; including pages such as Merchandise, Live Dates, News, Gallery, Videos etc. The idea of a conventional Digipak was much harder to deconstruct, as I wasn’t sure what was required from the spec. Whilst a Digipak may refer to the album cover, the casing, the lyric booklet and everything else included within the purchase of a CD, technically, the term Digipak is a trademark for a CD encased in a paper/cardboard folded cover, conventionally with 2 or 3

main panels, but they can typically have as many as they want. The more conventional method currently for storing CDs is in a clear jewel case, but Digipaks™ are increasingly becoming more popular as they are more eco-friendly and less prone to damage, hence why I decided to go along with this kind of a template for my own product. I also decided to design a template with three panels wide as this was the most conventional design for a ‘deluxe edition’ Digipak as it allows room for up to 2 CDs to be packaged. When I looked at my existing examples, I noticed that images printed on the exterior of the Digipak were also included on the corresponding website, so I included the background image for my website as part of the background design for my Digipak cover to create conventional brand identity for my artist.