media A2 question 1

1. In what ways does your How effective is the
media product use, develop combination of your
main or challenge forms and product and
ancillary texts? conventions of real media
products?
By Megan English

2. Before actually creating my media product, I researched conventions and forms that real media products from my intended
genre ‘indie pop’, would follow. Such opportunity allowed me to use them as inspiration whilst creating my own products to a
professional level that my targeted audience would enjoy. I started off my research by looking at different conventions that
music videos follow such as Friths types of music video such as narrative, conceptive and performance, such as Two Door
Cinema Club’s ‘sun’ video where it was conceptive and performance based. Along with looking at the types of music videos to
see what I wanted for my own and to match the most popular type for the genre, I looked at features that Goodwin which has
theorised, for example the genre, and relationships between visuals etc. By looking at these two theories for my music video I
was able to apply them to my own music video and follow on the concept that they follow. I analysed existing music videos
that showed these and this helped me understand how they are applied within. For our music video me and my partner chose
Life in technicolour by Coldplay. We had both created two different edits of the music video I personally chose my edit to
follow a conceptive path rather than a narrative structure as I felt that my edit didn’t necessarily follow a storyline of
someone’s journey and following an story arc, but rather a journey where there isn’t much meaning apart from enjoying an
adventure and getting away from everyday life so to speak. Although after research I noticed that indie pop music videos often
displayed a conceptive or performance based video such as Two Door Cinema club’s ‘what you know’ and Sia’s ‘Big girls cry’.
Both videos’ don’t have a narrative story line so to say but they display the mood and atmosphere that the music has. There is
often links between both the lyrics and the visuals of the music video, so I tried to achieve this similarly by listening to the song
lyrics and relating them to what my video shows. For example the lyric ‘now my feet won’t touch the ground’ I tried to
visualise the lyrics to the video by having shots where the actor was on a ledge and looking down on the ground to the ground,
which suits the lyrics best.

3. The song Life in technicolour was chosen due to the band Coldplay being know to create Indie pop songs and being known
within that genre of music. Me and my partner both decided that the song suited best as it fitted the genre and was a
popular song so would get notified at lot more by the audience. The song’s tempo and pitch is cheerful, fast and ‘bouncy’
which again links into a pop culture song and was useful to create a cheerful music video, which was the original intention, by
looking at previous music videos such as ‘When the sun goes down’ by the Arctic Monkeys. I found that the music video
started off quite slowly and steady which joined in with unhurried editing and pans. However then goes into a fast and
bouncy beat in which the editing got faster and as a result, rapider shots appeared on the screen to represent the chaos and
blurriness of the actors environment. I took inspiration from this element by showing the beginning of the music video having
the actor slowly walk out of the phone box and pick up the bike then the tempo of the song change to faster and upbeat.
Whilst during the upbeat pace of the song I decided to quicken the shots with the actor on the bike to show the exciting
development of the journey . This journey of the character on the bike follows the normal conventions of an indie pop genre
as they mainly follow the usual light and joyful nature that most indie pop videos show. Such as Two door cinema club’s
‘Something good’ which was very similar to my music video as it showed a band going on a journey to different locations and
enjoying themselves. My video doesn’t actually feature Todorov’s narrative structure as the character in my edit doesn’t go
through a disequilibrium or a resolution, he just goes through an equilibrium the entire video, which during my research I
found other videos such as Two door cinema club’s ‘Something good’ features also. My video also doesn’t feature any binary
opposition as the journey is mainly light and happy all the way through the only binary opposition I could possibly think of for
my edit, is the opposition of the water and river shots compared to the high mountain so from the ground to higher levels.

4. By looking at real media products such as the music video ‘We found love’ by Calvin Harris ft Rhianna, the music video shows
an upbeat and bright, harsher light from the outside shots compared to the artificial and softer lighting from the soft box
lights and projections influenced my edit for my music video as the shots from the outside are require a brighter and harsher
lighting attracts the audience to the video as it automatically attracts their attention with the colour gradient.
After looking at Coldplay’s videos such as Hymn for the weekend and Paradise it definitely influenced how we were planning
to shoot this music video as we wanted to show the similar shots of bright colours within shots such as the countryside,
sunset, blue sky etc all following the bright colour scheme that Coldplay seem to have. As well as the bike which can also be
seen in the video for Paradise, we wanted to incorporate this kind of imagery in our video such as the character having a shot
from the back riding down the road in the sunset and having close up shots of the bike wheel. This was so the link to
Coldplay and their recent videos. Which helped the target audience identify the song and the artist’s nature of videos. In
Coldplay’s videos the character’s/artists are usually dressed in casual attire which influenced our video as we thought the
indie-pop genre

5. For my digipak I researched into indie-pop genres such as Two door cinema club and The Arctic Monkeys, to see what
conventions they follow, however I also looked at my mouldboard to see what indie-pop genre colours there were that
could be incorporated within my digipak and magazine advert. Within my research I found that the digipaks had a lot of
space during 3 panels where there seemed to be patterns and imagery relating to the album and had darker colours such
as black for the Arctic monkeys. However I wanted my digipak to be colourful as it related to the song title ‘Life in
technicolour’ so I made my digipak and magazine advert related with colourful font/text and imagery which created
synergy between both of the media platforms. Also following the traditional indie-pop genre digipaks I had 2 panels of
patterned and multi-coloured overlays to relate imagery to the album and the main song title, all whilst keeping in with
the indie-pop theme. I also added in lyrics to the main song of the album ‘Life in technicolour’ which seemed to follow
conventions similar to other digipaks, such as the lyrics in the Arctic Monkey’s digipak. Again following that digipak I
included a patterned CD case covered with the design s and images used for the emptier panels to crate a synergy
resemblance between the entire product.

6. For my magazine I tried to follow media conventions of other products , such as Stereophonics album poster in which they
have the artists in the countryside giving direct address the audience and creates synergy with their digipak. My magazine
advert does this as it relates the same imagery with my digipak, such as the bright font/text and colourful gradient that is
used to attract the audience and the main character featured in the music video to be on the cover to tie the whole product
together.. Looking at Coldplay’s magazine advert for their album, I noted how the colour scheme was bright and captivating
with the font and overall look. I wanted to recreate the colourful font and type of background to attract the target audience.
Although my product doesn’t show a stereotypical magazine product of having a small image and the font displaying what the
title is, I had the full image on my advert along with the font being quite large so the image overall attracts the audience.