The document discusses how a media product both uses and challenges conventions of real indie and pop music genres. Research was conducted into conventions of indie and pop genres to understand codes. Elements like camera shots, mise-en-scene, costumes, and lack of artist promotion follow indie conventions, while the inclusion of singing and a narrative with deeper meaning challenge conventions by mixing genres into indie-pop.

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

2. When beginning the project I conducted research in
to existing products to understand codes and
conventions of different genres. Part of my research
included the indie-rock genre and the poop genre.
Our product is a mixture of both of these styles
creating indie-pop. Therefore when creating our
product I could apply these conventions of real
media products.

3. In terms of camera, we used conventions of the indie
genre throughout our video. For example, establishing
shots were used at the beginning of the video. How
ever, this contrasts the genre as in our video’s
establishing shots show the setting and surrounding
rather than band performance. Although, throughout
the video shots are shown of the artist playing the
guitar which connotes the indie genre.

4. Mise-en-scene was a key feature of representing of genre.
Key props were used such as the guitar and peacocks.
These were used throughout to link to the song lyrics and
narrative. The appearance of the artist was also adapted
to fit into our genre. We dressed the protagonist in basic
style indie clothing such as black skinny jeans, a white
tshirt and vans shoes. For the audience, this allows them
to recognise the costume of the protagonist and link this
to stereotypes that they recognise such as the indie
genre. The appearance of the artist was significant in
genre representation as if we had dressed the protagonist
differently, perhaps in all black and red, a different genre
would be deciphered such as punk or rock.

5. Indie artists tend to make music for themselves rather than the industry; therefore
large-scale production videos are unnecessary. In relation to our product we applied
this in several ways, for example in the album digipack and album poster. When
selecting images to use we decided to use images that didn’t contain the artists
face, instead we created icons through the scenery and props such as the guitar.

6. The narrative in our production both challenges and develops real
conventions. In any music video the narrative is key to representing and
explaining the song in a visual way to attract the audience. However, in an
indie music video the narrative commonly takes focus on the band/artist
musical performance such as playing the guitar. Large scale productions are
unnecessary for this genre as the key focus and intention of the artist is to
promote their music rather than their own image/identity. As we mixed
genres with indie-pop our production contains features of this and develops
the real conventions. Many parts of our video show the protagonist
singing/playing guitar, however it doesn’t glamourize his image which would
likely to be seen in pop videos. In terms of narrative in the indie genre it is
usually deeper than those in pop music due to the more sensitive writing of
the song. The narrative of the song is based around love and romance
therefore the lyrics are deep and meaningful and this is echoed in the
cinematography.