Q1) In what ways does your media

product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product

By Sonam Dhillon

We did several weeks of research before we worked on our main product and we gained valuable knowledge on the indie genre.

We noticed from several videos of arcade fire, artic monkeys that indie tend to have a mix between performance, narrative and concept based videos instead of focusing on one so we decide to infuse the three together.

Artic Monkeys – Fluorescent Adolescenthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma9I9VBKPiw&ob=av2e

Arcade Fire – Ready To Starthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oI27uSzxNQ

The clothing is generally casual from indie bands however as shown in the previous videos costumes are also included, this shows it is not a compulsory convention of the genre as the situation could determine what clothes to wear.

Indie clothing is often retro, simple shirt and jeans however different artist may vary.

An example of the costume used in the music video by arctic monkeys, this follows the concept of the video and song and shows a particularly dress sense is not necessarily required.

Casual clothing while the band is performing. This image is from the video link of arcade fire, there music video is them performing there concert, they wear the same clothes through out and because there performance has no theme, they wear there natural indie clothes and follow the conventions set, this is how they would dress everyday.

We noticed most indie music is not mainstream and are funded independently therefore it is clear that the quality does not match that of pop music.

We followed this convention in our video to give our main product a similar aspect, we made the video interesting yet feel low budgeted instead of expensive special effects and transitions, we focused more on the dynamic shots and camera angles to give our video that wow factor. There are no special effects but simple transitions from one scene to the next.

Another example of an indie music video which proves this point is The Smiths – Panic which uses simple yet eye catching techniques to grasp the audiences attention.

The Smiths – Panichttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AlH2oYedfk

We decide to also include humor into our video as most indie videos tend to not take themselves seriously despite the topic raised in the song being serious.

Though this contradicts itself its an entertaining factor when viewing it from an audiences perspective.

The Smiths – Panic, Artic Monkeys – Fluorescent Adolescent and Arcade Fire music video all have no serious storyline and have a comic feel to them.

We did challenge this indie convention with our digipack as we tried to follow the theme of the album “stranded” and although our main product (music video) followed the storyline we did it in a amusing way, however you can still understand the mood of the main character despite the audience laughing in the video and this is made clearer in the inside of the digipack.

Despite making our front cover challenge the music video, it did not challenge other front covers of indie bands. For example our front cover expresses how this person is feeling, which is stranded and alone therefore his tense body language, this is an example of a digipack which has the same idea. It shows sinister with the facial expression and red background colour which represent blood, death and lust.

This is also clear in our magazine advert which follows the same idea of the front cover. This shows a fox with sad facial expressions and the eyes represent the temperament of this animal.

Although our magazine advert features an animal, it has the same conventions as this example of noel callaghers high flying birds. It gives the website and informs the audience it’s the no1 album at the moment, with brief quotes from interviews about it. We chose to challenge that and not include quotes as we wanted to use the space to focus more in bold that it’s the number one album and that it includes the hit single “down in the mouth,” if people are aware that it contains this song they may be interested to hear the rest.

Conclusion

We used and developed most of the indie genres conventions but we also contradicted certain aspects we felt would make ours stand out. For example the nature of the video and the way in which it was shot is similar to an indie video, we used narrative, concept and performance however we tried to challenge following just one and infuse all three into one video. This was an effective way of getting our point across and received positive feedback. We also followed conventions such as the humor shown in the indie music video but decided to make our title “stranded” more clearer in the digipack rather than make this the same as the video. We also followed the conventions with indie clothing which is often casual, most characters including the lead guitarist of the band wear shirts, jackets, trainers however we went against this with the lead singer and actor as he's shown being fired from work, this needs to come across as more formal.