The document discusses how a media project used and challenged conventions of the indie music genre. Research was conducted on fashion trends, camerawork, narratives, and album designs of other indie artists. The project incorporated many conventions like simple clothing styles and camera movements but also challenged conventions through techniques like slow motion shots. Audience feedback was positive and confirmed the project fit genre expectations. New media technologies were used at all stages, including online research, planning tools like PowerPoint, video cameras for production, and online surveys and blogs for evaluation.

1. Q1
in what ways does your media
product use develop or challange
forms and conventions of real media
products.

2. Video

3. Clothing
When we had chosen our genre, we
then researched the fashion in other
indie music videos. We also set our
thoughts on a survey to check feed
back from real indie fans. This then all
came together in our video. we used
this as a base for our fashion in our
own music video to create our own
indie look. The essential clothing were
skinny jeans, shirt buttoned to the top,
Vans or smart pointed shoes. We made
sure all our band fitted together in the
same dress code.

4. Camera work and editing
• From our research we noticed that the camerawork in most indie videos
had many straight on simplistic constructions, many pans or tilts and
smooth transitions between shots. It was clear this was a convention as
pop rock band Blink 182 used a fish eye in the video First Date. They also
aren’t dressed as themselves but characters to fit in with the lyrics.
In our video we followed the convention we found using
pans, tracking shots etc, but also decided to challenge the
convention by adding other genres and other styles of
cinema photography. Our main parts to this would be
time lapses and slow motion shots. Both a juxtaposition to
the typical genre cinema photography.

5. Performance and narrative
• We focused our video around the band as we wanted this to be a
promotional upcoming bands music video. The performance shots were
kept simple as found in other indie music videos and we balanced the
performance out with narrative. Our main convention was to follow the
typical narrative of the band members themselves like an autobiography
in video- we found other genres doing this as well such as Black Tide in
their promotional video Shockwave.

6. Mise-en-scene
• For our narrative shots we wanted to build up and image of
the lives of our bands so we incorporated age fashions
skateboarding, pool, and new fashions fixed gear bikes to
keep up with the new age and ever changing genre.

7. Digi pak

8. Fonts
• For our digipak we decided to use a simple font as in our
research we discovered that many indie bands album art
included this code. We thought the font cooper black was
well suited. We followed what other indie bands had done
to follow the conventions as we wanted our digipak easy to
read and to stand out to our target audience in mind.
As shown by this current indie
bands album cover the font is
very simple and easy to read
with a black and white image of
the band.

9. Images
• The main point of the images from the digipak and
the advert was to suggest that they were going
somewhere included in the black and
white(monochrome) that this is a very mono
direction of the band. the close ups and stills from
the video are to create a visual for the audience to
base their image around. Many bands do this. Also
included with ours was to make this whole image
stand throughout the video, advert and digipak.

10. Colour
• We decided to take away as much colour as
possible to keep the entire image as clean cut
as we could as appose to loads of colour
clashes which can make images start to look
amateur and giving the product/band a lower
profile in retrospect to their profession.

11. Album advert
• While researching we came across the music video
My Sun by The Temper Trap which used an editing
effect where an image had been separated into
sections using vertical lines. We liked this idea and it
inspired us to somehow incorporate it in our album
advert.

12. Q2
How effective is the combination of
the main product and all ancillary
products?

13. I feel that all our products connect together to produce an authentic look that will sell as a full image
of a band.
The music video allows the audience to connect with the band through the fashion sense, attitude to
life and the hobbies they enjoy.
The digipak is connected to the video through its still images taken from our main product, the music
video. This emphasises again the outlook on life, the fashion and hobbies. The close ups helps show
the band members as individuals as audiences always seem to connect with one member of a band
more than the others. The only image that isn’t a still from the music video is taken at the train
station of an empty bench represents the movement of the band and that fact that they are moving
on and getting to where they want to be in their career.
In addition to this the advert includes the train station tying the other products into it. This makes
them easily recognisable as a group.
We used different images on our advert to our digipak as we wanted to break the convention of
using the same images again. This let our product show more of the band, enticing the audience
with more knowledge and the urge to know more about the band individually. This in the end means
our product works and would have a higher sell rating if it were based on the image of the band.

14. Q3
what have you learnt from your
audience feedback?

15. These are the results of a questionnaire we made to
gather feedback after producing our products.
Posting this around on Facebook and Youtube to
mostly people we knew that liked this genre because
they would know what sort of things make up a good
indie music video. As seen in the results, we usually
were rated between a 3-5 which was the higher end
of the scale. In conclusion to this it was clear our
product was liked and fitted in with the indie culture.
We received 467 views and counting and 5 likes. That
generally showed that people were interested in our
work and what we were able to produce. However
we found when writing surveys for the first
time, when open questions were asked, viewers
wouldn’t take the music video seriously and
answered with silly things which didn’t help us. Thus
for the questions to the left we only incorporated one
open question and the rest were multiple choice.

16. The above comment is taken from a site we used to get feedback from, Survey
Monkey. They gave us mainly positive feedback saying the video was ‘Brilliant’ and ‘I’m
off to go cry that mine isn’t as good.’ this then made us feel confident that we had
complied with the brief and did it to the best of our ability. The only negatives, but
taken as positives, were the same as our views for example, the slow motion
skateboard shots. We felt, as well as the feedback, that these shots weren’t up to the
standard of the rest and let us think about how we could have improved this area of
the video, but the only answer to this criticism is to use professional equipment that
can capture more than 25 frames per second.
In conclusion to this particular feedback, the persons responses weren’t specific
enough as to how we could understand what we did correctly . For example the critic
instead of just saying the location shots were perfect for the indie genre, this could
have been developed and said what aspects of the location made it a ‘perfect’ place to
shoot.

17. Audience research
• As we knew a lot about the indie genre to start
off with, the audience research confirmed our
understand about the forms of the genre. If we
were to do the research and the products again
we would include more open questions but send
them out to professional sites and forums to get
real honest feedback. Questions that we wouldn’t
ask next time would be those of age and gender
due to the fact that they don’t really help us
develop our product.

18. Q4
How did you use new media
technology in the
construction, research, planning and
evaluation stages?

19. Research stage
• In this stage of the project, I used the internet
to find images of current and past media
products that related to the brief.
• I mainly used Youtube to research current and
past music videos relating to the genre I
chose.
• BlogSpot was required to present our work in
a chronological order.

20. Planning
• We used SlideShare to put our powerpoint presentations onto our blogs
so they could be accessed easily. The main reason was to share large
gatherings of information-storyboard/shotlist within a small space on our
blog. This presented our work in a easier linear viewing manner.
• A HD video camera was used to show potential locations and to film
audience interviews.
• Survey Monkey was used online for primary research to add to our
secondary research making a better understanding for ourselves. This was
mostly posted on Facebook.

21. Production
• To capture the footage we used a high
definition video camera.
• We used a mobile phone app to check
weather conditions for our shooting
schedules. Also using mobiles to contact each
other on the days of filming.
• During shooting we used portable speakers
and iPod to insure we were in time with the
music.

22. Evaluation
• I used Powerpoint presentation and uploaded
it to SlideShare to present my work in a clean
tidy fashion.
• I used many ‘print screens’ to visually show
my points.
• I used the internet and BlogSpot to revisit my
work in order to fine tune my evaluation.
Some sites I revisited were Survey
Monkey, Youtube and Facebook.