The document discusses how a media project used, developed, and challenged conventions of real media products in their photo shoot, digital album packaging, website, and music video for a fictional female artist. Some ways they developed conventions included replicating poses and styles from real album covers in their photo shoot, including social media links and biographical information on the artist's website similar to real artists, and including costume changes in their music video aligned with averages from analyzed real music videos. Some ways they challenged conventions included using different colors than real albums, not including close-up shots or dancing in their music video, and simplifying opening title formats without additional descriptors like "presents". The project aimed to develop the artist's profile

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

2. Tulisa holds the zip section of her jacket
open, revealing her necklaces underneath.
We reproduced this with one picture in our
photo-shoot as you can see on the right.
The second digipak front cover is extracted
from ‘I Am’ by Beyoncé. The picture details
the artist holding her hair behind her head;
yet similar to Pixie Lott, Beyoncé glares
into the camera. We developed this
because we imagined our artist with a
medium/ long shot rather than a close up
(which Beyoncé utilises).
The picture on the left portrays the album ‘Platinum
Pixie’ by Pixie Lott. The front cover shows the artist
standing squarely and looking directly into the camera,
whilst her hair and eye makeup remain prominent.
Before we entered into our photo-shoot, we sought
out various digipak’s of real and genuine female artists.
We attempted to replicate the album covers in our
own photo-shoot as is visible on this and the next
slide.

3. Pixie Lott attempts to look ditsy and
angelic on the front of her digipak. Our
group imitated this in our own photo-
shoot; we instructed Tamsyn (our artist) to
tilt her head to the left, whilst looking right
and awkwardly smiling.
On the front of her album ‘Glorious’, the
artist Foxes clasps her hands in front of her
chest. This combined with her innocent
facial expression implies that foxes is
vulnerable - a damsel in distress.
We developed this vulnerability in our
photo-shoot.
As is visible to the right, the artist Jessie J is covering
her face with her hair. We developed this concept as
on the one hand we did replicate this posture;
however we used the left hand of our artist rather
than the right hand that Jessie J uses.

4. We analyzed various ‘Thank you’
sections of genuine artists for
their digipak.
On the left you can see
screenshots from the digipaks of
‘Jessie J’, ‘Amy Whinehouse’ &
‘Adele’.
At that point, we endeavored to
simulate this in our own digipak;
you can see our attempt on the
right.
As is visible on the left, Jessie J
uses her signature and an ‘X’
(a kiss) as her sign-off. We
duplicated this in our own version
as Anastasia’s sign-off.
On the contrary, we not only mimicked the ‘Thank you’
section, we challenged it. For example, the primary
background colour of Amy Whinehouse and Adele’s digipak
are dark, whereas we used our bright and vibrant pink. The
pink is replicated throughout our project with the constant
use of #DAAEC9

5. The three above screenshots are from Tori Kelly,
Hailee Steinfeld, and Halsey's website. They depict
how you can engage with the artist on social media.
This suggests that genuine websites of real artists
should have and be contactable on their social
media accountants.
We have replicated this when creating our own
website by also creating profiles on websites
such as 'Facebook' and 'Instagram’. This links
back to the question because it demonstrates
how we have developed real media products.
On our website we used a splash page; similar to the real artist ‘Adele’.
However, we challenged her text by on the one hand, not having an
extreme close up of our artist on the splash page. On the other hand, we
had the album coming out soon rather than tour dates being advertised.
We did this as we did not consider our artist to be as popular or famous as
Adele, ergo we wanted to raise her profile by advertising her new album.

6. The 'About' section on Tori Kelly and Daya's
website inspired us to replicate this on our
own website, we created a past history and
brief background of our artist in order to
increase the persona of our artist.
The 'About' section on Tori
Kelly and Daya's website
inspired us to replicate
this on our own website.
We created a past history
and brief background of
our artist in order to
increase her persona. You
can see our copy of the
‘about’ section on the
right.
This demonstrates how
our project has developed
media products because
we analyzed sections of
real artists, then sought to
develop it within the
context of our artist

7. Rihanna’s music video to her song ‘Stay’ depicts the artist in a bath. We
replicated this in our own music video; you can see screenshot examples from
both music videos on this slide.
However we have challenged this media product. Our song is upbeat and this
is reflected in our lively music video, whereas ‘Stay’ is a slower, more
emotional song. You can see in the above screenshots that Rihanna looks
down with melancholy, similar to our artist in the photos next to it. On the
contrary, the picture with our artist (Anastasia Winters) wearing sunglasses
(insert right) shows how we went against the seriousness and somber mood of
the ‘Stay’ Music video.

8. In conjunction with the previous slide, we challenged the
‘Stay’ music video in the sense that we did not have a high
angle shot or a birds eye view in our music video. In
comparison, Rihanna can be seen from above numerously
in her video. We did not use these shots and we felt that it
would imply that our artist is weak and vulnerable as she
is being looked down upon by the audience.
Furthermore, our artist sits in the bath as it is vital to the
narrative of the video - the music video is her imagination
from either a dream of hallucination whilst she is
‘drowning’ in the bath.
Whereas, Rihanna sits in the bath to imply she is
depressed and perhaps even that her relationship is
‘unclean’ and/ or ‘dirty’.

9. The screenshots,
which are visible on
this slide, are
extracted from the
music video of the
song ‘Sweat’ by Major
Lazer.
The music video is
extremely useful to us
due to the constant
use of U.V. paint. We
developed this media
product as you can see
here.
Furthermore,
compared to ‘Stay’ by
Rihanna, the song
‘Sweat’ is more
upbeat. Ergo, this
increases the validity
of the video as the
genre of music is more
similar.
On the other hand, we
challenged the media text
because in our music video, we
did not include any genuinely
dancing individuals – ‘Sweat’
does.
The screenshots on the right
shows our artist head bobbing to
the beat, but not conventionally

10. I analyzed 11 music videos, from 7
different female indie artists, tallying
the numbers from different criteria.
I then calculated the average
numbers (the mean) from the 10
different categories (this can be fully
seen on my blog).
Having discovered the average
numbers, I attempted to reflect this
in our own music video in order to
make it fit the genre and our overall
brief.
For example, in Tori Kelly’s video
‘Should’ve Been Us’ she has 6
costume changes. In Daya’s ‘Sit Still,
Look Pretty’, there are 8, and finally
in Zella Day’s ‘Hypnotic’, there are 7
costume changes. We developed this
real media product by having 8
different costumes in our own music
video (excluding make-up changes).
You can see our 8 different costumes
on this slide.
Above is a variety of screenshots from the different
costume changes from ‘Hypnotic’ by Zella Day:

11. ‘Hypnotic’ by Zella Day was a useful video to us because it is a real media product that implies the artist is dreaming or
hallucinating for center bulk of the music video.
As you can see, at the start the artist is driving in her car until it breaks down. Zella then climbs onto a horse with a random
stranger and rides away.
It could be argued that at the end she ‘wakes up’ from the music video, with her head only appearing out of the sand.
Despite the video inspiring us to use a narrative of dreaming, we did
indeed challenge ‘Hypnotic’.
For instance, we did not use animals in our music video, whereas
snakes and horses can be seen in Zella Day’s piece.
In addition, ‘Hypnotic’ operatives effectively the use of a bath. We did
use a bath in our music video, therefore we followed the conventions
set by this music video. On the other hand, we deviated and
challenged it by using close ups instead of wide shots, and as
previously mentioned, did not include animals.

12. We aimed to use titles at the start of our music video (opening titles). Therefore, I researched into the use of titles in real
media products. As you can see, the music video to Coldplay’s ‘Paradise’ uses opening titles.
We replicated the order of the opening titles:
1. Name of the record company
2. Name of the artist
3. Name of the song
Nevertheless we did challenge this model. We did not include lines such as “presents” and stars “in”. Indeed, we simply
stuck with the solo names of the company, artist & song.
We did not include a director because we did not believe our artist would be famous enough to attract the attention and
collaborate with famous music video directors.