EVALUATION QUESTION 1: IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

During the research and planning stages, myself and my media partner Sammy identified the common pop conventions used in real media products and then chose how we could incorporate these into our own music video and into my individual ancillary tasks. The research and planning was very useful as I found that the conventions used in pop genre videos are very different to other genres such as R&B, electro, dance, indie and many more. I was able to figure out and discover which elements would work together in both our music video and my own ancillary tasks to demonstrate our chosen genre for our artist. The research that I took part in surfing the internet was very inspirational, I used original ideas from real media products to help develop my own ideas and to make it my individual work. From exploring other example texts of media products it enabled me to challenge some conventions by adjusting current ideas to develop and form new ones. Our music video is a mixture of both illustrations and amplification as it brings in both elements of performance and the actual signing on the track. This is an example of a common convention that is used in today’s pop music videos.

INTRODUCTION:

ARTIST: MILLY EVANSFrom looking at real artists in media products through sources such as YouTube it enabled me to think of ideas of who we could include within our music video. We thought it was be important to include beauty within our video due to it being a big aspect of the genre pop and after already choosing the song ‘Alfie’ by Lily Allen, it allowed us to develop our choice of artist from looking at how Lily Allen looks and her style. An artists style is a very important convention when trying to reflect a desired image which is why we decided to use a glamorous girl. However, we did challenge this by adding in humour and making sure that our artist does not take herself to seriously to make it exciting in which our target audience of young teens would thoroughly enjoy it. Adding in this humour and making our video fun is another convention of the genre pop.

SHOTS:In our final video we included a lot of close up shots of our artist, not only just to show her singing clearly but to reflect her outstanding facial expressions as she illustrates the lyrics. After researching through real media texts we found that it was very typical for pop music videos to have a lot of fast moving shots to keep the target audience interested. However we did not have as many as originally planned although this occurred we were not bothered with this as we did originally want to keep our video simple with the added sped up humour parts to make up for this. This can demonstrate us challenging this convention which involved using longer length in shots. As we used a variety of amplification and illustration it made it easier for us to use longer shots so that the lip syncing wasn’t over complicated. As mentioned we developed our video by adding in fun and quirky shots as we like to call them ‘spoofs’ during the middle course of the sound when the music starts to sound like a fairground. This we felt added in humour and to convey hat the artist is not taking herself too seriously as well as the video.

Gimmicky and humour shots we inserted.

COSTUME:In order to show continuity through my media products I researched the same artists for each convention so that I could match up my genre correctly. Choosing the right costumes for our artist was a very important convention to think about as it determines how they may be looked upon by the audience as well as how seriously they may be taken as an artist. We were inspired by Lily Allen’s retro fashion style of clothing for our music video, we did this as we thought it would match the narrative of the lyrics as well as the props used such as a life sized puppet, giant playing cards, bubbles and a retro old fashioned camera. We can across some evidence that Lily Allen has previously worn a polka dot dress which is a typical trend of her genre so we thought it would suit our artist well. I had the perfect dress at home in which we put our artist into which was a navy blue and white polka dot bodycon dress. As we wanted to maintain the glamorous look not only through our individual ancillary tasks but also our music video, we combined this style of clothing with modern makeup to make our artist stand out and be inspirational towards out target audience.

MISE-EN-SCENE:Mise-en-scene is known and arguably one of the most vital conventions of a music video construction and can be demonstrated in a large amount of ways depending of what genre the music is. Different themes and styles can be used in the category of ‘pop’ and they don’t always have to follow specific guidelines as the connotations of the track are taken into account. After researching real pop genre music videos I was mainly inspired by artists such as Lily Allen, Eliza Doolittle, Jessie Ware and Eliza Doolittle.

During the beginning stages of our coursework myself and Sammy were drawn to Lily Allen’s music video ‘Alfie’ due to the video incorporating a real life sized puppet and illustrating the narrative of the track. From looking further into this music video in depth we decided to use these exact conventions to make our own music video. Although we were following a direct route of the pop music video conventions not only did we restrict our chance to develop or challenge any of these conventions but we also limited ourselves to be creative and original. However this negative impact when making our first video gave myself and Sammy both the chance to be more aware and alert of different conventions within pop genre videos and to be more inspired by other products the second time round when filming in a different location with different shots, lighting and use of different camera angles.

As the location of filming music videos is a very important convention when portraying an artist in a certain way me and Sammy decided to film within a white studio, this would then therefore result in everything being stripped down plain and simple to just our artist and main focus on her and the props used throughout the video. From researching we came up with this idea from being inspired by Miley Cyrus’ ‘7 Things I Hate About You’ and Jessie J’s ‘Price Tag’ who both belong within the pop genre of music. We thought this type of location would work effectively with our song ‘Alfie’ by Lily Allen as our artist can still illustrates the lyrics by using specific props as well as lip syncing the lyrics. In real media texts it is common for several locations to be explored and tested however we challenged this as we only used one location throughout the whole time of our music video. To overcome this we attempted using a variety of different shots and interesting props to keep our audience interested even though we only had one location throughout our video.

DIGIPAK:My digipak front cover was the main aspect of my ancillary texts which had a heavy influence from another source which was images found in the magazine ‘Dazed and Confused’. As well as images of pop artists such as Ellie Golding. Particularly of the example located in the bottom right hand corner as it has a double image effect of a head shot. This is where two photos were taken then put on top of each other with the transparency of each photo manipulated with. In this respect my digipak conforms to conventions of real media products as if reflects conventions that have already been used within real media texts. Another example would be the James Blake album also located to the right. From seeing these images, I really liked this effect with the image and believe it can apply to nearly all different genres. I think that it was an effective way to grab the passing public’s attention and be drawn to this digipak if it was to be seen on a shelf.

Even though I used this double face illusion throughout my digipak and album advert, I feel that I have challenged the typical pop style, as by using a bright colourful palette the artist is perceived as exciting and playful which the audience likes to be associated with. This was clear in my research, for example I found indie and rock genres used darker grungy colour combinations whereas pop genres used bright combinations to reflect the mood of the different genres. As a result of this I did challenge this, as you can see I used minimal bright colours on both my digipak and album advert(located on the next slide) however I used bright red lipstick to daw attention to her lips and to have that element of bright colour in there somewhere.

My final digipak

ALBUM ADVERT:As for my album advert I feel that it uses the conventions as it is comprehensively connected to my digipak, through the theme of the illusion head shot and the use of the same fonts. This is something that you would expect to find in real media texts as magazine adverts are inevitably reflective of their album cover so that the consumer can make the connection automatically through visuals. Due to my advert not including much information this could be classed as challenging conventions as many pop magazine adverts appear more crowded that I discovered when researching, to get a lot of information on show. Despite this I wanted my advert to engage with the audience by using a simple and not crowed layout with an eye capturing appealing picture which I think works due to my artist being glamorous.