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

1. Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before creating each of our final media products, we had to conduct extensive
research into what sorts of conventions were used in existing products. We
picked and chose between which we thought worked well, so that we could
include them in our own texts, and those that we thought worked poorly so that
we may work to avoid including in our own work. These conventions and their
motifs are as follows:
Magazine Advert
Band/Album Names
A rather obvious convention, but we knew that our advert
would need to clearly tell its readers exactly what it was
advertising. All of the examples we studied did this simply
by making the band’s name and album title large
mastheads on their adverts. We chose to use clear, yet
stylised fonts in high contrast colours so that readers
would understand what the advert was at a glance.
This gives them the ability to either recognise the
band and be intrigued, or to be shown the sort of
style their advert follows and decide whether they
want to read on or not.
The band’s names are usually featured above the
lead image, whereas the album name usually falls
below it. We emulated this in our advert because
in reading both, the audience’s eyes are drawn
over the album image, which we want them to see
and be intrigued by.
The use of the band’s actual logo font for the “Faux Pas” was a conscious
decision, as it is more likely to be recognised by existing fans or to
introduce new ones to the conventions of the band. These fonts and
colours are also featured on our digipak so that they may serve the same
purpose there. The advert we studied also usually used different fonts for
the two titles, and we chose to emulate this in our work to show
difference between their purposes. We could have recreated the band
font to use for the album name (as Kings of Leon have here), but we
decided that there should be a more natural distinction between the two
titles.
Social Media/Weblinks
Another “expected” convention, the adverts we
studied featured links that could lead their readers to
more information on the bands and the albums they
featured. We chose to include these so that audiences

2. may use the advert to connect with our other products, not just to be made
aware of when the album is coming out.
One thing we expected to see that they did not feature, however, was social
media links. Because Faux Pas are a youth band with a younger target audience
than the bands we studied, we deemed it necessary to include social media plugs
in addition to the band’s website link. Younger audiences are much more likely
to follow a band on social media than to visit their website, as our research
showed. The albums we chose to study also came out before social media
became the advertising behemoth is it today, so perhaps if we had chosen more
recent adverts to study then we would be emulating them in using social media,
not introducing it ourselves.
Many adverts also include logos for places their music can be found; Spotify,
iTunes etc. but seeing as Faux Pas are not yet on any of these services we could
not include these logos. The links we featured class as entry points (as studied by
Andrew Goodwin) into the band’s area of influence, so I don’t think we made too
much of a loss by not including these logos. Social media would lead audiences to
our other products just as easily as finding the band on one of these services.
This classifies both as cross-media convergence and, in a way, synergy in that the
services work with the advert to showcase the album and music video.
Our research also showed that these magazine adverts/posters usually feature
all of their extra information in the lower third of their presentation. This
commonly includes dates, quotes and ratings, information about the band, and
the names of their most famous tracks or another part of the media they were
famously featured which consumers might recognise them from. We decided as a
group that the most important information was the release date (the primary
purpose of the advert is to promote this specific album), a reference to the band’s
biggest live set at Leeds Festival, information that this is their debut album and a
quote and rating from a real local music magazine. The date is presented in a
bright, clear and dramatic yellow font in order to catch the eye of readers. This
serves alongside the mastheads above to entice readers. Featuring the date so
prominently creates a sense of rush as it acts almost as a countdown for readers
to go out and preorder or buy the album when it comes out. It also helps to
balance the presentation of the advert as all of the most attractive imagery and
titling is located in the top two thirds of the advert, and we didn’t want readers
to skim over the rest.

3. The actual image we used is the same image featured on the digipak’s front
cover. This is a convention that every album we studied followed, as if a reader
can associate this image with the album, then they are more likely to recognise it
in future and be interested, even if they have forgotten the other contents of the
advert. We tried using different colour variants of the same image but we chose
to use the exact same exposure as it matched with the colour scheme and held
maximum memorability with our audience.
There were very few conventions we disregarded in making our advert. Because
this is primarily an eyecatching product, we needed it to be as easily
recognisable as an album advert as possible. The adverts we researched were all
very similar, so we thought it best not to stray too far from the norm. Our
stylised presentation is enough to make this advert stand out.
Digipak
This was certainly the most
frequently scrutinised, edited and
reedited product we produced.
Dozens of last minute changes and
tweaks got this to its final version. In
the end we were all, however, very
satisfied with the result and it got
good audience feedback.
The most unusual thing about our
digipak is the imagery it features.
Because up until this point Faux Pas
have been mainly a live band with
very few online releases and no physical CDs, we felt we should communicate a

4. live atmosphere through its presentation, that and because it also features a live
DVD. The photos used were taken whilst filming for our music video at one of
their gigs on a film camera which are both very unusual traits. Usually specific
digital shoots are conducted to best present the artists who create an album, but
we felt this too plain and unexciting for our “rough and ready” handwritten
album design.
Further relating to this “handmade” feel, the digipaks we studied all seemed to
use very clear sans serif fonts in order to best communicate the information
written on them. We tried this but it suited neither the imagery or attitude of the
album, so we chose to make up for this lack of clarity in our scrawled fonts by
double layering the text with another high contrast colour. This way, the text still
feels personal but is also clear to read. We wanted to keep this “intimate” feeling
throughout our products as the band present themselves as very local,
homegrown musicians and speak very casually to their fans through social media
etc.
The digipak’s layout is completely conventional; band name and album title on
the front cover, tracklist and extra information on the back cover, discs and
personal messages inside. We followed these conventions so that when
presented in a shop format, with its plastic wrapping still on, audiences can flip
to the two available sides of the album and see all the information they will need
to see. The discs and personal notes can remain inside because the audience do
not need to see them on the shelf. However, this layout allows them to see the
band’s name, album name and tracklist with ease prior to
purchase.
The digipaks we studied also all seemed to feature one blank
panel with just a band image on, so we chose to emulate this
so that the album would not feel too busy or cramped. Our
audience feedback told us that some people feel the album is
already too crammed full of imagery and text, so this was
definitely a good decision.
We chose such a distinct, high contrast and colourful visual
style with our digipak in order to provide brand identity to
the band. Seeing as they do not have much physical media yet, we needed to
create something memorable and were luckily not limited by an existing
personality. This is definitely a challenge on existing conventions because whilst
not technically breaking any rules, it certainly bends a few expectations in its
ostentatious and busy presentation.
The two discs in the digipak feature almost identical images. This was a
convention we found during our research of digipaks which contained DVDs in
addition to their CDs. Often the DVD would feature a colour swapped or negative
version of the CD’s appearance. We liked this as it shows coherence but
difference and so chose
to emulate it in our own
work.

5. The reiteration of the same masthead image (this is also the exposure we used
on our advert) further push the band’s unique image at audiences, and we felt
that this was one of our unique selling points so needed to be emphasised in any
way possible.
Music Video
The final product we created was, of course, our full-length music video. This
was certainly the most difficult product to create which took the longest time to
produce, but again we are happy with its result. Making videos was a skill none
of us had any experience in, so we had to do a lot of research into their
conventions and tried to stick as close to them as we could. One good set of
guidelines we found comes from Andrew Goodwin, whose book “Dancing in the
Distraction Factory” states that:
- Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics (e.g. stage performance in
rock videos, dance routines.)
- There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals
- There is a relationship between music and visuals
- The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups
of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their
work (a visual style).
- There is frequently reference to the notion of looking (screens within
screens, telescopes etc.) and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the
female body.
- There is often intertextual reference (to films, TV Programmes, other
music videos etc.)
One of the key driving forces behind our videos creation was that of its genre.
Jacque Derrida’s theory states that “A text cannot belong to no genre. It cannot be
without a genre. Every single text participates in one or more genres, as there is
no genreless text.”. Our genre is that of indie rock, and so we carried out research
appropriate to that genre and followed the conventions of which it comprises.
The very convention Goodwin uses as an
example for genre characteristics is that rock
music videos often feature live performance. As
our genre is “indie-rock”, we felt it important to
include live performance in our video because
of this, and because of the fact that the band is
a famously exclusively live act locally. Many
indie videos feature “false performance” filmed
in a studio with special sets, outfits and pretty
instruments that the band don’t actually use.
We felt this would make our video feel disgenuine so stuck with the idea of live
performance. Normally this live footage is filmed very professionally at huge
concerts with brilliant lighting etc., but we felt that because the band are so small
and intimate, these shots should be taken from the point of view of the audience.
This was much easier to film and produced a more appropriate result than
specially lighting and framing them would have done.

6. We felt it very important to follow Goodwin’s second and third rules; that there
should be a clear relationship between the music, lyrics and visuals in music
videos. This helped guide our creative decisions whilst planning and editing the
video. As for the music relationship, we tried to keep a fairly fast cutting rhythm
throughout the video to match the tempo of the music. In places we tried to have
our cuts fall on beat, which makes the video feel custom tailored to the music but
I don’t think we did this enough. Ideally, almost every cut would fall on a beat but
this simply wasn’t possible without it overriding the whole video and some shots
needed to be longer than the music allowed.
Our video also featured performance – both
from the band and the video’s protagonist –
which played in time with the music at
points to give the illusion that they were
playing the music overlaid onto the video.
This happens with the band throughout and
with the protagonist at the very end of the
video. Our audience feedback showed this to
be one of the most successful traits of the
entire video, as everyone we interviewed
seemed to like and/or pick up on it. We certainly challenged this convention by
including some shots of the protagonist playing a different tune to the featured
song, but we have seen this done in other videos and it didn’t seem to spoil them
so I don’t think this was a big downfall.
Another of Goodwin’s conventions we
payed particular attention to was the
notion of “looking”. We used many shots of
the protagonist looking at things in order to
create a cohesive narrative and show his
thought process throughout the video. His
gaze directs ours, as Goodwin theorised.
Because of our particularly young audience,
we chose not to include voyeuristic
presentation of the female body, which is
certainly a challenge on standard
conventions. One would be hard pressed to
find a music video nowadays which doesn’t
feature this presentation of women.
However, due to the age range of our
potential actors and considering the age of
the fans that would end up watching this
video, we chose to leave it out in favour of
other imagery. Granted, there is a shot of
our male protagonist changing at the start of the video, but this is not meant to
carry sexual or voyeuristic undertones, rather simply to endear the viewers to
his lifestyle and create common ground between them. It could, however, be
seen either way by the audience.

7. Vladimir Propp’s theory suggests that there are six stages to any narrative:
- Preparation: The scene is set
- Complication: A problem arises
- Transference: A hero receives help and sets out to fix the problem
- Struggle: The hero goes through hardships
- Return: The hero returns strengthened by his efforts
- Recognition: The hero is rewarded for his efforts. Often a villain or idea is
punished too.
Although our narrative disallowed the feature of any particular
villains, we still managed to fit it to Propp’s theory. In our case
- Preparation: The protagonist wakes up like any other day
- Complication: His bad grades featured later clearly
demonstrate what is wrong, but at this point in the video we
are just told something is wrong by the fact that it needs to
be improved.
- Transference: The protagonist hangs up his note and travels
to college
- Struggle: The protagonist receives his bad grades and goes to
study to improve them
- Return: The protagonist receives his better grades and
appears happier
- Recognition: The protagonist tears down his note, implying
that his like is now “together”
Costume (amongst other features of mise-en-scene) is commonly
known to be a very important part of music videos. Bands and artists are usually
dressed very fashionably to express factors of their
respective genres and personalities, and we wanted to play
around with this idea of expression through clothing in our
video. The three outfits worn by the protagonist represent
the three stages of his struggle; dissatisfaction (dark,
unkempt and worn out), hard work (practical and
utilitarian) and triumph (smarter, coordinated and
relaxed). The first attempt at the video also featured these
outfit changes as we thought it a clear and simple way to
show progress through the way that the protagonist felt
about himself. The change into the fitness outfit was also an
important distinction to make as we did not want his
running or cycling to be misinterpreted as merely rushing
for college or something similar. These changes helped us
to follow Propp’s theory and show character development
throughout the story. His struggle and reward are clearly
stated by how he presents himself.
Whilst on the topic of mise-en-scene, it is important to
mention the choice of props we used. Rock and indie videos
are characteristic for featuring their associated instruments

8. being played, which we definitely emulated through our live footage and in part
through the narrative, although we had to use an acoustic guitar thanks to
practical limitations. We challenged this convention by mixing together two
separate performance pieces in the same video, only one of which was actually
playing the song featured. Simply featuring all the instruments, lighting and gear
of a live gig helped conform to usual video tropes and make it feel like a true
indie-rock video.
The cutting styles used throughout the video do not vary much. Our research
showed that very few modern videos use fades, slides or zooms to switch
between shots so we stuck to plain cuts and the occasional jump cut to show
passage of time. This cutting style is certainly a modern convention to which we
adhered very closely, as we did not want our video to feel dated in the slightest.
Overall, our video adhered to many features of modern indie-rock music videos,
but not as many as I would have liked to have done. I feel that in challenging the
cutting rate with off-tempo cuts and instruments that didn’t diagetically suit the
music being played, the music comes off as rushed or strung out, which it has
definitely not been.