Evaluation Q1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Initially we had to find the original conventions of music videos in our chosen genre, "Indie-pop", and the conventions of music videos in general. We also had to find the conventions to existing album covers and digi-pak adverts.

Music Video

First of all, I can compare our music video to the General Theory on music videos:

1. Lyrics establish a general feeling/mood/sense of subject rather than a meaning. Meaning is presented more through visuals.
2. Tempo of music drives the editing
3. Genre might be reflected in types of mise-en-scene, themes, performance, camera and editing styles. 
4. Camerawork impacts meaning. Movement, angle and shot distance all play a part in the representation of the artist/band (close-ups dominate).
5. Editing is done in fast cuts, rendering many of the images impossible to grasp on first  viewing, so ensuring multiple viewing. 
6. Digital effects often enhance editing, which manipulates the  original images to offer  different kinds of pleasure for the audience. 

Here is a video explaining the ways in which we believe our music video used, developed and challenged real media conventions and thereby challenging the General Music Video Theory:

Lyrics: 
"You've applied the pressure
To have me crystallised 
And you've got the faith
That I could bring paradise 

I'll forgive and forget
Before I'm paralyzed
Do I have to keep up the paceTo keep you satisfied..."

These lyrics aren't particularly visual and so we had room to do almost anything we wanted, in terms of story line, within our genre conventions.

We decided to have a continuous theme of sparkly things such as crystals and glitter contrasting with the more gritty side of things such as gritty pavement and broken glass. We also challenged the conventions of music videos in the indie-pop genre (particularly by The xx) by including a vague story line.

Music and Editing: Looking at our music video you can tell that the editing really came down to the beat of the music. The beat fluctuated from fast to slow depending on what part of the song it was, and this is shown through the various fast-paced and slow motion edits.

Camerawork: All of our filming was done with the intention that the clips would later be edited into a series of various short clips. The mixture of camera shots such as, ECUs, tracking, low/awkward angle and still shots created a distorted view of the music video conforming to the conventions of the indie-pop genre. 

Intertextuality:  We didn't base our music video on any lyrical references other than the title "crystallised" we took this word and created our continual theme of sparkles contrasting with darker edgier things from it. 

Andrew Goodwin's Theory on the Conventions of Music Videos

"Visuals either illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics and music. Genres often have their own music style/iconography. Close-ups should always be included. The artist/ band might want to develop their own star iconography, which becomes their star image. Voyeurism is a common theme within music videos. Intertextual reference are also popular. The female performer is frequently objectified principally for display purposes, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star."

After comparing our music video to Goodwin's theory there are some clear similarities and differences. For example, I would say that our adaptation of "Crystallised" by "The xx" contradicts the lyrics and music by involving a slightly more upbeat theme in the clips than is depicted in the lyrics. Another similarity is that our video involves a vast amount of close-up and extreme close-up shots focusing mainly on facial features. This links to the part of the theory that says "The female performer is frequently objectified..." as close up shots of eyes and red lips creates an image for a male audience. Also red lipstick has sexual connotations and it is often used to make women look more attractive to the opposite sex. We didn't develop a star image, apart from the previously mentioned 'red lipstick' voyeurism wasn't involved and an intertextual reference would be difficult to involve as different people will interpret our music video in different ways.

Our Digipak

Here is our digipak 

The front cover

and the back cover

Our album cover was created using Photoshop. The front cover inspired our use of eyes in our music video as we thought it would be a good way to open and close it. We initially used the eye because we wanted to challenge the conventions of "The xx"s usual theme of simplicity while also conforming to the same convention on the back cover. Due slacking time-management skills we were unable to find the time to create an inside cover for our Album, however if we were to it would be plain black with an X where the CD would be placed, to continue with simplicity theme.  

Our Digipak Advertisement   

Here is our advertisement 

After researching for real band album advertisements we found that they were all fairly similar. From the adverts that we found, we realised that there were certain aspects included in all of them that we would have to include (and therefore conform to). These were:

• Band name and album title
• When the album is released 
• A couple of hit songs on the album

We also realised that a lot of the adverts in one way or another resembled the album cover of the album they were advertising so a customer would know what to look for. The adverts that didn't have a resemblance to their album included a picture of the album in the advert. As you can see, we did this. We did it because we thought a picture of the band "The xx" was relevant as it is their product that we are advertising and therefore the background picture of the band does not resemble the eye on our album cover. The fact that we put a picture of our artist as the background both conforms and challenges media conventions depending on which genre you look at. If you look at the indie-pop genre of advertisement it rarely shows the artist in the background and therefore our advertisement has challenges our particular genre's conventions. 

We also thought we needed to include information on where customers could buy the album from and so we included two of the most well known icons associated with purchasing music, HMV and iTunes. Furthermore we included the websites of these two stores and the bands website so as to notify an audience of where they can get more information. Only one of the adverts we found did this, however we thought it would be a useful attribute and so we included it, developing and also challenging the usual conventions.