The document discusses how the media product, a music video for the song "Tertius Bestia", uses and develops conventions of real music videos and the visual kei genre. It incorporates narrative elements and Todorov's theory of equilibrium and disequilibrium to tell a story of a woman undergoing extreme substance abuse. Performance aspects are also included to promote the band. Editing is synchronized to the music's pace and lyrics are subtly linked to the narrative. The poster and digipack created for the band also use visual kei conventions like focusing on the narrative protagonist and incorporating motifs across materials to develop band identity.

1. EVALUATION QUESTION 1
In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of
real media products?

2. In my video I included different theories such as
Todorovs theory of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium. IN
which we showed the transcendence of our assumed
protagonist, the female with red hair; who is undergoing
extreme substance use. We felt that this structure would
be effective and relevant as it would keep things simple,
and allow the audience to follow our already complex
plot and narrative (which is open for interpretation). A
music video that conveys this structure rather well (Where
there is no positive resolve) is in the music video “Embryo”
by Dir En Grey, which ends up with the child’s mother
being killed (or so the narrative suggests).
Here is an illustration of the structure of our music video. It shows the red head to be
going about her crazy substance use, and as the video progresses we see this
become more violent, which relates the fast paced music to the fast paced editing
style. The more racy the video becomes, the more the character loses control and
we wanted to convey this form of “Insanity” by having a strong correlation between
the editing and the music video, which in turn made our structure more successful as
it projected the narrative and message across; the difficulties of extreme drug use.

3. Although we had a heavy emphasis on the narrative and wanted our viewers to take a
message away from the music video, we did stick to one of Goodwin’s conventions
through the use of performance aspects. This creates a nice blend between the
performing artist, creating band identity, and the narrative which is related to the
music being played by said Artist. This helps keeps audiences interested and gives them
a pleasant mix between the two.
We placed our artists in a variety of environments, ranging from a desolate wasteland,
to a skate park. These gloomy and somewhat urban landscapes really emphasize the
grungy appearance of which the band is going for, which blends nicely with the
costuming and image of the band. An example of this is the dead grass in the first
environment, which is certainly conveyed through the hues on video, which blends
nicely with the bleak and dark colours used by the band. This is rather conventional
and common within Heavy Metal music videos, and more conventional with Eroge
Kei, a subform of Visual Kei, the Japanese metal style we tried to emulate.
As you can see in this shot, which is the beginning
of the music we have blended a performance
scene within the narrative to give the lyrics a
sense of flow and relevance with the narrative
shots. The use of this is extremely effective as it
makes great clarity to the audience who band is,
and the identity they are trying to conceive. This
is important for the band, as it creates band
identity and gives them significance and
presence in the real world, promoting themselves
in a sense.
This is very similar to a lot of Visual Kei artists who
are actually performance heavy when referring to
music video structure, as within the Visual Kei
scene, it’s all about creating identity and
appearance and in turn advertises them to the
specific audience. An example of this Kerbera,
who are a Swedish Visual Kei band who do
include a narrative, but focus heavily on band
image.

4. Another convetion that we tried to develop in our music video was linking the lyrics to
the onscreen narrative. Although we did this subtly, to avoid cheesiness found in older
music videos. We did this by focusing on the performance aspect, making the artist
reflect the messages the lyrics have through the appearance, which was mostly
gloomy and of course, we did this by placing a relevant narrative, the decadence of
drug use.
The title of our song that we are using for the music video is titled “Tertius Bestia” and
it was composed/performed by Swedish Heavy Metal band BatAAr. Although the
title has no direct link to the narrative or the band identity, it does have an impact
on the lyrics and speaks about the third beast, which is a biblical reference. After
researching this we wanted to have an indirect reference of the third beast being
the drugs that are possessing our intoxicated red head “possession” being the
subliminal message. We have a section where the chorus screams “Tertius Bestia”
and for a moment the shot focus’s on the artist, but then straight onto the
indulgence of drugs showing this message of possession. This happens again for the
second chorus, however the content is much more extreme and the intoxication
appears to be more violent.
We linked the lyrics to the video by including the artists that perform them. We did this
by adding the band in a variety of shots, with many extreme close ups and mid-shots to
capture the entirety of the band with each section of the song having relevance to
each band member playing on the screen. This is very common and conventional of
music videos in general do this, especially when tying lyrics to the music video.

5. Another convention and technique we have used when developing our Music Video
which were clearly apparent with existing media texts was the use of editing in relation
to the rhythm and the beat of the song. Like I mentioned in terms of structure, an
example of this is when the shots became more fast paced to have a coherent
relationship with the fast paced music which builds up in speed progressively, and the
editing style has to fit to that. Another example of this is when the music video leads up
to the chorus and the song is speeding up creating an intense build up, and the shots
are cut up into tiny sections flowing one after another showing that the editing style
certainly reflects the genre of the music.
Another example of this is when the video slows down and the shots become slower,
and allow the audience to collect their thoughts on what has been conveyed to them.
This sense of speed up and slow down puts the audience off their feet and thus messes
with their expectation of a coherent sense of editing. We did this to emphasize the
convention-breakage of which Visual Kei endorses. We wanted our music video to also
fit the image our band was going for, and that was to break out of already existing
conventions and create a new form of style, and thus by using an unusual editing style
(which remains relevant to the song itself) it allows us to reflect that style. The more
hectic parts of the narrative follow o the more violent tone of the song, and the video is
cut up in really small parts for this.

6. We also used our two lesser tasks to show the Visual Kei conventions by doing different
techniques through Photoshop. We had to portray our band identity through a
digipack (Also the album context, which was Tertius Bestia) and our poster which
primarily promoted the band.
We used the conventions of putting a heavy focus on the
narrative protagonist on the poster, as it reflects the album as well
and demonstrates a clear relationship between a poster
promoting a band with an already existing product. Although
not all bands do this, and they put themselves in the foreground
to amass the most attention. The use of already existing tracks
within the poster is very appealing as it tells the audience that
they are a lot of compositions made by this artist, which is
appealing to the customers.
By using predominantly black colours, it helps our band create a
theme and identity not only for the Album being advertised but
the theme for Band Identity, which is dark and sinister. The striking
red on her hair is purposely conflicted with the dark colours, thus
creating this radical contrast, however the red colour brings
negative connotations (Which in turn relate to the gloomy
connotations and suggestions the blacks have) suggesting blood,
jealousy and innocence.
As a group we had mixed
feelings for the font as there were
a lot of fonts we liked, that really
brought out the band theme
and ideas, however we settled
with this somewhat Traditional
and Gothic font as it looked very
grungy, whilst keeping some kind
of traditional form giving those
themes of Goth which are
quickly related to the Rock
Genre movement. The big swirls
in the letters show some form of
handwritten effect, but the
degraded look makes it appear
old, abandoned and somewhat
sinister of which we wanted our
band to look like.
The use of this image, and the other
poster motifs between each of our
texts, such as the Music Video, the
poster and Digipak creates a
relationship and in turn creates some
band synergy as everything
accumulates to a successful release
of an array of products. This is a
method used in many other artists
products.

7. A current motif is already recognizable with
the typography seen on the front cover of
the Digipak and the poster we also created.
This is to develop a band identity as we want
this font to have a relationship with our
identity, and to our targeted audience
hopefully they’ll see the font related to use.
We have done this through the use of motif
and keeping ideas throughout our ancillary
texts.
We used a variety of images, some which are
taken from the Music Video and some we
took solely for the Digipak. For example, on
the back cover we have our character
eating some wild berries and this is seen with
our music video. This creates a relationship
between the Digipak and the Music Video.
This is a common convention found within
Digipaks or any Album set, is the use of shots
from existing texts to display a relationship.
We kept the overall theme about Tertius
Bestia (The story within our music vide) and it
was the most important aspect of the
Digipak, as it clarifies what our Digipak is
about and who it is aimed for. The band
recognize the band on the back, thus the
album is more likely to sell due to the
relevance of the digipak plus the content
appealing to the fans.
The mixture of images between
the band the character follow the
conventions of Digipak
development. It suggests to the
audience who the target
audience is, which is Visual Kei fans
who regard the band members
just as important as the theme the
band members are trying to
create (In this case, the story of the
music video which implements the
red haired character) and this
gives a more personal feeling
between the band the audience.
We wanted the front cover to be
absent, not making it overly
complex and keeping it simple as
we wanted the few visuals to strike
out to our audience. The simplicity
of the front can offer this effect to
our audience as we have
previously researched in other
Album Covers, for example in the
cover “Dahlia” by X-Japan, it is just
a line of text and a still image of
one of the band members yet the
impact is great because it remains
simple in it’s design.