Question 1-In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convention of real media products?

Our task was to create a promotional package for a band this meant we had to think, develop and create a music video addition to two tasks which were to create a diqipak and an advertisement that could feature in a magazine. We chose a local group of boys who are starting up a band, who want to get there music out there and create a following of fans to enjoy their music. We had pick one of their songs to create a music video for their single release. An Advantage of choosing a local band meant that they could feature in the actual music video, instead of getting actors to stand in, this caused to have better lip-sync in and guitar/drum playing. This meant that people didn’t have to learn how to play the song from scratch, instead this would mean for easier editing as they knew their own song. Another benefit was that we could have their influence and ideas of what they wanted in a music video, this gave us ideas that we could develop for ourselves. Making sure that the band had their say. So we could create a creative, unique video that everyone liked and had the best of everyone's ideas.

The purpose of creating a music promo is to advertise a local band called DanceGrenade who are trying to gain a following by their individual style of music and to entertain the audience watching—so they will want to watch the video over and over again. We created a Digipak for our band-DanceGrenade, the main and original purpose of the digipak is to house and protect the CD, so it can be sold to the artist’s fans. This are also seem as collectors issues, with a limited number produced, causing dedicated fans or collector to be interested. 

Another purpose to creating a digipak is to advertise the band, create a unique, individual piece of art for their front cover that could encourage potential fans to purchase their music. The purpose of the advertisement is to be put in magazines like Q or Rolling Stone to advertise the latest release of our bands album to attract audiences to become familiar to their music and encourage them to purchase the digipak. It is helps publicise the single we created the music video for. We finally hope as a combination of these will create a buzz about them, giving the target market an idea of what they are about and what their music values/style.

We hope as a group we can create a unique, representation of the band’s song, to make a quality and creative video that has the ability to be played over and over again—causing the song to get more and more plays allowing it to see seen and heard by our target audience, of male and females between the ages of 15-40.

Taking inspiration straight away from this digipak of Katy Perry Teenage Dream album has a strong conternewaty throughout the design. The common theme of Candy is seen from the CD to the different covers, the sense we get is that her music is fun, sweet and from the pop genre. It really gives the audience a strong idea about the type/theme of the music might be, it appeals to her fans are the colours are Yellow and Pinks—girly. Whereas the front has a provocative theme, appealing to the male audience—this is a clear contradiction. The design of the pack features heavily of images of the artist in this case Katy Perry, showing us that she’s the one and only star, it’s her music and her product. The photos have a clear reference to a cloud like dream that she is living her dreams in reality—this is minored by the title of the album Teenage dream, representing to her fans it was her ambition in life to be a pop star. The type of photos are very typical of the pop artist genre, where we see Katy Perry in the centre of the shot, where the audiences eyes are straight away drawn to her, showing her fans that she is just as normal as they are We hope to create a digipak that does do this, that it sticks to the music genre conventions, this makes sure that we target the right audience and that it appeals to them—causing them to buy and popularise the band. It was interesting to analysis what we think works and does, this caused discussed on what we all wanted to achieve in our digipak—so we were all in an agreement right from the start.
 
A music video almost gives the story behind the song—it allows the audience to maybe see what the song means if they didn’t already know, maybe causing fan to relate and connect to the song make it personal to them. Adele’s hometown single is a key example of this, as it is an emotional song that through the video helps fans think of a time they felt the same emotional that’s shown in the music video. The conventions that help convey this feeling is the use of putting an effect on the shots using black and white, gives softness to the video, the link between old photographs of a happier time have resistant to the promo. The use of close ups on Adele show her emotion, the way the xamera is always movement is significant represents the continue development of her feelings that one minutes everything is okay the next heartbreak.

 In the majority of music videos of a similar genre there commonly links between the lyrics of the song and the video in the narrative parts of the video. Post-modernism--where texts are created by copying and reusing ideas / images that have been used in a previous texts. An example of this is Madonnas Materials girls opening is an exact copy of the Marilyn Monroe film--with the exact copy of the dress and male dancers and the choreography. But seem in some of Fat boy slims videos they are often more playful, shocking, or even unconventional at time as a result of taking inspiration from other resources. This video also featured live performance of Adele singing her song when walking along the river Thames in London. This makes the song become personal, as there are no fancy backgrounds or dance routines, this is her as an artist showing her talent for singing and song writing—representing the raw emotion in the song which in turn causes it to be more powerful. The type of live performance shots are causal, as if they are just thoughts running through her head, again representing her raw emotion. This concept makes her as an artist relatable to her fans, as if the audience watching the video has access to the real thoughts of the musician, that she is just an ordinary woman going through the same things as everyone does—Love, heartbreak and pain. This video also have strong repeatability, although it is simple in conventions, locations, costume and artist, there is true feeling and love behind the song, that every time it is being watched you notice/feeling something different. The location of central London makes everyone recognise where Adele is, creating a sense of home-this is a place where everyone knows.  

Camera-Music videos often tend to include many long shots, close ups and mid shots this tend to be popular across a range of music genres. This helps create emphasis on the artist-who’s is mostly in the centre of screen, main focus. It also forces the audience to take notice of the location and emotion taking place in the video. The close ups are used not only to show emotion but to reflect the words and meaning of the song with the movement of the lips of the singer.  The use of long shots in a video tend to help tell the narrative, show location, live performance of all band members playing—head to toe. These type of give the audience the idea of the world in which the band live in.

Camera movement is often used to follow or trace the singer, for example the tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots. This gives the perspective of an audience member is in a gig environment shot, achieving the mood of being in the moment watching a live bands performance.  This adds excitement and pace to the music video. This particular camera movement is seen in music genres of alternative, Indie and Rock—where the atmosphere and music takes centre stage in the production.  These genres traditionally have a target audience of fans that are likely to attend gigs—so advertising the gig atmosphere within the music video is going to attract people to pay for tickets. Also with this music genre this often rely on ticket sales for gig as a source of money as their music doesn’t appeal to the mass market like Pop music does—so very little album sales. With fans buying gig tickets causes the band to survive in the music industry and continue making music.

Mise-en-scene this is everything in the shot and arrangement of props and performance in the video. It puts importance on the representation of something; an example of this is Mad by Nero. The video involves him walking alone, being in a room alone. This sends a message to the audience of isolation and sadness/lost. This is helped by the costume he is wearing dark clothes represent depression, wanting to almost be a shadow in the world-unnoticed. The lighting has a similar theme; this is just a few examples of mise-en-scene in a music video. The importance of mise-en-scene in a music video is extremely important as these are the things that the audience notices. The use of costume, paints the personality of the actor or the artist, by the clothes that they wear. For example the use of costume that featured in the video. (ADD VIDEO)

Setting is a convention that you can’t help but notice during watching a music video. The use of location can vary from music genres for example a pop video might feature the setting of studios or urban decay environments in contrast with our band’s music genre of Indie/Alternative of outside spaces and rundown locations. You can see the contrast there with Cheryl Cole Fight for this Love and Blurs Coffee and Tv. Where you can see the contrast of locations, which influence our views on the music and the artist.

Lighting-is hugely important in a video, it picks out what the audience sees and doesn’t. The use of black and white light emphasises or shadows a scene. Artificial lighting is often used to enhance the look of the artist showing that they are the aim focus of the video. The use of high key lighting on a video, for example stage lighting that shines on to the band or artist adds emphasis onto them used in live performance shots mainly. An example of this being used is in our music video in the parts where we film at Mama Lizzies the lighting brightly shined on the faces of the performers.

Editing Jump cuts are very popular in music videos. As they create pace in the video, making sure that the editing is in time with the beat of the song. With dance/Pop genre of music building to a point is important as it allows for excitement to build for the drop in the song. It type of editing technique allows for quick jump of a range of different shot whether it is a close or long shot it still works. This is because it allows the editor to suddenly change the pace of the video in time with the music-to the beat. Other transitions like a fade and dissolves are sometimes used--dream affect.  An example of jump cut used to create pace is artists like Rihanna on her video Rude Boy, which feature of mix of different shots that can together for the pace of the song. Editing isn’t always fast, with the Lady Gaga video Telephone which has a strong narrative through the video, before the song even begins has a mix. As the narrative is being told the editing is conventional for a TV Programme or a film with a few long duration shots that tell the story, but as soon at the song tempo comes in it dramatically changes, with a huge amount of different shots with a very short duration on screen. This doesn’t allow the audience to keep up at some points as the flashing images appear on screen.  

Narrative is almost always subordinate to performance. A song rarely tells a complete narrative--not the full begins to end that you would see for a film or a book. This often keeps the audience watching the whole music video from start to end, as they are hoping to see the ending of story created in the promo. It also allows for playback ability, because there isn’t a certain ending as the audience you could interrupt any ending you want. Causing the fans to make up their own mind about what the narrative is about open to ideas and can to make personal to the fans. Music videos often don’t rely on more traditional styles of narrative that you might see if in a film or TV programme.  As the video tend to be incomplete with very amount of characters, plotlines and setting, that doesn’t always tell the complete song. Although against these typical videos sometimes dialogue is used at the begin of the video to set the scene for the audience, so it puts context to the song before it is being played. An example of this is Taylor Swift “I knew you were trouble” The live performance is important is a music video as I shows the band was actual musical talent and merit to their music through playing their instrument or singing along. It also the audience members not to get bored of narrative through flicking between the narrative and live performance it becomes more interesting to watch—appealing to the repeat playability of the music video.  So fan will watch the video over and over again. Another reason why this is an important element in a music video is that audience gets the impression and vive of what their favourite band might be like live in concert, causing them to sell tickets for their gigs.

But there are some music videos that go against any type of conventions, an example of this is Queens Bohemian Rhapsoy, one of the most influential music video of it time, it paid the way for artists to experiment, be creative and think outside of the box when producing a music video. The promo is a total of 6 minutes—in contrast with the traditional 3 to 4 minutes conventional video are. This broke expectations, rules and tradition to cause a truly unique, creative expression—that changed the industry. The use of lighting in the first shot, it consists of one light shining slightly over their faces to reveal a very little amount of the band member’s faces—that sense of not making everything visible to the audience creates that sense of mystery. Instead of other artists in the 70s and 80s where the musician was in constant light—the force was always on them in the video, there were the star and it was to publicise them as people, instead of putting emphasis on the song they wanted to get famous. Compared to this video the band didn’t see themselves as famous, it was more about the music, making good, new, creative sounds.   Another element of the video that was unconventional was the amount and type of editing techniques that were used in the six minute long promo the use of cross fades in particular a close up of the lead singer Freddie Mercury, were we can’t properly see his eyes it becomes unnerving for the audience—again not a typical mood we feel in a music video, there distance from the footage to the audience, going against the convention case in pop videos.  The use of live footage, had never been use before the release of this video, they would traditionally like along with the recorded song. With the band playing their instruments gives the feel that they are real musicians—a technique used regularly in today’s video.

The music video by Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen Good Times had particular influence for us on our music video with the idea of friendship, excitement, parties and adventure. This would amplification to the lyrics on our song, which represents friendship for one night-of celebrating being young, free and together. This video represents the similar sorts of themes I hope to create within our music video the use of location-the woods sparked potential ideas with the colours that are created on screen, looks visually appealing.  To create a mood the audience can connect with of happiness, joy and fun with humour and friendship. The use of lip-syncing was continue throughout the video as typical convention for the pop genre.

The elements that influenced us were the use of environment—with the woods, it looked visually very affective on screen with the light of the fire on the black background of the night, was something we really hoped that we could repucate  in our own video. Another element that we really liked was the mix of narrative and performance and how it was put together. It took different angles, shot type or subject matter put it together in time with the beat and it worked. It made us think despite having different elements we could pull it together as along as we have something that continues throughout everything.

Another music video that was particularly liked by the band we were working with was Here We Go Again by Ok Go, this was a unique music video. That didn’t respond to any of the typical conventions of music videos we had researched, but we were interested with why the boys wanted us to look at it and what we could take away from it. The use of humour was very much liked by the group and was an element we really hope to put in our video—this really fitted into the image the way the boys wanted to be presented—that they are friends having fun and making music. It’s unique, creative and hilarious it has been a huge inspiration and really made us passionate about producing a music promo that was brilliant.

These are our location shots with the band members featured in Bourne Woods, inspired by the Good Times music video, but we decided to add our own ideas into the mix. To feature performance shots instead of narrative. This shot in particular is of the band playing live the song with their instruments and singing, this makes for a real representation of the bands attitude/feelings towards the song. 
It allowed us to capture their friendship, talent and love of music. It was a fairly conventional shot and idea of having the band play live, but I think it was needed and showcased their talent. It lighting and framing on these shots look brilliant as the audience is able to see them playing through the long shots but with close ups of the faces to capture emotion. This particular technique is popular with the alternative music genre video seen on such videos like Kings and Queens by 30 Seconds to Mars.