The document discusses conventions used in music videos and other media products like digipaks and magazine advertisements. It analyzes how the author's media product for the song "Reason to Smile" both uses and challenges conventions of real music videos. Key conventions included are relationships between lyrics/music and visuals, close-ups of artists, and intertextual references. The author's music video challenges conventions of voyeurism but uses conventions like cancer representations. The digipak and ad also aim to use gendered conventions like bright colors and the artist's image to attract audiences.

1. Media Evaluation:<br />In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?<br />My media product uses a lot of conventions as well as challenging them within both the music video and the print productions yet to explain how these work first I will explain what exactly these views are. Such as the conventions of a music video and how they are stereotypically produced with similar features including colour, text size or font, character types, lyrics that match with the visuals, the props used etc. <br /> <br />952575565A theorist known as Andrew Goodwin has identified a number of key features in music videos which include the following list:- A relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, with the visuals illustrating, amplifying or contradicting the lyrics.- A relationship between the music and the visuals, creating the same reactions at the one above yet with the beats instead of the words.- Genre-related style and iconography present.- Multiple close-ups of the main artist or vocalist however band members (if there are any) are involved and portrayed too.- Voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females however this isn’t always the case as some videos nowadays are trying to get away from this view.- Intertextual references to other media texts may be present from films, other tracks the artist has, news reports among others.He states that music videos are often constructed by the link between the visuals and the song including the lyrics and the actual beats such as drums that may go with things such as scene changes. He then goes on to express that relationships are built between these in the video while the close-ups of the artist gives them the representation and publicity they require. Thus a new artist gets more attention and acknowledgement from the audience/public as they will see them constantly throughout the video. This is purely done to get the artist out there in the limelight hopefully making them a successful investment for the record company who took them on their team. Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness, particularly to males, whilst intertextuality is often used if the track is linked for a film. An example of this would be Linkin park who produces a song for the transformers movie, the video of which shows pieces of the film giving publicity to both the artist and the blockbuster. Many of these features are present in all music videos, depending on the genre of the song and the aim of the record company/artist.<br />Music Video<br />Taking this into account for the video that was created for “Reason to smile” by artist “Carly Jones” we used some techniques while completely dismissing others in order to make the video stereotypical by going with the norms yet also show that it doesn’t have to follow everyone in order to be successful. Thus the storyline we created was the first step in production the video and was one of the hardest choices on what to go for however soon enough the pop track was picked yet because it was slow we didn’t want to include voyeurism links as it didn’t go with a storyline we decided on. The plot was basically about a female’s loss, namely her mothers who dies from cancer and we wanted to show the change from her being sad because all the good memories had gone to her actually feeling good about it as she knows that their memories are always there thus she can deal with death. We challenged the voyeurism view due to the factor that as a group we decided that it was getting too sexual within videos such as “Rihanna – S&M” which is all about sex, so we challenged this view to try and make the video about the artist again and not for sexual pleasure. <br />The cancer aspect on the other hand was a hard topic to use as it was an invisible illness with some people suffering from it without anyone knowing any better. As well as this we didn’t want to offend anyone by using stereotypical views yet felt that to show clearly what the female’s illness was we couldn’t get away from not using them. The look we came up with was having the cancer suffering wearing a head scarf to try and express and she has no hair which is a common side effect (convention) of having treatment. We also made the character wear pale make up so that she looked physically like she had lost the colour in her cheeks and so that she appeared to be weaker than an average person or frail, again these are stereotypical views that we felt just had to be included for the right story to be expressed within our music video production. <br />3457575125095<br />As you can see from the images above (with the cancer sufferer on the right and the one we stereotypically created on the left) we tried to create the look by placing the scarf just below the hairline which in turn meant that the actress we used had less distress and it took less time to create the look. This meant that we could film the scenes we needed faster that we would have done if we would have to create a full bald head look every day that we filmed. That said we also used black and white to create the emotion of the storyline to express the past while also enhancing the pale make up we used to really show that the female is frail. <br />633730613410That said other artists also influenced our decisions yet mostly by the type of music video we went with as well as certain key features that we used namely the two artists that influenced us was Taylor Swift and Alicia Keys who both produce similar music to the one that we created. The songs/videos that we picked from each artist was “Mine” and “Empire state of mind part two” respectively and these were picked due to the conventions that we could use from both of them within our own music video to make it more successful.<br />25209519050<br />The two images above show the artist Taylor Swift on the left while my groups production is on the right in black and white. I picked these images to show exactly what we used as inspiration for our music video from the official pop video of “mine” which can be shown from these two images quite easily. Basically we used the idea of having photographs surround the actress which represents memories and the person that they are singer about eventhough the two videos are about different kinds of people. “Mine” is about her and her boyfriend while “Reason to smile” is about her mother. As well as this we also used the idea of using items to represent the love for that person, however it was an engagement ring within “Mine” yet a locket with a letter in “Reason to smile”.<br />3114675133350<br />The images above show the other artist Alicia keys on the right and Carly Jones (our artist) on the left to show the similarities between the two clearly which is obvious from these two photographs. The key feature we used was the piano that both artists play themselves when singing along to the music as well as the black dress that we used to make Carly seem more sophisticated while allowing her figure to flow around the piano in a similar fashion to the famous artist. Both of them also have long hair which we used Carly’s to represent the same as Keys so that it flowed behind her instead of getting in the way, the reason for this was so that the audience could get a good image of Carly without her face being hidden from her hair which in turn increases her popularity. Thus the video conforms to the connotations of both Taylor’s video as well as that of Alicia’s.<br />Digipak<br />I researched this topic a lot by looking at various digipak designs that I felt would be useful to get a brief idea of the things that companies did or didn’t do and whether I would go along with the convention or simple reject them. The digipaks that I looked at however were all female origin as the artist that I made it for was female thus it would help me get ideas whereas a male digipak cover would probably give me the wrong connotations to use thus possibly reducing the attractiveness of the digipak. <br />The key features that I found were the following: <br />- Large artists name with the album name close by<br />- Bright colours<br />- An image of the artist (face or body)<br />- Large text readable from a distance<br />- Nothing else on the cover to distract the audience<br />21240751607820The album cover had the same track title as the one we made the music video for, I selected this name for the album as I felt that it clearly showed the connection to the artist’s video and noticed that usually during up and coming artists first album’s they usually use one of their released songs as the album cover. I believe that this is show that their target audience can clearly recognise who actually sung the song if they say heard it on the radio. For example artists that have done this include: Rihanna – Music of the Sun, Pink – Missundaztood along others. Yet this method isn’t always used such as with Avril Lavigne’s debut album named Let go which she hadn’t gotten a song of. That said nowadays the method of using song titles as the title for album’s are becoming increasingly popular and more so for albums targeted at a younger audience so seeing as my target audience is for teenagers and upwards to around early twenties, I feel that it would suit their style going with the conventions of this method.<br />4257675147320-28575143510<br /> <br />The text I used for the artist’s name is in the colour red that I used as I feel that it is a fairly bold colour that catches people’s eyesight rather well and that it ties in with the genre of some of her music which relates to love or some kind of relationship between people which red is a convention of. The reason to smile text however is in a blue text as it is suppost to make the audience feel which is sad or at least slightly upset as the song is about someone looking for a reason to smile due to a trauma to them that they can’t overcome.<br />Digipaks are known for having a picture of the artist or something that ties to the songs as the cover and this album is no different. Going along with this stereotype I used an image of Carly within the top centre of the digipak. I was able to take a photo of her facial features and her mid body so that the target audience could recognise the artist as well as the track before I modified the photograph on photoshop. I used the burn tool to get rid of a few scar’s as well as the clone tool to help create the clean skin that is stereotypical used on album covers as well as magazines in order to go with the conventions however rejected some as instead of using bright colours I kept the cover tone quite calm and laidback. <br />4552950136525193357513652576200136525The image on the far right is the back of the digipak which due to some negative feedback on the first draft became more conventional and more popular as the days went on. Thus starting from scratch I incorporated the one picture idea using a flamed candle which Carly herself stated was useful to refer to one of her songs known as catching fire. The photo I enhanced so that it came of brighter as well as larger yet altered it just slightly enough to allow the photography to fill the back yet not appear stretched in any way or form. This is seen on many digipak covers such as that of Nicki Minaj. Another convention I went with was that of having the track list straight down the middle as it just looked more formal and far more attractive than on either side.<br />The right side I used a dark tunnel which had a light coming through the middle of it as I found a few old digipaks one of which had a similar tunnel like image for the CD to fit in with the image pasted on the disk so that the hole in the middle showed the light tunnel effect underneath. Taking inspiration from this I selected this picture and used it in a similar fashion creating the look that you can see in the centre of the three images above this statement.<br />Magazine Advert<br />2057400122428042481501223645-1524001223645The magazine advert that I have created here was made after looking at a few examples such as one from Elvis and an up to date one by a new up and coming band. I picked the colour red in order to represent love, trying to make the audience feel that they should connect with the artist and love the female’s music while the yellow represents the sun and happiness which finishes the look while again trying to attract the audience’s attention. These colours help the advert increase its look so that the target audience are attracted more too it and so that people can see it from quite a far space away while sticking to the conventions that I went with in the digipak to keep the print productions connected.<br /> <br />The text counter balances the red and yellow colours by being blue and making the words represent calmness like the artist is suppost to signify. The font for the artists name and the track album is known as Vivaldi which I chose to create an old English writing type feel as the adverts I have see try to connect with artists by their gender with females mostly getting curly type posh writing while males receive bold type writing. Thus this stereotype I have carried on as it had now become the norm so my audience will see the writing and hopefully instantly see that the artist is female and thus will attract the right attention to buy her CD. That said however I have used a different font (known as Constantia) for the box talking about HMV in order to make it feel that they have made that statement which will hopefully cause the public to be interested more as a big music company is selling it.<br />I used the ITunes sign as well as the HMV sign to again increase popularity as some people will just look at the symbols instead of reading the page or they may just recognise the symbols from a first look. Thus I kept the symbols next to the text boxes that they are being described it to keep them connected so that the whole advert ties in together and makes sense to the viewer/reader. This I have noticed is used quite a lot on adverts and not for just digipaks, this method is used by films, TV companies (etc) showing that it is a useful method to think about.<br />3429000130175 <br />I also have an image of Carly which I created a white border round the outside of it making the photo appear deeper and more bold while also turning it into an oval type shape so that it looks like a vanity mirror. This I feel creates the idea that she is happy for her image and that people should be staring at her or the advert, meaning that they should buy the digipak to be as “outgoing” or as “beautiful” as she is portrayed. Again this is used a lot in albums such as Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Cheryl Cole plus many more all trying to use the female’s body or image to help sell the digipak.<br />