The document discusses how the media product conforms to conventions of real country music products. It summarizes how elements of the music video, album packaging, and website were inspired by other country artists like Kacey Musgraves, Miranda Lambert, Taylor Swift, and Lori McKenna. Conventions included setting the video on a rural path, including the artist's band, using consistent costumes, establishing a connection to the artist early, including natural elements like flowers, and addressing fans in a personal way on websites and albums. The goal was to attract a target country music audience while developing the artist's image and persona.

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

2. The first example of a music video that inspired our own, Kiss
the Future, is a music video by fellow country artist Kacey
Musgraves. Mentioned before in my genre Prezi, Kacey is a
young country artists (who's songs entail elements of a pop
culture). Because we liked her image as an artist, we were
inspired to use similar elements of her music videos for ours. It
is very typical to see country music, especially the music
videos all have roughly the same undertone if not imagery due
to its very narrow genre line. Here, even within the first few
seconds of our country music video, we are conforming to the
conventions of a country music video by setting our narrative
on a long nature filled path. Country music videos often have
to do with ‘ finding ones path’ or ‘ following ones dreams’ and
so therefore it was effective to right away illustrate to our
audience that our video is country.
In order to shoot this we place our camera on a low tripod
to keep the camera sturdy yet have it at a low level. Next
we gave the camera a slight upward tilt in order to give the
entire shot an elongated element, conforming to the
conventions of a typical country music video. Unlike
Kacey Musgraves however, we gave our entire music
video a slightly lower saturation ( meaning in editing we
made the entire video a little darker). While this isn't
typical of many happy country songs, it does fit in the
criteria of an unhappy country song because the weather
and the saturation of a video always exemplifies the mood
the artist is trying to display in his or her music.
Furthermore,

3. Music Video
Another example of how we conformed to the conventions of a music video is
through the usage of a band. Rarely does one see country artists singing
without a band and thus, just like Kacey Musgraves, we included a band in
our music video. A band is useful as it allows an audience to feel a sense of
family and friendship within an artist image or specifically a country music
video. Country music is always linked to dealing with relationships, love,
hate, family or friends. Thus is was highly essential for us to contrast a band
of member we knew would fit the criteria. As demonstrated in Kacey
Musgraves music video, her band surround her in the background while she
standing in the centre and a bit further up front. This tells an audience who to
look at while securing this sense of family life. Moreover it was very
important to us that we make sure that, costume wise, there is a general
consistency as to what everyone is wearing. While Kacey took it to the
extremes dressing her band all the same outfits, we decided we wanted a
more natural looks for our band and therefore simple dressed them in typical
‘ country folk’ clothing. We had Bella in a flower shirt (consistent with our
theme of flowers throughout) which, along with the set, gave the audience a
feel that they were out in the country, in nature or close to a farm. While
Kacey was wearing a typical country hat, we didn’ t want to hide fen’ s face in
her ‘ band/close up’ sequences and thus chose to use the hat in a later sequence
when she is on her own. In order to shoot this sequence we places the camera
on a track and moved it back and forth to give variation as well as make sure
we include all angles of the beautifully constructed set in the shot. All these
elements of our music video conform to the conventions of a country music
video and an artists image.

4. As it is highly important to establish a connection between
the artist and his or her audience we knew it was essential
to include a close-up of Fen Xanadu within the first few
seconds of the music video. This establishes who to watch
in the music video as well as helps set the tone of what the
music video will be. Like for instance an artist can look sad
and then we know without having to listen to the music that
the tone of the song will be sinister and upset. As shown in
one of Miranda Lambert's earliest videos (image displayed
below) it is typical of country artists to insert a close up of
the artist within the first few instance of the given music
video to create a relationship between the artist and his or
her audience.
In order to make this quick connection fit, we
inserted the shot early in our video yet made sure it fit
with the beat. Unlike Miranda Lambert's video,
wherein a connection is established before she has
even begun singing, we decided to go against this
convention and waiting until the song had already
begun before putting in a close up, thus setting the
atmosphere of our other narrative strand. However, it
is crucial one does not take too long before
introducing the main talent because otherwise an
audience may loose focus or cannot establish the
family, friendship relationship with the artists
essential and typical in a music video.

5. My group and I continued to conform to a typical
country music videos rural and natural atmosphere by
creating a theme of flowers throughout our piece.
Inspired by Miranda Lambert’ s ‘ Dead Flower’ s music
video, we also contiguously used flowers in our various
shots. For example, Darcy (the female character playing
the girl in the red dress in our video) carried a suitcase
filled with roses and pictures of her long lost love Ned.
Furthermore we made sure that our studio shots with
the band were covered in flowers ranging from roses to
lilies to lilacs because we liked the aspect of naturalism
is gave to our video.
Unlike in Miranda Lamberts video where her
flowers are all dying, we decided we wanted our
flowers to be alive, well and filled will lots of
colour because our music video was about the
future being bright and leaving behind a past. This
past, dark or not, was supposed to be erased by all
the goodness of the flowers and so when Darcy
through the flowers over the bridge it is a symbol
of how she is ‘ leaving the past behind’ (an actual
quote from her music video).

6. Digi-Pack
Like Lucy Rose’s and an early Taylor Swift Album, my group
and I made sure to conform to the country artist image of
always having an instrument with ones artist (shown by Taylor
Swift in her cover photo and by Fen Xanadu in hers). This is
highly typical of a country artist and conforms to the
conventions. Moreover, we wanted to make sure the theme of
stated consistent throughout so we used the same font on the
front and back cover, done likewise by my two example artist.
We also continued on we the theme of flowers likewise
displayed in our music video. It is important that a country
music artist has elements of naturalism within it. In all three
covers, these female singers have included images of the
outdoors, flowers and used (like Fen) a similar font/exposure
on their album covers.

7. Website
An example of an artist who inspired our website was Taylor Swift. We really loved how she addressed her fans with a
personalized message with an image of her in a rural environment. Including ones personality as well as elements of
nature into a website is again typical of a country artist and how he or she would address his or her fans. Like Taylor who
stayed to a natural pallet of colours on her website, we wanted our colours to represent the country side so we used greens
and blues and beige as well as black and whites. Within her message was knew we wanted to target a typical country
audience by being very laid back and organic.

8. Website
Another artist we looked at and took inspiration
from for our music video was Lori McKenna, Lori is
an organic country singer/song writer who like
Taylor and Fen uses a natural, subtle colours to
attract her target audience. While McKenna is
roughly 30 year older than Fen, her star image still
obtains to our general county artist schema. For
example, Lori’s front website cover displays a
natural image of her and her guitar insinuating that
she is a talent based, rural artist and this is the
same image we wanted for our star image.
Furthermore, Lori McKenna’s website
immediately displays her information and
songs on her front page, perfect in luring
an audience in through talent and self
made music rather than ‘bling’ and any
given ‘shock-factor’. Her layout
encouraged us to likewise create an easily
accessible website where Fen’s details
and music was presented on the front
cover. Moreover, we displayed direct links
to Fen’s meet up points and fan talking
groups so that other fans could discuss
her and they would feel more in touch
with our artist.