2. Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop
or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Through our initial research we learnt a lot about the typical codes and
conventions of music videos, magazine advertisements and digipaks. In particular, those
of the Indie/Pop genre. We knew what was typical of this and decided to go against the
conventions in an obvious way. The topic of the original Alt-J Breezeblocks video is
domestic violence and we decided to continue this subject on in our own music video.
Although we had carried on the with the initial matter, it felt as if we were totally going
against the convention because domestic violence is a very sensitive problem and rarely
talked about. Our music video tackles an almost unspoken issue and this is not like other
music videos, particularly the genre which we we working with.
3. In terms of creating an entire storyline and showing the domestic violence
being played out, we really followed the typical conventions. The Alt-J music video was
complex and thoroughly thought through, It was telling you a story and we decided it
was appropriate to do this with our music video. You discover at the end of the original
video that it was actually presented to the audience backwards, making the good guy
look like the violent one. We came to the conclusion that we would create a video that
was in chronological order. So we were playing around with the conventions by doing
this. We discussed the storyline at great length to ensure it didn’t look thrown together
and unconsidered.
4. We had to make sure that the music video was presented in a way that
would attract the audience we are trying to aim at. Our target audience are
young adults both genders age 15 – 25. The way we attracted this audience was
by using both male and female characters and tackling a situation that anyone
could easily fall into in their lifetime.
I thought that the music video itself had to be really interesting to attract such a
varied age group.
The lavish house and how it seems so calm and lovely, when it is in fact a front for
what goes on behind closed doors; it’s perfect for our target audience and for the
genre. Some parts of the music video are filmed inside the house, so the music
video shows light and fairly steady scenes from the house, some of the parts are
filmed outside with both of the characters running. The outside scenes are duller
and have a fast cutting rate, like the abuse has been released into the open and
becomes even more obvious as he is disturbingly chasing her away from their
home.
5. The elements we added in when creating the music video were carefully
selected so we could target the genre and audience properly. We fitted all the
conventions in our music video so that the audience gets what they were
expecting to get and this encourages them to watch the video. We set the scene
like any normal house, generally tidy, natural lighting etc.
The opening scene of the music video is a woman being sung to by a guy who is
just behind her shoulder, after a few seconds it becomes obvious that
something is not quite right and that she actually can’t in fact hear him. This
pulls in any viewer straight away. This leads us on to a very harsh topic for a
music video to be covering. This already gives the audience most of what they
were expecting.
6. It is typical of a digipak to have a running theme throughout it. For ours we had a
specific colour palette that we kept for the whole thing. From our first hand photos
we were able to collect a pattern that we found fitting with a wide range of
colours. It was easy enough to spread repeatedly across the digipak without it
looking odd because the picture was already quite abstract.
The CD was also made from
a picture from the actual
music video to tie it all up
together.
7. Fonts, colours and images had to match in order for the posters to fit the typical
conventions. They are very rarely completely different in appearance for the simple
fact that people would not recognise it as being part of the band. Posters have to
consistent in what pictures and fonts they use in order to develop the stereotype of
Alt-J.
