In order to create our products we had to conduct research into the forms and conventions of real media products, this gave us some idea of what we'd have to do to create professional products. When creating our product we had to keep these in mind using, developing and challenging various forms and conventions as “only repetition would nto attract an audience” (Neale, Genre Theory). My research took the form of analysing 20 music videos, 10 digipaks and 10 magazine adverts and collecting my findings into conventions, I looked at several different areas during this; camerawork, mise en scene, editing, font and layout.

 

Due to the nature of our product we chose to use more conventions than we challenged of developed, one of the most common conventions across all three products was the use of close ups on both the artist and props important to the plot, these would signify what is most important in the video and is arguably the biggest convention used across all three products. We chose to use this in all three products because it was so commonly used, it's used to highlight items (or people) of importance to the plot/product. In our digipak and magazine advert it helped to create a relationship between the artist and the audience through the use of eye contact in conjunction with the close up, it allows the audience to pay attention to more detail and get to know the artist in terms of their look which is important in construction of their image (Dyer Star Theory). Particularly since costume wwas so crucial in creating our models look and conveying messages about her products and what they meant to her and what she wanted them to mean to others, the use of the close up aids in seeing facial expressions to help convey the emotions within the product, this was important particularly because our genre contains products are are highly emotive due to the raw nature of the songs. Their meanings are usually quite personal (as ours was to our artist) and therefore showing the emotion of the female was an important factor in how it would be received.

        Another common shot we chose to use in our products was mid-shots, mid-shots were most often used to show body language to further express feelings and meanings, they also allow more focus on the costuming which was again an important element for the construction of our artists image. Particulalry with our genre it's common to see mid-shots being used when the artist (or another character) is playing an instrument. We chose to use a mid shot in our music video with our artist and her guitar to follow this convention, it allows the audience to see the talent (Dyer's seven common values) of the artist explicitly and helps link her to the music she's created. It also allows us to put focus on the acoustic element to the music which is often highlighted in our genre. We chose to use this shot conventionally our music video however we developed it when using it in our digipak.

 

We knew mid-shots of artists with their instruments were a common convention from our research, since we used it conventionally in our music video we started to play around with ways to develop it to add meaning whilst remaining as a convention. In our digipak we chose to use a mid-shot but cut the artists head out of the shot so her face could not be seen, we felt this put more emphasis on the music aspect and focused on her talent (Dyer's seven common values) which is an important convention in our genre as the music is often acoustic and quite raw. We felt this added meaning by representing the idea her music was more important than her image which was a convention seen in many of the digipaks I looked at, many of them choose to use pictures of themselves but from a distance or focused on a particularly aspect of themselves, this helped construct their image and add meanings to their product and I think it had the same effect that we created when developing a common convention.

 

As well as using and developing conventions we also challenged some, a particular convention we chose to challenge was the use (or lack thereof) tracking shots in music videos. Very few of the videos I analysed used tracking shots however it was somewhat necessary for us in how we planned our narrative to run. We chose to use a tracking shot of the apple as it falls out of our artists hands and rolls across the groun into the wolf's hand (1:40-2:01) this would help connote the apples importance and the role it plays in our narrative, we wanted to replicate the sequence from Snow White in which she bites the poisoned apple as this was one of the inspirations for the narrative of our music video. We used intertetual references a lot during our video, using the fairy tale woods and the character of Red Riding Hood as recognisable icons for our audience, the use of the tracking helps to connect our narrative with Snow White, which opens more meanings. The use of the tracking shot I think was effective and helped add professionalism to our video using the borrowed meanings from Snow White and remixing it to create a new meaning in our product.

 

We also chose to base our costume around Red Riding Hood and Snow White, we chose to 'remix' their costume for a modernised style to create a disctinct look for our artist which would help make her more recognisable over others and aid the construction of her image (Dyer: Star Theory). We chose to keep the motif of the red hood and also use the iconography of the apple as a key prop to our narrative. Few of the music videos I analysed used fairytales as a base for costume making this idea unconventional however we chose to develop the convention of costumes from our research. Most of the videos had a clear light/dark theme and costume to match however we wanted our artist style to remain distinctive so we chose to use mostly dark costuming with a bright colour (red) as a focal point, the colour red plays a large part in the iconography of our artists look and I think this helps her look more professional as she has an established image. This carried through all our products, we chose to use the same costume throughout them, this helped create synergy between the products and aided the construction of our artists image by creating a distinct style for herself thorugh motifs and iconography.

 

Syngery is also created through the use of props in our artists iconography, we used a varied amount of props which was realtively unconventional, in my research the majority of videos stuck to none or 3-4 props in their products however we felt the use of various different props helped add a lot more meaning to our video. We used common images to convey clear meanings to our audience, for example the use of empty beer bottles with no label connotes alcoholism and as an extension abusive relationships, this was seen in 'Girls like Girls' and we chose to echo this to show how hopeless and negative the females life is which exaggerates the importance of religion in her life (the subject of the song).

The use of props was also essential for the development of our plot, the icon of the red apple helps link our product to established products, in this case fairytales, and foreshadows in a sense what's going to happen in the narrative, it also helps create new layers of meaning to the video. The use of wine and grapes connotes luxury in her fairytale world which helps the juxtaposition of her reality with her fantasy which is what we hoped to convey by using the two different locations. Our locations were conventional, we chose to use a domestic inside location and an outside location usually focused around the natural world particularly trees and fields were seen in the videos I analysed. This was also seen in our ancillary tasks, we chose to use an inside location for our advert and used both inside and outside locations for our digipak. We chose to use an inside locatino for our advert primarily for practical reasons, we thought that using a conventional coloured text would be harder to do with an outside location because there would be different colours and the background would be a lot more detailed in terms of what's in it and we felt this would be too busy for our advert as the majority I looked at in my research were relatively simplistic.

 

One of the main conventions of the ancillary products I looked at was the use of NVC, those who used images of their artist (as some chose not to, particularly with digipaks) used eye contact. We chose to use this convention because we felt it was necessary to help connect the audience and the artist, we also felt this would helps convey a more personal side to the products as the use of eye contact can make a person stick in your head longer, which we felt would be a good marketing scheme as well as make the product more professional.

        In terms of editing we tried to use a mix of conventional and unconventional items to encourage interest in our product and to help separate it from other products. The majority of music videos I looked at used editing in ways that helped further the meaning of the song and make particular things pop. We chose to alter the colouration of almost everything in our post-production work, we did this across all of our products to help create synergy across them. We primarily played with the colouration of green and red to help make the red stand out against the background, we did this in our advert with the edge of the hoody and the lips of our model and we also did this with the apple and the shoes in our digipak. We felt the use of red was an important aspect of our artist look and also of our products as a whole, the use of one colour emphasised throughout a product or one artists work was seen in my research. For example in the Mumford & Sons digipak they chose to make use of the colour white more than other colours, we felt the use of red helped to connote the passion and also the pain the female feels in both her reality and her fantasy, as the colour connotes both it helps promote both feelings in both worlds.

 

We chose to challenge editing conventions by using our editing software to create the effect of cold breath in the forest scene, we chose to use this to convey that although the fantasy world looked better than the real world it still had sharp edges, we conveyed this idea through the use of cold breath because we wanted to show that it was icy in the forest eventhough it looked warm with the sunshine. I think this helped us represent the duality of everything in the video, the fantasy world is seen as good but also bad (its beautiful but she dies metaphorically) and the real world is presented in this way too (there are beer bottles and cigarettes but also flowers and our artist chooses to get rid of the wolf in her life). Which helped us stick to the convention of a happy ending in the narrative of the music videos I looked at.

 

Contrasting my previous point we chose to be conventional in our use of cuts, we primarily used straight cuts throughout the music video as most of the videos we researched did, we furthered this by using a fade to end the video which was also conventional of many of the videos we chose to look at. Doing this helped to dissuade confusion of the narrative because of complex or distracting visual effects, as few of the videos I looked at chose to use complicated visual editing we felt this was a better decision and also more practical for our genre as it's usually quite simplistic in terms of the visuals seen in products of the genre.

 

We chose to stick with simplicity in our ancillary tasks by using a sans-serif font for the majority of our text, this was unconventional however I feel it was a good decision as it helped the product feel more personalised in a hand-written sans-serif text. Although we chose to use prmiarily sans-serif fonts we did use a serif font on both our ancillary tasks to highlight the artists name (magazine advert) and the album title (digipak). We chose to do this to highlight the important information on the product and also to use the convention both serif and sans-serif fonts in our ancillary tasks.

We chose to use a conventional text colour and put the majority of our text in a white font, white was the most used colour of font in my research both on magazine adverst and digipaks, this helped make the text stand out and also contrasted the images which were quite dark in comparison, I think this again helped us create a duality about our artist also seen in the music video which helps create syngery between the products in the mise en scene and also her constructed image (Dyer).

 

We also challenged conventions in the placement of our text, in our magazine advert research we found the majority of information was presented in a line across the page, usually centered, this was (presumably) so the audience would read the information according to the 'Z' line of vision. Although we chose to follow the convention of putting the artist name and album title at the top of the page and the less important informaiton closer to the bottom of the page we were unconventional in that the majority of our text was placed to the right of the image (bar the artists name). We chose to do this partly because we felt it would help create a distinctive image for our artist it would be more memorable because of this, we also choose to do this because we felt it would help convey our ideas of there being two side to everything, which is a theme also presented in our music video, however more explicitly in the music video.

 

We chose to be conventional in layout in terms of what information was presented to the viewer first, we chose to put our artists name at the top followed by the album name, 'the debut album' and then some ratings from popular sources. We chose to follow this order because it was the most conventional order of information and also followed the 'Z' line of vision, we also felt this would help the artists name and album title be remembered because it's what it seen first on the page. We felt this would help the audience rate the information in terms of importance which is also reinforced by the text size and it gets smaller as you get further down the page.

 

Overall I think our choice of which conventions we chose or use, develop or challenge was successful in what we were trying to convey or represent using them, I also believe that our choices helped open up new meanings in our products that constructed the image of our star.