1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions offer media products?

DIGIPAKWhile researching media products in order to gain an understanding of how professional media products should look, I was also looking for inspiration and ideas which I could develop or use with my own spin, as I knew that soon i would be creating my own version of this, aiming for it to look as professional as possible. I therefore made notes of conventions, characteristics and likenesses between products, and looked at how i could use, develop and challenge these forms and conventions,- all the time aiming towards making these prevalent in my final products. Due to the aid of my research i was able to create a 4 panel Digipak, Insert and Advert for my fiction band ‘Eyes Above’ and their new album “Tesla”

I started by looking into artists work from the genre of the record we chose, this being Dance/Electric. I also researched texts from the Rap and Hip Hop genre, as this holds the most interest for me personally, while also looking at work from artists signed to the same record label as we have grouped ours with. The main things I took away from this involved a clear colour palette, bold designs and aesthetically pleasing looks for all of my work. 

I chose to challenge forms of convention by using the colours Red, Gold and Black from an early point, along with images of the band members faces, and incorporating gold borders, always gold borders. This is similar to albums which I have copies of, such as My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West, The Chronic by Dr.Dre and Wonder Where We Land by SBTRKT. This followed suit with the minimalist saying I have used always throughout the media course, which uses and develops the forms of professional media in todays age. It was always important for me not have my work seen as boring. I challenged this with striking

colours, an Attractive girl on my cover and as little text as possible. All of the above follow conventions of modern day covers from pretty much any genre.

The use of Gold and Red mainly came from Indicud by Kid Cudi and Wonder where we land by SBTRKT, this challenged the usual conventions of these albums however, due to the photo in the centre which reflects the artist, unlike the other 2 albums. I ensured to then keep my work clean and minimalist, only adding where i really needed to. All the time keeping it small and around the periphery, so that it didn't takeaway from my work. This is very bold for a viewer, making it standout. This followed throughout my work, giving my work an element of continuity. Just like many of the digipaks i had researched.

To the right are examples of covers that have been challenged/developed within my work, acting as inspiration and ideas. Many of these are iconic and despite not having the artists name within, associate you with their work and are easily recognisable within the genre. The graphics, borders and colour schemes all key here.

ADVERTIn order to create a sense of continuity between my work I used a similar gold border and the same cover image and font to make up the majority of my Advert. Other conventions used such as release date, name of album and name of band were all prevalent in texts I had researched (right) I feel the gold and attractive cover girl is eye-catching without being overwhelming. This challenged the conventions of many adverts I looked at because only a few had an image of the face of the artist and most were mainly graphics based. I wanted to have large text but not much of it, so that a viewer can gain information from it quickly, without having to read, for example when driving past on a bus, or seeing it in the street. After seeing other texts from artists such as the Arctic

Monkeys, SBTRKT and Tame impala, I think that my Advert is on the whole relatively unconventional, challenging other forms of text with its large writing and zoomed in image on the front. Keeping it plain yet eye-catching was the biggest issue I faced. 

Less is more was the general feeling and mood i got during my research, using large graphics/writing for the name of the artist to draw a viewer in, coupled with smaller writing for the finer details. The main graphic was also nearly always central, and the name of the artist the top line of writing and the writing always capital. I feel I carried this out to a degree, only developing/challenging where necessary for example the image of a band members face. 

MUSIC VIDEOThe main 2 aspects we filmed during our music video creation was dance and lyric synchronisation, always involving members of the band. This inclusion of members of the band for every shot is extremely common for this genre. We decided to have the 3 girls in all shots during the early stages of research, this gave us a mould so that we could begin planning what our video would look like, developing other ideas from music videos we had seen from similar setups to what we had.The criteria when watching videos for research was often 1 or 3 females, a white backdrop and low budget. We often developed conventions of artists from Grimes to Beyonce, noticing the height of camera, camera angle, length of shot and background lighting and depth of landscape in shot. These early texts we studied were extremely influential in the design of our video.

During the research and planning prior to filming we decided upon the inclusion of a white backdrop. We took this idea from multiple examples found on youtube involving artists e.g. SBTRKT, Caribou and FKA Twigs- all from similar genres. Terry Richardsons work and execution of this tool also made us think this simple yet effective method was worth pursuing. We had a

look at the schools backdrop however we did not feel this was big enough and therefore rented out a professional studio in leicester. We thought that this was the only way to properly use and furthermore develop the conventions of the videos we had studied. The inclusion of all 3 girls in many shots also gave us a need for extra space, which lead to the hiring of the studio. In our draft video we failed to apply many conventions due to our lack of understanding which could only be gained through research plus trial and error. Despite our draft video being pretty much an absolute failure, this gave us an insight into how to carry out the conventions we had chosen to include, it also gave us man ideas on how to challenge the conventions of other videos from this genre, such as using a bright backdrop, and using a wide range of angles. We noticed that there were some shots which would be very hard to replicate, so made changes to the storyboard here also.