Evaluation post question 1

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

For my media production, I created a music video for an already existing song and created my own artist. We were asked to create a 3-5 minute music video for a genre of our choice and from a song and artist of our choice and where we would then create our own artist image for the song, choose the narrative and concept direction of the music video and try and build a target audience that we could have an impact on to overall create a successful and realistic music video. A music video is a short visual representation and narrative of a song that is used in order to create a better representation of the song and its artist for a bigger impact on the audience in order to give the video a better and deeper meaning. They are also used as a way of marketing and promoting the artist and portraying different genres of music as each music genre has a number of different codes and conventions it follows and what audiences stereotype them with. 

For my own music video, myself and my group chose to follow the 'indie genre' with Indie chart topper 'Panic Cord' by Gabrielle Aplin being the platform and inspiration for our video. We decided to choose the indie genre because it covers a wide range of artists and different styles of indie music including indie rock, indie art and indie music on the whole, giving us lots of conventions we used use and challenge in the visuals for the video. For the production of my music video, I planned the micro elements that will go into the video such as cinematography, editing techniques, mis en scene and genre conventions before putting them together for the visuals of my song panic cord. Part of my production task was also to create a digipak and magazine advert. For my artist that correlates with my artist representation and music video. Music videos have many different purposes in the music industry and are designed to give fans more content and a visual for the song. This allows me to explore my artists to give more back to their audiences and allows them to create a better understanding of their character as music videos allow artists to portray a certain concept and a lot of emotion. Another purpose of a music video is that it allows the artist to tell a particular story or narrative that they can not express with just the song. popular and successful amongst artists as audiences can create the bigger picture and a better understanding of the artist through the effect of emotions portrayed in the video and artist representation. Some of the conventions I identified in indie music videos when doing my research were the variety of performance based shots that I took on board to include within my own music video as it engages with the audience and shows off my conventional settings and my artists character.

Music videos come in a number of different genres, all of which have genre conventions that artists tend to develop in their videos or sometimes challenge. for my own music video I chose to follow the indie genre by taking inspiration from other indie artists such as Ed Sheeran and Birdy and the artist I chose to base my song on Gabrielle Aplin. Some of the inspirations I took and genre conventions these real life media products used were the idea of a narrative and performance based music video. I developed this convention in my own music video by including a variety of performance based shots in my video. I chose to follow the convention of using performance based shots in my video as I wanted to get the lyrics of the song across well to my audience as they worked well to demonstrate my artists emotions and the concept of the song and also by including performance shots of the artist looking into the camera meant that my artist is engaging with the audience and they audience are able to relate to my video more and feel a emotional connection with her. My performance scenes included a number conventional settings such as when I filmed them in a forest with an isolated and natural background, on a haystack and in an open field. These settings are conventional as Indie music videos often use settings which are isolated to help capture and focus the artists emotions as the audience aren't focused on the settings. I also showed the performance shots through a number of close ups and mid shots for the same emotional effect and to show how the artist is engaged with the song and how the lyrics are meaningful to her. This is also conventional to the indie genre and real life media products as many more artists tend to use simplistic settings and show a lot of performance based shots to show of their talents and star quality as well as the fact they don't tend to use extravagant and high end settings like pop artists.

 Another convention I developed was I used a number of close ups within the video. I chose to follow and develop this convention as close ups are good ways of demonstrating my mis en scene. For example, the audience are able to clearly identify the artists facial expressions and see clearly how she is feeling in order to be more in touch with my artists character and my narrative and concept. Close ups are also conventional camera techniques as it shows my artist as pure and natural and someone who is isn't afraid to open up and show a personal side to her. I felt this worked better for my music video rather then challenging the convention of using a close up as without a close up, my audience won't be able to identify how the artist is feeling during important scenes in my narrative. The use of a close up developed the idea that music videos are used to portray the artists facial expressions and emotions and is also conventional to the indie genre as indie artists tend to show a lot of emotion and don't like to hold a lot back so audiences can relate with them more and see their true artist representation. One convention that I challenged was that I used a number of filler and fast paced memories that did not correlate with the lyrics of the song which is often a purpose of real life media products (music videos). I chose to challenge this convention as it allowed me to demonstrate my narrative better as the filler memories and fast paced editing techniques I used was to recap the artists relationship and how it started well but began to broke down. I also felt it worked well during the timing of the song as although the lyrics did not match it, the fast paced tempo of this part of the song did and make it more engaging for my audience. I used a series of montage shots towards the end of the video which showed the couple in previous happier times and also added drainy filters on them to show how they were in the past and added fast paced memory shots in to represent the modern date with shots of drugs, alcohol and other relationship breakers for the couple which showed the video in two different representations. I used this convention as It worked well with expressing my narrative and the representation of my artist with her boyfriend. This was conventional to the indie genre however as indie music videos often tell a deep and meaningful narrative to engage audiences.

Overall, my three different products in the digipak, magazine advert and music video all correlated well together and proved successful as I followed the criteria and conventions of the indie genre for each one and gave them all similar features. For example, I used the same images in both my digipak and magazine advert that were seen in my performance scenes from my music video so the audience were able to draw comparisons and links from my video to my advertising, as well as the scenes I used in my performance shots such as the countryside swing and on top of the haystack were conventional to the indie genre as they show signs of nature and innocence in the settings and help to portray how my artist is down to earth and relatable to her audience. Another example of how all three of my media products correlated well and were successful was that I my magazine advert and digipak included features of my music video narrative through the artists facial expressions in the images and the use of the memory box. The photos of my artist in both my digipak and magazine advert show my artist as looking relived to be out of a relationship and portray her as strong willed and independent, two characteristics she shows in the narrative of my video. The memory box is also an important piece of iconography seen throughout the narrative of my video to start a new scene so therefore by interpreting this into my magazine advert and digipak, this is successful as the audience can engage further with my advertising techniques and her more drawn into my artist. 
I feel my ability to develop and challenge conventions and purposes of music videos were successful I created a conventional, realistic and professional looking final video that had a clear narrative and concept behind it that indie artists tend to adapt into their music.