Media Evaluation

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

PerformanceIn my music video which is of the rock genre I have followed conventions by having a performance scene. Performance scenes are a key convention of a music video in general but are found in the majority of rock videos. First of all I began to research different videos to get a grasp of what to expect in terms of cinematography, mise-en-scene and editing. Some one examples I looked at were “Peace” by Kids In Glass Houses and “Loverboy” by You Me At Six. Both of these videos had performance scenes running along side a narrative.

The typical things you would expect to see in terms of mise-en-scene in these videos would be instruments, guitars, drums, amps etc. This is something I had done in my music video as I have set out the performance scene as if the band are onstage and playing to a crowd so you can easily see the musical equipment of the drums and the amps easily conveying the feel of a live gig.

Furthermore the way the band dress in the video is very important to determine the genre of the video. If the band were in tracky bottoms and trainers it would not fit conventions of a rock video. From viewing other videos clothes like skinny jeans, denim jackets, converse shoes are worn, stereotypical “cool clothes.” Because of this the band in my video are wearing those “cool clothes” skinny jeans, converse, band t-shirts etc.

Performance Continued…In terms of cinematography I took influence from the videos I studied. In the “Peace” video there are lots of close up shots of the band which show an up close and personal feel to the band something you might not get at one of their live gigs. Also we wanted to get across the energy and movement of a gig so using hand held shots and using quick tilts and pans got across this energy as well as the band moving. We decided to do this as the song is a fast paced song and we wanted the video to match the pace. There's nothing worse than having a video that is slow paced with no energy or movement in other words just boring.

An example of this would be The Beatles “Hello Goodbye” which uses the same shots over and over again with some shots lasting 15 seconds which is boring an slow paced. We wanted quick shots with quick edits and movement in the performance scenes to show that.

Here is an example of the close up shot from the “Peace” video and a close up from my video showing the influence I took from the videos I researched.

NarrativeMusic videos are driven by their narrative storyline which sometimes reflect the theme and lyrics of the song. My narrative reflects the theme of the song which is isolation and loss as the song is called “Black Cloud.” Despite the song being an upbeat number the lyrical content is quite dark and I wanted to reflect that with my narrative storyline. The majority of videos having a narrative and performance interweaving between the two and my video is no different. In the “Peace” video they have extras with a different storyline however in the “Loverboy” video it is the band creating the narrative by them getting arrested.

With my video I wanted to create a narrative with extras to give something different to the video than just the band. Our theme for the narrative was isolation so we wanted to capture that by close up shots of the main protagonist and high angle shots to show the struggle and lower status he has in comparison to the other actors in the video.

Ancillary TextsMy first thing I wanted to do was look at existing digipaks and posters for albums. I look at albums such as You Me At Six – Sinners Never Sleep, Muse – The Resistance and Biffy Clyro – Only Revolutions (All of which I had a physical copy of). All had similar conventions including album artwork, images of the band and a track listing on the back of the album cover. I took this on board and created a digipak with a good album artwork, tracklisting and an image of the band to show a professional feel between by music video and the ancillary text.

Another key convention I found was that the CD itself was in a sleeve much like an LP as opposed to on show like a normal CD. Therefore I wanted to use this I feel only a selection of albums will do this and is something a little bit different. I also included a “Thank you” page on the digipak. This is were the band thank their family, friends and label etc. on their journey as a band which is found on every album I looked at as well as the majority of albums in general.

However this can be found in different places, some albums come with a lyric booklet and the “Thanks” comes at the end of that. With mine however I wanted a page dedicated to thanking people who would have helped the page rather than having it hided away.

Ancillary Texts Continued…When it came to creating an advertisement poster for the album I first of all looked at existing posters to get an understanding of what to expect and to find the key conventions. I looked at three poster adverts (You Me At Six – “Hold Me Down” and “Cavalier Youth” and Muse – “The Resistance.”

I found that the main thing I needed to create a strong poster was a good main image to draw people to look at it. In all three of these examples it was the album artwork which understandably is a great idea as people will see the advert they will be able to recognise the album artwork once the album is released. Furthermore I noticed that a bold yet simple text stands out much more than some crazy off the wall text. Therefore I chose a simple black text which was called “November Sky” which really stood out against the colourful background of the album artwork and was easy to read the information given.

There tended to be a small review on the poster such as, “One of the most eagerly anticipated albums of the year” which creates a real buzz around the album and will get other people interested in the album. Using this example I used a small review on my own poster (“The best album you’ll hear all year”) which if I’m honest makes the album sound better than it probably is put it is a good advertising technique.

Because of the ever changing world that is the music industry the way albums are released is always changing. Downloading is one of the most popular forms of consuming music however there are some people out there including myself who loves a physical copy of the album. In the last few years vinyl has made a big revival with things such as Record Store Day. Because of this bands have changed the way they release albums and this has been reflected on posters as they now include what format the album will be released in. Because of this is I decided to include what my album will be released on which I decided would be CD, download and vinyl. Therefore I am catering to a lot of peoples needs in how they consume music.

Finally I looked at where albums are advertised which included several different places. Posters are advertised on places like bus stops or billboards in the U.K which are a great source of advertising as the general public can easily see them and possibly buy that album. Down in London a lot of album advertisements are in the London underground which is one of the main ways of transport in the capital city and therefore a lot of people will see these adverts and reaching out to a greater audience. Because of this I created an advert for my album at a bus stop by importing an image of my album poster over the original poster which would therefore appeal to a wider audience than my target audience of rock music fans.

Also I found that album advertisements are found at festivals such as Reading and Leeds which does cater to a particular audience of music fans. However it could target people who haven’t heard of the band or aren’t into that kind of genre of music but want to get into something different. I collected some images of album posters from festivals and copied my album poster over the top on Photoshop. This is a great way of advertising the album as so over 100,000 people attend festivals like this so therefore a fairly decent amount of people seeing my poster.