The document discusses how the media product challenges conventions of real media products in several ways: 1) It uses experimental genre conventions by using grey colors and nature shots in the music video, contrasting the usual bright colors and club shots of the dance pop genre. 2) It challenges the iconography of the artist by changing the usual deer/stag symbol to a dog, representing a new beginning. 3) It uses semiotics like medium shots of a smiling girl to signify joy and freedom, and includes mysterious enigma codes and editing of images on the digipak cover. 4) While the digipak and advertisement design follows conventions like white fonts and background images, it aims to attract audiences

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

2. • Within my promotional package, there is a general
following and usage of the form of genre within it. I
think my general usage of genre is what Metz would
name an experimental genre when he explains the
four developing stages of genre. Experimental genre is
when the genre is established thoroughly and
recognised between the audiences however after this,
experimentation will occur to create different shots
and scenarios. An example within my promotional
package would be my general usage of the grey colour
in my digipak along with the spacious shots of nature
within the music video. I think these two alone
contrast with each other and isn’t what you would
usually see for a dance pop genre. As usually you will
see shots of dancing and bright lights from the club
which would usually be partnered with some bright
colours in the scenery, I challenged this convention of
this genre to turn it into something more peaceful and
meaningful.

3. • The artist I used for my promotional package has a
general iconography of a deer/stag throughout,
William chandler would say that an iconography is
that there are certain icons associated with a genre or
a specific artist. Taking this into account, since the
artist I chose had an iconography of this before
mentioned deer/stag, I decided to challenge this
within my music video to give him a new image which
is generally what many dance pop artists do, they are
always changing their image to suit the needs of their
fans; as their fans grow, they grow with them. So with
this, I decided to change his main subject matter to a
dog. I did this because it was to challenge the
conventions of what a usual artist would do in a sense
that they would always keep one known thing about
them, but I decided to change everything about this
artist; a new beginning. I gave this idea of a new
beginning for the artist since these dogs are quite
small compared to the stag/deer it could symbolise he
is being born again, and he will grow bigger and
stronger with this new upcoming digipak.

4. • Within my music video, there is a clear use of what De
Saussure would call semiotics. There was a signifier of
medium shots of a girl smiling, this is to signify that
she was in a joyful mood, the overall sign I wanted to
transfer to the audience was that she is in freedom. As
well as this, I decided to include enigma codes to add
mystery to the whole promotional package. The
digipak itself was quite mysterious as with first glance
you cannot tell what the images on it are, but editing
and manipulating these images it allows me to create
them to be attracting to the audience, the blue blues
on the front cover would attract all ages since
generally this shade of blue is quite gender neutral,
even though the colour blue is stereotypically seen as
a male colour, the shade is quite neon or light, and so
this can also add it to be attractive to females. The
neon colours may also attract younger audiences, but
with the dark greys around the rest of the digipak it
doesn't lose out on its older audiences either since they
are attracted to deeper, more classic colours
stereotypically.

5. • Within my magazine advertisement and my
digipak, it is particularly plain on information
but it follows a general idealisation of what a
popular dance pop digipak and advertisement
would look like: White, cut-out font with a
background image which is to attract the
audiences’ attention. The Frankfurt school have
a general theory that the mass audience is
manipulated by society, this fits in with my
creation of the digipak and advertisement. This
idea that something must contain good content
if the outside of it, the presentation, looks good,
is what society has written into its audience, the
bright colour coordinated colours are exactly
what is needed to attract an audience since they
are according to the Frankfurt school, easily
manipulated. The Frankfurt school's theory
simply states that society is easily manipulated
by the hierarchy, and that these bright colours
and big lettering are only attracting to the
audience because that’s what has been sewn
into their minds. But this is exactly why I
decided to use a white box with transparent
lettering, as this will attract the audience as it
is big, block capitals to attract the audience.

6. • Within my music video, there is a relationship
between the music and the visuals, Andrew
Goodwin mentioned that this is a convention in
normal media products. I decided to make this
prominent as my video is what Joan Lynch will
call a concept video, however there are some
performance aspects inside of the music video
since there are some shots where a girl is
singing to the music. However, with this I
decided to challenge the general idea that a
man must mime the men’s voice and a woman
the woman's. Instead, the girl mimed the lyrics
while the main artist, a man, sings the lyrics. I
did this to make the music video more unique,
because usually when a lyric is sung by
different genders, you will interpret it in
different ways.

7. • Propp mentions that there are 8 main characters needed within a narrative, the
Donor, the Father, the Mentor, the Protagonist, the Antagonist, the Hero, the
Helper and the Heroine. However, my concept hybrid music video challenges this
theory and furthermore doesn’t cooperate with this convention. I only have one
main character throughout, however this could be argued that because this music
video is a concept video mixed with performance and narrative aspects, this is why
it does not feature all of the characters that Propp has mentioned. So in this sense
it is not following the stereotypical conventions.

8. Thank for reading!