1. Evaluation 1: In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
2. What are conventions and forms?
• Media conventions come in a format in which we recognise. It is like a set
of clues or a list of instructions. Conventions are the detailed rules of a
genre, for example so if you see guns, fast flash cars, a good looking
woman and fighting scenes you know you’re watching a thriller
• Media forms are the general overall shape of the end product, for
example a digipak, a music video or a website.
• Conventions consist of the setting, themes, characters, props, narrative,
style and plot
• Media forms normally ‘determine the medium’ which is used for example,
film or video is used to make a music video. A typical music video would
either consist of a singer lip syncing, a narrative or a performance- a music
video could even have the combination of all three.
3. Dubstep Conventions
• Dark atmosphere
• Dancing
• Flashing lights/ strobe lights
• Skating
• Graffiti
Some artists such as Skrillex do put a music video together,
however due to the style of the track there is usually an
individual message, which is loosely linked to the track.
Artists of the dubstep genre are skrillex, knife party, sub focus
etc
4. Conventions of a website
We were inspired by David Guetta’s webite, it was bold, simple and effective. David
Guetta is a well-know DJ, known most famously for his hit single ‘Titanium’. When
researching, I found out that the conventions of a DJ’s website were minimalistic and
simple; on their websites they show the tour dates of the DJ, information about the
artist, a few images of the artist on instagram and their new singles.
As you can see David
Guettas website used
three colours: red,
black and white. We
also used these three
colours. We also
followed the
conventions which
was shown in all of the
websites I researched
by having the menu
bar at the very top of
the page as you open
up the website.
5. Conventions of a website
On the front page of every website, the artists name is always in a bigger font size
than the rest of the words. Another DJ I researched into was ‘deadmau5’. This
website has the DJ’s name at the top of the page, in the centre and it is the biggest
text on the page. Our website has a very similar layout to ‘deadmau5’s’ the
conventions shown are- a simple, clear and very basic.
6. TouringDavid Guetta’s tour dates
layout
Our tour dates layout
On the website for the fans of a singer/ artist the tour
dates are essential to be previewed on the website.
David Guetta’s way of showing the tour dates is visually
appealing and very simple and easy to follow. I liked the
idea of inserting google maps and then pin pointing the
places in which the artist will be performing at. Touring
is a large aspect feature for an artist in the music
industry, fans go to watch an artist perform and this is a
way of making a huge amount of money and in order to
make the artist successful tour dates are required.
7. Editing
For our music video we used a very fast editing
pace, which mirrored the fast pace of the
electronic beat of the song. Other conventions
seen in music videos like in ‘I fink u freeky’ the
song is dominated by close- ups and mid-shots
to show the star image/ to show the clarity of
the lip sync.
In every music video there is a real need
to use camera and editing elaborately to
express meaning, for example we used a
slow motion effect at the end of the
video of the female protagonist and this
created a surreal, strange atmosphere.
Also the fast-pace editing created a sense
of confusion, as there wasn’t really a
simple narrative to our music video, this
convention is used a lot in music videos,
so that your audience watch it once-
don’t understand, which then leads to
them watching it again.
8. Projections Effect
Our whole artistic direction for our music video, was to have the first shoot day in a black
studio to film everything, so then for our second shoot day we projected all the footage in
the studio onto trees in the woods. The idea was very original to project onto a forest but
we were inspired to use projections from the Ralph Lauren Marketing Campaign (shown
on the left), where they projected onto a building. This created a surreal illusion which
fitted really well with spiritual/ god-like theme we had.
With this inspiration from
Ralph Lauren projecting it
onto building, we thought
we could do something
similar, by projecting onto
trees in the woods. This
worked well with our
tribal theme.
9. Conventions of our artist
Our initial idea for the female
artist was to show her as a
rebellious figure. This figure
took an inspiration from Miley
Cyrus’ appearance. Our artist
has images of her smoking and
being radical and unique, for
example by sticking out her
tongue that some may interpret
an “I don’t care attitude”.
Artists like Miley Cyrus
and Lady Gaga are key
examples of distinctive
artists in the music
industry.
10. Conventions of the Music Video
For our music video we had a lead female singer (Bethany) who looks directly into
the camera lens whilst she lip syncs to the song. This is a regular convention and
can be seen with many artists such as Lady Gaga. Gaga is always in ore of the
camera, in all of her music videos in shots she looks into the camera. However, the
music video does not just consist of Gaga lip syncing, it consists of a huge art
directed performance. Gaga is known for the most wacky, bizarre and out of the
ordinary music videos, there are lots of elements including dancing. For our four
dancers we chose wisely due to the fact they were all strong dancers, so they could
pick up the routine and really sell the performance.
11. Digipak
Although we already had an idea of what we wanted our own digipak to look like,
we felt it was useful to research into similar artists to ours. Our digipak has just the
one image enlarged on the front of the artist, this convention is a very common
layout for the majority of artists album covers such as Martin Garrix and David
Guetta (as shown below). The image of all three artists shown below, including our
own are all shown to be in black and white, whereas the writing is contrasting by
being in a different colour, eg. Black, red, orange, white. We also decided to create
an illusion effect to keep with the surreal, trippy atmosphere.
