Kieran Hill A2 Media Production: Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenged forms and conventions of real media products?

For our current A2 media coursework we have been given the task to create an effective music video for an unsigned artist’s song, and create two ancillary tasks, which include a digipak design and a website.

The purpose of the music video, digipak and magazine is to promote and advertise the artist/band’s new material to the target audience. These methods help a band to gain more experience of reaching a larger audience that they would not have been able to obtain without these types of promotional marketing. They all work together to help plug the artist/band, giving their fans or potential fans an idea of who the band is and what they have to offer.

Promotional Video: A promotional video would be used mainly to embolden the target audience to get to know the band; the music video for a song is made to be viewed on multiple digital media formats such as music channels, YouTube and Itunes. The music video must be eye catching to the viewer and it must also have the repeatability about it, so the audience feel that they want to come back again and again to watch it, this helps to keep the song in your head and interlink the imagery from the video to the song.

Digipak: A digipak is simply a CD case that holds the CD within it along with other items such as lyrics, pictures or even a poster. The digipak must be appealing as you want to gain the attention of your chosen audience the second they look at it, sometimes you only see the spine, so all of it must have a bold and effective design. Although as technology becomes more advanced, more and more people tend to get digital versions of songs off ITunes, collectors and fans still tend to buy a hard copy.

Website: The website is a way of bringing everything the band have together into one marketing element, the website helps a band to promote their music video and their tracks along with merchandise, which will include such things as t-shirts and the digipak. A website is also an effective way of bringing the fans closer to the band, having constant updates through images and videos really gives the people viewing an insight into what the band are like together and what they are doing, it also helps feed the hunger of fans, links to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter also promote the band and encourages you to go and follow or like their page. I have chosen oasis for each section as they have a professional example for each element, helping to support my points.

The purpose of a music promo is to give the fans something that they can watch when listening to the song; this helps to enhance the overall story behind the lyrics and create a strong link to visual imagery. The video also lets them show off their musical talents with shots of them playing the instruments and also help to show the personality of the band, allowing people to decide whether they are a fan on two aspects, the music and the bands personality. For a record company, a music video allows the band to be noticed and listened to on the Internet instead of relying on the radio; this helps to promote it to a larger number of people.

In a music video you are not able to use one type of shot to make it effective, it is expected that in a music video, a large range of shots are used such as long shots, mid-shots, close ups and establishing shots. These are all used to show either the performer or used to show the narrative. It is very conventional for a music video to give you a lot of shots of the performer(s) playing their instrument and/or singing; this allows people to see that they are skilled and also helps to portray the genre they fit into.

A music video is expected to mirror the energy of the song through the use of mise-en-scene and editing as conventionally the shots are cut to the beat of the song, allowing it to feel like the video flows according to the music. This gives it a very professional feel and also makes the overall video more enhanced with both aspects, the performance and the narrative. Most cuts that are used tend to also relate to the genre of music it is, for example a slower song may have fades between shots whilst a more upbeat one will use straight cuts to make it punchy and energetic. Conventionally they tend to use to straight cuts are they are easier to keep to the beat and do not distract the audience from anything going on in the video. The mise-en-scene in music videos stays in parallel to the genre of music it is, such as a hardcore genre like the one we chose the mise-en-scene is typically darker lighting, no outlandish costume themes, they tend to just wear a band t-shirt to promote other bands, the conventional location for a genre like ours is an abandoned building/derelict area and the props would be the instruments as hardcore bands show all instruments and don’t tend to focus on one more than the other, I feel we have succeeded to hit all these aspects. Although a variety of shots are expected in a music video, you get more close up shots than any other type, this is because it gives a more intense feel to the video and also allows the viewers to see up close and personal which they will perhaps never be able to do.

The sound in music videos usually is non-diegetic sound as it will be the song placed over the top of the video, however in some more unconventional videos they will have sections of narrative that will be diegetic sound, this is noise that is picked up from the camera, usually this is done either at the start or at the end, this allows the video to be more realistic, it also deters people from downloading the song straight from YouTube because they do not want that in it so they will buy it from ITunes to cut that sound out, an example of this is the ending of the video below.

Narratives always vary significantly depending on the genre of the track, most bands/artists tend to want to keep their narrative straight forward and easy for the viewers to understand, stopping people from getting confused or missing the point of the song It also helps to enhance the ideas and emotions that they want to get across to their audience, there isn’t always a balance on both narrative and performance as some videos focus just on one aspect. There are three main narrative ideas; you can either choose Illustration, which is the just where you mirror the lyrics from the track in the story, Amplification, this is when you take one main idea or theme from the lyrics and you create a story based on that and Disjuncture, this is when the narrative is completely different to the lyrics in the song, this tends to not make sense or have any link.

http://prezi.com/yssq29jwkt3g/conventions-of-a-hardcore-video/

http://prezi.com/ubkzjualqp1w/conventions-of-a-pop-promo/

This video above by The Verve breaks a lot of conventions that you would associate with a music promo, one main factor is the amount of shots used, although they have all the main shots such as a long shot, mid shot and close ups, they are just scattered around compared to the long tracking shot that flows through the whole video. It also breaks conventions by just having the vocalist in it as usually when a band make a video for a song, they tend to have every member of the band in it to promote the band and also to play their instruments. However in this video, you see no one playing instruments, just the vocalist walking along and singing. It’s also interesting how they have used disjuncture in their video, although this is unconventional of a music promo, it is conventional of a rock band as they thrive to keep their individuality.

This video by Jessie J sticks to a lot of conventions, however has some aspects you wouldn’t usually see in a pop promo. One aspect is that usually pop promos tend to be set on sunny and bright locations or expensive sets; however this set is very simple being that it is just a corridor with a few rooms on the side. The video is very conventional in the way that the editing is very upbeat and fast to replicate the pop genre and the narrative behind is very simple to understand, being amplification of the name of the song ‘It’s My Party’. The costume design is also very conventional as pop promos tend to keep to having very fashionable clothes, although Jessie J isn’t wearing a lots of branded names, she looks very young and fashionable.

In our music promo we have kept our camerawork very conventional of a music video by using a large range of shots, however also kept it to the hardcore genre conventions by including mainly mid shots for our preforming shots. As we have seen in most hardcore videos, we showed each band member playing their instruments in a mid shot of them where they were the main focus and other members in the shot were blurred using manual focus, we also showed the full band together in long shots, this was to help show their talents and skills and help to show the bands connection to the music. We have developed the convention of narrative a lot in our music video as hardcore promos tend to focus mainly on the performance when we have tried to keep our video very equally split.

For our performance shots, instead of using a tripod and having a single placed shot, we have used a glidecam, this meant that we could film one large take from one angle, this meant that we could also follow the performer in their actions, moving back and forth along with them is a key aspect in hardcore music videos as it allows you to feel much closer with them and therefore makes the shots more energetic, a conventional style for a hardcore music video.

For the most part of our music video, we have kept our editing completely conventional, we have kept the editing to replicate the tempo of the song so the editing is a fast paced, which helps to keep the energy of the song at a peak throughout. Fast paced editing also keeps the viewers more interested and helps to increase its visual appeal. For most of our transitions we have used straight cuts, this keeps the video looking sharp and professional and also keeps all the audience’s attention on what is happening in the video. However, on the piano intro we have challenged conventions by using slower cuts between shots and instead of having straight cuts we have used short fades, we felt this mirrored the piano better than straight cuts but is very unconventional of a hardcore music video.

When choosing our location, we wanted to have a conventional setting, which from watching other music videos of the same genre we saw was abandoned or derelict areas/buildings. We wanted to use a building with a low amount of light coming in as we wanted to be able to control the lighting, we had either a very old barn or an abandoned hospital, but after sitting down discussing what would be the best place, we came up with the barn. This was because it had a very old feel with the stone bricks and wooden frames and we felt that would give us a very aesthetically pleasing video and would also suit the genre much better. We also chose the barn because we knew that we wanted a wood setting for our narrative, so this linked better with the video and we knew it would have a better flow between narrative and performance.

Whilst watching other music promos we found that there was a strong correlation in costume to the hardcore genre and we felt we wanted to carry this on in our video to make it conventional. We were wearing band t-shirts, a lot of bands do this to promote other bands or brands they have created, but it also helps to create a sense of personality as they are showing the audience what bands they enjoy listening to, giving the audience a chance to connect to the band member(s) more as they may listen to the same music.

The props in our music video are very conventional of a hardcore music video, we have used a full drum kit, a bass guitar, an 8 string guitar and a vocal microphone. The conventional aspects come from the guitar and microphone, an 8 string guitar is most commonly used in hardcore videos as they are used in heavier music because they have a much deeper tone to them, so using it in the video helps to mirror the deeper tones of the song as a normal 6 string wouldn't be able to reach the low dynamics. For the microphone we chose not to have a stand, bands from lighter and more pop orientated music will use microphone stands, however, in heavier music it is uncommon to see a stand as the vocalist never tends to stay still, we have tried to replicate this in our music video.

When watching back over our footage of the woods narrative we felt it wasn’t quite right to fit with our chosen genre, it was too light and vibrant to work with the heavier music, so we decided to use colour correction on Final Cut Pro to alter the contrasts and make it darker, this has meant that the clips fit in better with the conventional style of the genre and also flow a lot smoother from the darker clips of the barn. Alongside the video effects of colour correction, we also used layered two clips together and altered the opacity to reveal the other clip, this allowed us to have two clips playing at the same time, we had the male character from the narrative and the vocalist on the screen at the same time, as they are the same person this gives the video a real sense of individuality, something that a lot of hardcore genre bands like to have.

Our performance in the music video is very much conventional of a hardcore music video; we gave a highly energetic performance each time it was filmed. This replicates what you would see in a hardcore video as they want to give the viewers watching a sense of what their stage presence is like and how much they would give in a performance; this makes people want to see them live. We have kept an equal balance between the band members shown, this is also conventional of a hardcore music video, as they never tend to show any member more than the other like other genres may do such as rock or indie. For our narrative we have tried to keep it conventional with the use of amplification to keep the storyline very easy to understand, the idea branches off the lyric “Dig a hole and bury your feelings”, we felt like we wanted to make the narrative and performance 50:50, this allows people to not focus on one section of it more than the other, helping them to take in the whole video and not just one element of it.

In our music video we have used ideas from Andrew Goodwin’s theory as throughout our video the narrative works well alongside the performance, we also have the male vocalist being both the main character of the narrative and also the singer in the performance, to which he states makes “the video more authentic and original”. As well as this theory, we have also taken ideas from Steve Archer’s theory in trying to keep the strong link between the performance and the narrative.

For our promotional video, we used amplification, this meant that we took one section of the lyrics, which was 'Dig a hole and bury your feelings', a very bold lyric and be based the narrative around that, this narrative type is conventional of a hardcore music video as they like to keep emphasis on one section of the song, this also helps the narrative become much bolder as its based on one element.

Conventions of a digipak: