Question 1

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

We were asked to promote an upcoming artist by creating different elements of media. These should promote the artist quite well. The different types of media we had to create were a music video, a magazine advert and a digipack. The artist who we choose to promote was Finn Riggins and then song we used by them was called Benchwarmers. We found them on YouTube and we checked if they were unsigned. The song is very catchy and we believed we could do many shots types with it. When creating the three different media promotions we had to make them all link and look similar, they all had to have synergy to work well together. This is so that if someone sees one of these promotions they should recognize it and if they have seen the music video they should recognize the digipack or magazine advert. We had to also look at typical conventions of each of these promotional products, to make them look professional and to make sure we adhere to the promotional products conventions.

When creating a music video you need to think about many elements and things. You need to create a memorable music video as its main job is to be remembered and promote the artist and their music. You have to look at past videos, do you research and understand different conventions of each genre, to be able to create a good video and adhere to your chosen genre. A lot of music videos today have a narrative or performance, but a lot more videos now incorporate them both to make an effective and interesting music video. When creating a music video there is a repertoire of elements that make up an effective music video. One element is performance, this is where they are filmed while playing their instruments or if they are singer the will be singing in time with the track, but most of the time they will just mime it. For a lot of house and pop music the shots of performance are normally shot in front of a large crowed, an example of this is “DVBBS- Raveheart”  and sometimes this crowed isn’t real and is added later. But performance shots by alterative and indie are normally shot on lower budgets, so they are shot in recording studios and maybe odd locations like a field, wood or barn. An example of this is “Vampire Weekend- Cousins, this is shot down an ally way. In our music promo we filmed our perforce pieces mainly against a white wall to keep it clean and simple, but we also film a few other lip syncing shots to get a variety of shots, we also did this because we don’t have a large budget and a crowed wouldn’t fit our music videos idea. Another element is Narrative; native is widely used by a lot of music videos. It really makes the song so much more memorable and makes people want to keep re-watching the song. There are three key types of music video narrative, Illustration, disjuncture and amplification. Illustration is simple; it just illustrates the ideas and lyrics of the song. Amplification is where a lyric of the idea of the song is created and expended upon; it has a bigger meaning and links to the lyrics more. Disjuncture is where the lyrics don’t link to music video at all, it’s quite abstract and it’s unconventional, but also it can rally make the audience think about the video and it might have a much deeper meaning and the meaning could be different to each person. These three types of video are suggested by Andrew Goodwin’s theory.  Another element is camerawork, this is key obviously, because without this then the video wouldn’t be good. Depending of the genre of music the camerawork style will change. In a lot of pop and indie performance clips from promos, the main shots are close ups, mid shots with a few long shots, this is so you can see the artist playing their instruments and singing and their facial expressions. Sometimes long shots and extreme long shots are used to show an audience. A lot of music videos try to use a range of shots but some artist use one type of shot in their video, like vampire weekend for example, in their ‘Cousins’ video they only used one type of shot just changed the direction of the shot. The cinematography in the videos normally shows was happening or a story. The camera is used to make the audience want to keep watching and to make it very interesting. The camera work of our music video is very good for telling a story as it isn’t hard to follow and is quite clear. We also tried to experiment with shots by changing the tilt on them and moving the camera in a certain way to make it more appealing. Also for one of the lip sync shots we tried spinning the camera to make it look different. Another element to music videos is editing. A key apart of editing a music video is called cutting to the beat, this makes the shot change or cut at the same time as the beat. This is used by pretty much every signal artist and music video. An example of this is “Showtek ft. We Are Loud & Sonny Wilson – Booyah”. In this music video when the beat drops the shots start changing in time with the main beat. This really sets the tempo for the video, this makes it quite exciting, but this video is also because it doesn’t cut to the beat consistently, this is good because it mean that it won’t look the same all the way through making the song reparative and boring. Music videos are quite similar to TV key events have cuts so music videos can be cut at key points in the song as well. Another element is actors, if a music video is mainly performance then is more than likely that the singer in the video will be the real artist singer. But if you have a narrative and performance the person in the performance is normally different to the main actor in the narrative, an example of this is Adele’s Skyfall. It switches between her singing and James bond. You do get videos where the singer is an actor in the narrative; a good example is this is Stan by Eminem. In our music video we have used the singer as the main actor in it. Eminem’s song is about one of his fans trying to get his attention and then dies, Eminem tell the story with the performance and acts in the narrative. The actors chosen for pop videos are chosen because they are seen as society’s ideal person, in the way they look. These people are used to grab the audience’s attention. Pop music and their videos meant to mainly appeal to a younger audience of young adults and teens. The actors used are normally people they can relate to or someone they look up to or someone that they want to be like. Also pop videos normally show some sort of wealth and this is appealing to the young audience as well. Young people want to be wealthy, be attractive and have an attractive partner. Another element is mise-en-scene. The props in the music video tend to be quite important. Main props for are example instruments, microphones and speakers. These prop are used to make the audience recognise the artist, as they may use certain instruments to do with that artist. These props are used to make it look like the band members are playing the song. Also two key props are the phone which plays the song that enables ups to bring the song into play in a natural way and make the audience fell like it’s their ears. Also another prop is the folder it plays a key role thought as he is dreaming of it and then it’s there at the end with the photo in it, making the character very paranoid and stressed about their work.

 

 

 

 

The shots of the lip syncing and performance are all mimed to make it look like they are playing and singing the track. Lighting in music videos is very important as they can show and determine the mood and genre of the music video. In the majority of music videos the main singer or artist is well lit. A lot of pop videos use bright lights to give it a happier feel, indie and alternative music videos tend to be quite dimmed to give it a grudge feel, and this follows their typical conventions, heavy metal is very dark, and only key things like faces or instruments are light up. When we did the lip syncing we used a green screen and a large industrial light, this made seem slightly more professional and it linked into the two genres of indie and pop, this made the music video slight more interesting. But I believe that the shadow that is left behind makes it look a little odd. Filming indoors is good at the weather won’t affect us and the lighting should change. Costumes are used in all music videos, a lot of pop videos will either be dressed in really bright bold colours or maybe even really extravagate costumes, whereas indie tends to be quite casual or sometimes start, this genre is mainly for young adults and late teenagers as they can relate to it. The costumes are similar to everyday clothes worn by their audience. The locations are also very important to the genres typical conventions.  The typical locations for a pop video are normally filmed in a music studio or a lighting studio to give it a clean finish and the correct lighting. The set colours tend to be quite bold and bright. Using a set can be very beneficial to any genre as you can get the right colours and lighting effects to suit the genre. Rock and house tend to film there performance shots in front of large open crowds. Rap and hip hop are filmed at certain places to show wealth or parties, these locations show off a rappers typical lavish life style. The location tends to relate to the song, but as our song is set in a day dream then we can set the location to any where we want.

Alongside music videos to promote and artist, digipaks and a magazine advert. Digipaks are like a deluxe edition of a cd case, it’s made for card not a hard plastic. Digipaks are normally foldable; they fold out to reveal text, images and the cd. They tend to have additional information about the artist or the main song in the album. It’s very appealing to big fans of an artist as it can be seen as a collector’s item, making them very special.  Digipak sometime contains extra feature like a poster, or booklet or a bonus cd. The magazine advert is used to advertise and promote the artist; these are mainly found in music and gossip magazines. The magazine advert should be very synergetic with digipak, they should look similar. They will also give very valuable information of the artist and their release dates and tour dates, also where you can buy it from and links to the social media. It has to be very appealing and eye catching.

Our chosen artists music, falls under the genre of indie. Once we knew this we began to research the genre. We did this to understand its typical conventions. Also most indie artists, in their music video like to preform and sing, they tend to be close ups and mid-shots, this is so you can clearly see that its them singing and preforming, this also shows their expressions. They sometimes preform in front of a crowd making them look population and in with current music, but they also use other unusual locations as well like woods and barns, for example Mumford and Sons do this. This just makes them more interesting. Also some music videos will jump from one performance shot of their being not crowd to one with crowd as this good show their journey to fame. These are very similar to our performance pieces, all of our lip syncing shots are similar and people you will see throughout the video. We adhere to the genre, we used close ups for the singing and chose to use a slightly different locations. But we subvert in the performance pieces as we didn’t perform with any instruments, we tried to be slightly different as we wanted to be a little different to the genre and we can’t play instruments in real life. The performance shots have the animal mask in it which is seen throughout the whole video this is done to make the story and performance link, this makes it much more interesting, this is also typical of the indie genre, link the narrative to the performance in some way. The typical narrative of the indie genre is a story that links to the lyrics. We slightly subverted this as we chose to do a narrative that has a story but doesn’t link to the lyrics. Most indie songs are about a memory, an experience or a feeling, the typical theme to indie is love, heartbreak and stress. Like I said our song doesn’t link to the lyrics, but it does adhere to the genre as the story is of a guy who is suffering from stress as his media work is stressing him out. We took inspiration from many different artists and genres; the mask idea was inspired from Martin Garrix – Animals. Our music videos is disjuncture as it doesn’t match the lyrics, this can be seen as adhering and subverting as it follows the conventions of the mood a feeling of the genre, but it also makes not links to the lyrics. Its defiantly not illustrative, our video isn’t that simple. The costumes used in the indie genre are very ordinary and this makes it easy for the audience to relate to the music video, this isn’t always that interesting. Some indie music videos I have seen use a few different costumes just to make it slightly more interesting, Mumford and Sons clothes look slightly old fashioned, similar to southern American clothing from the 1920/30s, and this keeps the audience interested. To make our video a bit more interesting we chose to have the lip syncing shots done in suits and the person who is following the guy in the day dream is also in a suit, this disguises his identify and we wonder who he is. We adhered to the indie genre of slightly changing the outfits. We tried to keep the costume of the day dream different to the costume of the lip sync so that people don’t get confused and can’t tell the difference. The style of clothing used in the day dream is quite “hipster”, this fashion type is wearing slightly old and vintage style pieces of clothing, this is very typical of the indie genre as this is the type of clothing that their main part of their audience wear and it also makes it easier for their fans to relate. This style is quite fashionable at the moment. The main actor in the music video, this clothing in the day dream is very dull colours; this can show a sense of stress as his jeans that are grey connote isolation as nobody can help him with his stress; it also connotes emptiness and lack of motivation. Blue on his jumper could imply or connote that he is very depressant and sad as his media work is too hard.

 

 

 

 

Sets we use for preforming was just a white wall or a green screen, we used an industrial light. Using a green screen enabled us to change the background to the performance pieces easily and quickly, we changed the back ground inside of the editing software we used. We also did a lot of filming in the woods and suburban areas, the bus top was a good idea because it’s like he’s trying to escape his work and drive away, but he has the day dream and doesn’t catch the bus to leave on a journey, he goes home to get on with is media work. The day dream of the wood is his “happy place” in his mind but it is invaded and ruined by the mysterious s stranger. He thinks his home is safe in his day dream but it isn’t, he just can’t escape his work. These locations are where teenagers and young adults can relate to.

 

 

 

 

 The target audience is mainly teenagers and young adults, indie is a current music genre as a lot of young people can relate to it, also they are the most likely to watch music channels and watch the music videos on YouTube. Most indie song focus on things that can be quite stressful, like education, relationships, and family problems or just general stress you get at this age. We believed we could use this to appeal to teenagers. As we are a similar age we can understand this lot, so we decide to make a music video story based off of the stress of education and it can also play with your mind, we have tried to show this using the man in the suit with the animal mask representing authority or the school chasing him down. We choose a black suit or him as it connotes the authority and control, maybe even death, as he is trying to escape it. The location we filmed at was quite typical of our chosen artist genre. We used a green screen and I white wall to create a makeshift studio, we did the white wall shots at my house and the green screen shots were done at Marcus’s house. I believe the green screen looks fairly good but we could have made it much more professional as the angle of the light we used makes the large shadow on the green screen making it look slightly odd, but other than that it looks pretty good. The other locations adhere to the indie genre as its quite natural and free/open space locations, also the house and the woods are very relatable to teenagers, as the woods may have been a place where they used to play when they were younger and they can relate to a normal house, this can also help teenagers understand other people have the same problems and they aren’t alone. When setting up the shots and locations we had to really thing how we want the sets as they can set the mood of the story and music video. We had to make sure the continuity of the shots were right and we also tried to use a couple of “grudgy” locations to adhere to the indie genre as it sometimes tries to incorporate a grudge feel to it.

There were a couple of music videos that influenced us while in the research, planning and production stages. One video that really influenced our production was Martin Garrix – Animals, it really showed us what we could do with animal masks and also how to cut to the beat affectively. The people with the masks are seen as a gang/bad as they go around together and they set a car on fire. This showed them to be quite evil, so we took this idea and thought why don’t we make it so that person following the guy in the day dream is wearing a mask so that he as a sense of mystery, and people who don’t want to deified stereotypically are bad or a criminal. We wanted our mask wearer to be evil. It also showed us that you don’t always have to cut to the beat, but you need to a key moments within the song to keep the audience interested.

 

Another video that influenced our production was Bleachers – Rollercoaster, this is a very indie track. It really showed us what we could do with the camera if we had the budget for some on the shots. But the key thing that influenced us from the start of the video is that the music doesn’t start straight away, it’s all quiet at the start of the song until a car horn “beeps” and then the music starts to begin, we decided to do something similar at the start of our video. We added the ambient sound of wind and three shots later when the guy presses the play button on his phone and the music starts playing.

 

Another really influential music video is Ed Sheeran - The A Team, it’s all about the struggles of being young and homeless, and being in very stressful situations like drug use and selling your body for sex. The style of the video really set a high bench mark for emotional turmoil, it really helped me think about how a depressed person may feel. Also the effects used are very good, it makes the video feel very sad and depressive. I wanted use this back and white filter to make my music video fell more stress full.

 

My productions costumes are also influenced from a song by Higher Self ft. Lauren Mason called Ghosts. The costumes in this are everyday office wear and casual wear. I want this type of clothing as this video is shot in winter and my music video is shot in autumn, so this could mean summer is over and now he is depressed and the thought of failing his education makes him feel cold as he is worried. Winter connotes death. In this video there is snow everywhere and he can’t escape work, the white snow could connote a void in his life, or boredom. We wanted to incorporate something similar into the  video so we choose to hair winter clothing and the white masks could represent lack of motivation and the unknown like he doesn’t know here to begin with his work.

 

There were a few digipak that influenced my work, I don’t think there was a specific one we based our ideas off, it was all our own ideas. Just looking a wide range of digipaks there were quite a few typical conventions you’d almost see on every digipak even if their artists were form different genres. A lot of digipaks have the song names in the centre on the back of the digipack so we decided to stick with this as it will make it look more realistic. We wanted to make the digipak be clean; this gives it a professional look and feel. We were going to leave the sides blank but it’s a typical convention to put the lyrics on the inside panels, so we added this but we kept the text small. Our cover of our digipak is of the stranger with the mask on, in a cut out form, this is done to like the guy has seen this stranger in his day dreams and can’t escape him so he has drawn him out. On our digipak we have tried to add the correct minor details to make it look as professional as possible. We adhered to typical indie digipak conventions as we used earthy colours like browns, greens ,yellow, quite dull colour, it give it a sense of grudge which his consistent thought the productions. The colours used have been influenced from a lot of indie digipaks, they are all use pastel colours. We wanted out magazine advert to very synergetic, because when you look at the able cover we want the audience to instant recognize it and thing of the magazine advert or the other way around, we wanted them to look very similar. We had a look at Two Door Cinema Club’s magazine advert, it was very plain, flesh and clean. It really help as it was easy to get influenced by it and it showed us what you can to with a studio, also you don’t need a lot of clutter on your advert, less is more. The colour scheme was very simplistic and clean. All of the important text is slightly small than the title, this is done so the title grabs your attention first and then you look at the key details. Another good feature was the stars on the bottom, wasn’t many just two or three reviews to keep the advert looking professional and clean. The main subject in our advert is the cut out image of the mysterious masked stranger; this instantly grabs the audience’s attention as it is very eye unusual and eye catching. The next bit you see it’s the artists name and the title of their new song or album, this informs the audience who the artist and their new single is. Then underneath that, it follows conventions of an advert perfectly of having the release date and reviews under the title, all neatly in place. It tells the audience all the information they need.

When editing we did many things to make the video the way it is. Typical of nearly very music video promo ever made, we cut to the beat. We make the shots change on the major beats, this makes it look professional and in time, also we can’t cut to the beat all the time as it may get slightly boring so it’s best to cut to the beat at events in the narrative or the song. Another piece of editing was we made the fifth and last shot fade to black; this made a good start to the song and the end to the music video. Between a few shots there are straight cuts to black this creates a quick and easy transition. For a few of the clips we had to change the timing of them, we spend a few shots up and slowed a few shots down to make it all work, we also used this tool to make the time lapse of the geese in the pond, we spend it up quite a lot. We also used a green screen to easily add our own back drops to the performance pieces. We also had to flip some of the shots to get a variety in lip syncing, that is also done quite simply.  Also of these different techniques are used by every music genre, but indie would also use them to make an affective music video, a lot of indie videos cut to the beat consistently and they use a lot of straight cuts, I leave we have followed the genres typical conventions.sss

This shot is of the main actor and singer, this close mid shot is just after he clicks play on his phone, his costume is very normal and a teenager/ young adult audience can relate to the fashion, it has a lot of meaning as the blue represents sadness/depression. In this shot his face expression is very neutral as he may have things playing on his mind, which he does as you find out later in the song. This shot pans up to the sky and transitions by fading to black

This shot here is the first time we see the masked character. This is a partial over the shoulder shot, which is a mid-shot and an extreme long shot. This shot is cut to the beat and when the main actor turns around it skips out the middle of the turn to be in time with the song.

This shot here is a close up; this type of shot is good for this clip as we want to be able to see the mouth lip sync the lyrics of the song. The lighting of the shot is quite moody and this follows the grudge appeal of indie. It also makes this character look sinister and that is what we were aiming for.