Evaluation - Question 1 (Kyle Quadra)

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

Music Video

Goodwin's Theory

Andrew Goodwin's theory suggests that a successful music video contains six key features. These features are:

1. Demonstrates genre characteristics

2. A distinct relationship between the lyrics and the visuals

3. A distinct relationship between the music and the visuals 

4. Close-ups of the artist; used by the record label to market and advertise the artist

5. A reference to the notion of 'looking' or voyeurism 

6. An intertextual reference 

For our own music video, we tried to incorporate the key features from Goodwin's theory in order to produce a successful music video that is realistic and as similar to real music videos produced by record labels.

How our music video demonstrates Goodwin's Theory

Conventions of a Indie-Pop Music Video
- Set in Studios, Cities, Parks or woodland.
- Live Performance from the band, or singer.
- Usually Partnered with a narrative.
- Extreme Close-ups, Long-shots, Establishing and hand-held shots used.
- Costumes and make-up create the character and are dependent on the time and setting.

Conventions in relation to our products
- Our Music Video conforms to majority of the conventions of an Indie-Pop Music Video, for example being set in a central city; London as well as featuring parks, however not using a studio as a location.

The gif below shows a clip from a real Indie-Pop music video. The artist is seen looking out over the setting of a city in the introduction to the video.

This common convention found in many Indie-Pop music videos is carried over and used in our music video in multiple places. An example of this can be seen in the gif below, where the artist from our music video is seen looking out over the river Thames and the city of London.

This convention of the music video being set in a city, woodland or park is a common feature seen in most Indie-Pop music videos, as seen in the gif from the music video for the song 'Pompeii' by Bastille. 

Our music video further adhered to this  through the use of a park as one of our locations, as seen in the gif below. 

- The performance in our music video was not live, and the artist is portrayed by an actor. The music video therefore does not conform to the convention of an Indie-Pop music video containing a live performance, as the real artist does not feature in the music video.

- It is a key convention of a Indie-Pop music to be linked with the narrative of the video. The song is clearly partnered with a narrative in the video, making our product conform to this convention. Through the analysis of the lyrics done prior to storyboarding and later filming, we identified the theme of a love story to which we attempted to produce in the narrative of the video. The song references his love for someone or something, and therefore the narrative had to be about someone he loved, i.e. his partner. The music video cuts between a previous date and the artist thinking back and remembering the experience, and this is done on the beat of the music therefore creating a relationship between the visuals and the music as seen in real music videos.

As the reference to the artist's love towards something or someone is left ambiguous, we decided to take the narrative further by attempting to show the artist's love of something more; his love for the city of London - shown through the establishing shots of London as well as the the wide-shots of the artist looking over the city. 

This proved successful as from our audience feedback, we asked our audiences whether it was obvious or not, to which the agreed that there was a dual love story for both the couple and the artist and London.

- In relation to Goodwin's fourth key feature of a music video, our music video incorporates many long-shots and establishing shots of the various locations around London as well as a series of close-up shots on the actor portraying the artist. Seen below is an example of this from our music video.

This is an example of a close-up in a real music video. 

It is useful to have close-ups of the artist in a music video as it provides the record label with a method of advertising the artist, giving the artist a brand identity as well as being a synergistic link between the song and other songs made by the artist.

Our music video does not contain any notions to voyeurism, challenging the conventions of a successful music video according to Goodwin, however conforming to the conventions of an Indie-Pop music video, which do not commonly refer to voyeurism.

- There are many intertextual references within our music video to real music videos. Some of these references would include; 

The song title at the start of the video, mirrors that done in real music videos as seen below showing our opening compared to the opening of the music video for 'Someone New' by Hozier.



Overall we aimed to stay close to the conventions of real music videos, to make our video as authentic as possible by following Goodwin's key features. We conformed to these features by having a narrative to compliment the music, demonstrating characteristics of our genre through the video, making intertextual references to other music videos and using close-ups of the artist as a selling point. The only exception to Goodwin's features, is that we challenged the idea of voyeurism by not sexualising the female character in the video.

Digipak

Conventions of Digipak

- The artist's name.

- An image or logo of the artist.

- Song list, if the digipak is for an album which contains multiple songs.

- An insert or booklet with information about the music, artist or a poster.

Conventions in relation to our Digipak

- Following the conventions of a digipak, our digipak features the artist's name in bold on the front cover panel. It is often the artist's name which draws an audience to the single or album, which is why most digipaks display the artist's name in bold, usually being the dominant text on the front cover over the name of the album. We did not conform to this convention as audiences would be less familiar to our artist, therefore we placed the artist's name at the bottom of the digipak and made the title of the song the dominant text, as we believe that the track title would be what attracts an audience to the digipak.

As seen on the front panel of our digipak above, the artist's name is located at the bottom of the panel, compared to the digipak for 'Good girl gone bad' by Rihanna, which prioritises the artist's name over the album title.

- We did not use an image of the actual artist on our digipak (shown below), but instead used the actor who portrays the artist in the music video on the digipak. By doing this, we created a synergistic link between the print product and the music video which in turn would make the digipak more recognisable to audiences if they had previously seen the music video. This does not conform to the conventions of a real digipak as majority of digipaks have the real artist of the songs on the cover as well as rarely using images from the music video. 

Stills taken from the music video for the digipak.

Whereas the cover of Rihanna's 'Good girl gone bad' does not use any images or themes from the music video for the song.

The only synergistic link between the music video and the digipak would be the artist Rihanna.

- We did not include a song list on our digipak seen below, challenging the conventions of most digipaks. The reason for this was because the digipak was made for a single, not an album. If we were to include a song list, it would only contain one song so to compensate for this, we decided to include some information about the artist and the single.

Examples of song lists found on real digipaks:

- The booklet found as an insert inside the digipak was the main feature of the print product. The booklet seen below, contained stills from the music video, again reinforcing a synergistic link between the print product and the music video. This is a common feature in real digipaks and therefore our product conforms to the conventions. 

Examples of inserts from real digipaks:

Magazine Advert

Conventions of Magazine Adverts 

- The artist's name.

- An image or logo of the artist.
- The album title.
- Reviews.
- Where to find the song.

Conventions in relation to our Magazine Advert
- Similar to our digipak, the artists name is featured on the magazine advert. It is much smaller in relation to the song title for the fact that the song title would be more recognisable to the audience. By doing this, we are challenging the conventions of popular magazine adverts by not having the artist name as the key aspect of the text on the advert.

In the magazine advert above, the artist's name is clearly the most dominant text on the page, directing attention to the artist and therefore conforming to the conventions.

- The magazine advert uses the same still from the music video which is used for the digipak. This creates a synergistic link between both print products and the music video. The image of the real artist, like the digipak, is not used but instead the actor from the music video features on the poster therefore not conforming to the conventions of an advert for a magazine.

- The magazine advert, in the same way to the digipak, features the title of the song as the dominant text on the advert. This further adds to the continuity and synergy between all three products.

The titles are shown below; showing the magazine advert, digipak and music video.

The typeface is the same across all products.

- The reviews are a common feature on magazine adverts although not featured on all adverts. It promotes the song and can influence audiences to buy the track. To conform to this convention, we added reviews to the advert as well as starred ratings as seen below, similar to how a critique would rate a real song.

An example from a real magazine advert:

- Finally, we included links to find the song online; through iTunes and Google Play. This is not a very common convention to magazine adverts as adverts have been used for a much longer time, before songs were available online digitally, but is used in some newer adverts as shown below. 

Overall we attempted to stick to the conventions of digipaks and magazine adverts in order to produce products which are authentic and similar to real print products.