Group 3 A2 2016/2017: Evaluation - Question 1 (Osbert Menezes)

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

The title of the song as well as the artist name is a convention used in many music videos that come out today. For example the beginning of recent songs like "24K Magic" by Bruno Mars, "Million Reasons" by Lady Gaga and "Let Me Love You" by DJ Snake ft. Justin Bieber show this. All these songs use this part of the song to show the title as well the the artists to give the audience information about the music.

There is a link between the visuals from the video and the music. For example there are scenes where the character int he video is singing the lyrics as they are heard. This creates a link between the video and music.
Similarly the artist was featured in the music which is used in most music videos.

In terms of the story portrayed in the song, a love story is used which is something used in much of today's music. most music is based on love stories looking at its good or bad sides. our one happened to focus on the good and this optimist view on love seen in many songs in today's music, for example "Closer" by The Chainsmokers and "Just The Way You Are" by Bruno Mars.

Use of bright vibrant colour contrasts to create a high state for the viewer which is a convention used in a lot of indie music videos to look trippy and confusing. For example "Let It Happen" by Tame Impala uses very bright contrasting background colours to make certain aspects of the frame stand out and use visual effects along side this to create the trippy effect.

Scenic shots are something that are used a lot in indie music videos and so we tried to incorporate this into our video as well through multiple shots of London. Shots like this can be seen in videos like "I Bet My Life" by Imagine Dragons and "Pompeii" by Bastille.

One convention we did not include was the idea of seeing instruments playing in scenes which we chose not to use as we felt it would detach from the story although it being something used in many videos.
Costumes in music videos of the artist in particular tend to be very flashy and vibrant but we also chose not to stick to this and chose for a more simple casual look to give it the video the indie genre feel we were looking for.
Lots of music videos tend to film using camera dollies and panning equipment but we went for a more hand held option to make it look more indie and realistic rather than very cinematic.

Many indie music videos tend to include the artist or a band playing instruments in scenes but we did not include this for mainly practical reasons as the actor we had playing the artist was unable to play instruments to make it seem believable so we preferred to keep this out of the video.

One way we conformed to the forms of digipaks was through the amount of panels we had. Most digipaks tend to have 4 panels with additional panels from little pullouts our booklets that come inside. This is why we went for a similar idea and did the same by having 4 panels and a pullout. An example of a digipak that uses 4 panels include "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay,

The design used on many fronts for digipaks tends to be quite artistic. We did this by creating the effect of the past shadows from one of the scenes from the music video. This can been seen in covers such as "Currents" by Tame Impala and "Badlands" by Halsey. This helped us to create synergy between the two products while still making the digipak seem different as it included the effect which was not in the music video.

A way we challenged the conventions of traditional digipaks was through the way we incorporated the front and back panels as part of the same image. This is not something that is done in digipaks and the front and back panels tend to be completely separate images, however we still chose to challenge this as we felt it looked better this way.

Many posters tend to include a link to where the music can be accessed or purchased so the audience can know when they can get hold of the music from. This can be seen on posters such as "21" by Adele in which information on where the album is available is displayed on the poster. in a similar way this information is displayed on our advert poster by the "Google Play Store" and "Apple Store" logos.

Reviews and ratings is also an aspect used in a number of magazine advert posters quite a bit so we chose to include this within ours too. For example the poster for "Death Magnetic" by Metallica uses this to sell to the audience with great reviews and critical feedback.

We challenged the forms and conventions by including website links to social media pages as well as official website links. this is not something used on many magazine adverts but we felt that this should be used more to get a fan base growing for an artist so they can potentially sell more products in the future.