Evaluation: 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Overall, I would say that there is an effective mix of conventions across our finished media products, both in terms of adhering to conventions and avoiding them in places. I think that the majority of the technical aspects we have used have been fairly conventional of real media products, as well as products of this genre, whereas the themes and content of our narrative takes a much more unconventional approach.


MUSIC VIDEO:

I think our music video for the most part challenges the forms and conventions both a a typical video, and particularly for a video belonging to this particular genre of music. One of the main ways in which I feel it is portrayed in an unconventional form is that structure of the music video consists entirely of narrative. This is quite an uncommon approach to music videos as there is usually at least a slight performance element about the video, in order to portray the appealing live aspect of the artist, as well as showing them in more direct association with the visual interpretation of the track - this creates familiarity with the audience, and established the image of the band or artist with the audience. However, we chose not to take a performance approach, as we did not know the artist personally, and therefore did not want to cheapen the effect of the video by using a substitute singer. I feel this was fairly effective in making our video more unconventional, as is set the video apart from the typical expectations of the product and genre. This could potentially have positive implications on the artist in the long run, as it is very easy to become 'samey' in this sort of genre, and therefore any alternative methods which serve to distinguish the artist from the rest of the crowd are likely to be embraced rather than rejected.#

Another manner in which we served to make the music video unconventional was through the use of the content of the narrative. Typically in this sort of genre, the narrative would be expected to consists of a typical love story, perhaps the whole boy meets girl cliché. The relationship within the typical narrative would tend to be of a more idyllic nature, likely to be representative of perfection, flawlessness - a similar convention to films, adhering to the audience by making them connect with the aspects of love, longing and desire. Our narrative however put a completely different spin on this typical portrayal, indicating the relationship and dismal and crumbling as opposed to perfect and desirable. I feel this worked in our favour, elevating the feeling of realism we were hoping to convey, thereby making the product much more relatable to our intended target audience than perhaps the traditionalist, worn conventions may be. In doing this however, I feel it may potentially have had a slight negative impact on the song - our narrative plays on these typical portrayals and skews them in a humerus and slightly satirical light, which slightly undermines the lyrics value of the song. Typically, songs from this sort of genre are written from quite a personal and heart-felt level, so potentially challenging the conventions in this manner would be detrimental to the impact or message the lyrics were representative of.

In terms of representation of character, we took a fairly unconventional viewpoint in this - having seen a number of videos from this kind of genre previously, we were aware of the typical representations of the characters in narratives of this sort, including the gentlemanly, dominant male, with the almost princess-like representation of the 'precious' female. We chose to defy these conventions, in order to create comedic effect and to make a video of a less conventional format. Our male actor was portrayed as being a little more on the soft, 'dopey' side as opposed to the gallant, chivalrous hunter-gatherer. We originally intended to portray the female actor as fairly feisty and cold, but I don't think this is an effect that has necessarily transgressed as well as it could have done. Representation was also key in terms of the characters style, as dress and image was important to convey the ideas about the genre and the artist. Overall, Beth dressed in a fairly typical style, in portrayal of the genre, whereas Oscar was shown to be fairly unconventional and not belonging to any particular fashion or style, serving to emphasise the separation between the two.

Alternatively, the video can be see to adhere to many conventions of the typical music video, and conventions of this genre. We used a range of editing varieties to convey meaning, such as flash backs and fades, all of which can be found in real media products. Many of our technological aspects in this stage could be seen as fairly typical of both form and genre - we very much wanted to portray a strong relationship between the music and the visuals, even if the content was not the most typical match. To do this, we edited the footage to fit in time with the song, as is a frequent feature throughout real media products such as this. Many of the camera angles and movements were fairly typical examples of this. Additionally the use of lighting to create a romantic atmosphere in the initial flashback scenes was inspired directly from visuals fitting to this sort of genre, and could therefore be seen as a convention in our product. We aimed to utilise a number of conventions of the genre in the flashback scenes in order to imply the connotations of warmth and happiness that are generally associated with the genre, linking with the theme of the visuals.

ANCILLARY TEXTS:

Our ancillary texts could be seen as much more conventional and representative of the artist and the genre. They obey typical forms and structures as expected of real media products - for example, the CD packaging contains a booklet including song lyrics, the back cover contains information relating to copyright and various other legal information. Additionally, the magazine advert contains relevant information concerning the release date of the album and reviews, all of which are typical expected features of this sort of form which overall combines to create the feeling that this is a real media product.

The use of colour and editing in these two products was highly conventional, I feel. Typically, images from this sort of genre tend to be fairly natural and unedited, which was a feeling that we knew we wanted to convey in our ancillary products. We used only slight amounts of editing, merely to bring out colourings to convey a sense of brightness and warmth. This ensured that the overall impression of the images remained very natural and promoted the desirable sense of realism and relatability that we wanted to convey with our product.

These ancillary texts could also be viewed as unconventional of sorts, again going back to the basic idea that we did not want to have somebody pretending to be the artist due to the overall cheapening and slightly tacky effect we felt this would have. To avoid this sort of representation, we used images of the actor from behind, in order to convey the typical ideas of the pretty, young girl, but not to imply her being the artist. This approach also serves to add an element of mystery and enigma to our product that works to distinguish it from other products in this genre.