This document discusses how the author's music video and accompanying digipak used and challenged conventions of the indie rock genre. The author followed some conventions such as including a narrative with characters, but challenged others such as not including any band performance. The digipak used minimalist artwork and simple colors as is common, but did not include photos which is a split convention. Symbolic rather than literal connections were made between the digipak and video to seem more modern. Feedback showed those familiar with the genre better understood the references connecting the two pieces. The digipak drew influence from other designs that discussed modern disconnect and resembled medicine packages.

1. How did your print productions
use, develop, or challenge
conventions of media language
and genre?
How did you use, develop or
challenge genre conventions in
your music video?

2. Genre
Ego Honeys Drunken Fumbling is of the
indie rock genre. This genre holds many
different conventions that I used within
my video however I also challenged
many of them. General conventions of
the indie rock genre include the use of
performance and narrative, shot
reverse shot between narrative
characters and the band, use of male
and female love, low-budget looking
settings and nostalgia. I was also
influenced by many different media
texts including music videos and
film/television.
My print production for the video also
followed conventions of the genre. The
conventions of an indie rock digipak is
obscurity that links to the music, not
focused much on the band and fonts
are normally bold and strange to stand
out. Conventionally the digipak will
have 3 panels, however, they include
some kind of strange audience
pleasure, for example, Michael Gordons
CD Timber. This CD was packaged in
medium fibre-board wood.

3. Genre Conventions & My Video
I followed conventions in that I did a narrative based video, that followed 2 people
(boy and girl) and presented a problem that was either resolved or not dependent
on audience interpretation. On the other hand, I also challenged a lot of the
general conventions.
Firstly, I didn’t include any performance aspect within the video. Although in earlier
planning I was going to I didn’t believe that it would improve the video or add
anything to it. I challenged Christine Gledhill’s theory of believing that ‘Genres can
be seen as a means of controlling demands. The relative stability of genres enables
producers to predict audience expectations.’ due to my lack of genre
characteristics. However, in some ways I followed the theory of Steve Neale who
said ‘We may derive pleasure from observing how the conventions of the genre are
manipulated.’ because although I challenged conventions I still used some but took
a part of it out.

4. My Digipak
My digipak expressed parts of the conventions of the indie rock genre. For
example, I used minimalism within my artwork and used a similar running theme
throughout my whole digipak. I made the creative choice not to use photography
as throughout the genre I noticed there was a very split use of either photography
or artwork through the genre. I felt as though artwork would be a lot more
aesthetically pleasing and interesting to look at, it also showed the cultural
modernity that was a main theme of my whole project.
I used simple colours such as black, white, blue, purple and pink to give the
digipak a point of notice due to the pops of colour but also kept it very
monochromatic to fit the genre.
I used a lot of negative space within my digipak as I felt that it makes the whole
digipak very contemporary and interesting. This is due to the modernisation of the
indie rock genre that has essentially been around since the 1980’s and has now
become a very mainstream sub-genre of music. This is also a reason as to why I
used a liner rule of thirds through some of my digipak, such as the cover, as it
keeps the digipak looking very contemporary and interesting.
My digipak ties together with my video in a symbolic way rather than literally as I
felt this would be a lot more interesting and modern. I used the theme of
painkillers to show how in the 21st century we deal with things by finding methods
of pain killing. For example, drugs and alcohol. So within my music video, there
are small ties between itself and my digipak (2 girls drinking together, tobacco in
the background) this I believe made my music video and digipak more individual
as well as creating audience pleasures. Christine Gledhill said ‘One advantage of
genres is that they rely on readers already having knowledge and expectations
about the works within the genre.’ I feel like within my project I followed this
concept rather tightly as when considering my audience feedback, those who
hadn’t listened to the genre very much said they didn’t understand the digipak in
comparison with the video and didn't’t get the references that linked them
between the two. On the other hand, those who listened often to indie rock
understood most of the ways that the two matched.

5. Earlier within my posts on my blog I made
a slide show of digipaks that influenced
the creation of mine. However, as I was
creating mine I came across more digipaks
that then later influenced me within my
work.
I took a lot of my influence from a band
called Spiritualized who created an album
called ‘Ladies and gentlemen we are
floating in space’ this was a album
released in 1997 it discusses the lack of
empathy within the modern world and
how we are nothing but a small part of a
big universe. I found this album very
interesting visually. It was designed by
one of the members of the band as well
as Mark Farrow. Like mine the box
resembled a package of medicine and
coming with dosage instructions.
Influences (Digipak)