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

Music video

For our performance video the video is basically telling a story throughout in which that they are against the Government and the corruption that they bring and from this in the video we have portrayed the band in a manner in which that they are rebelling against them and breaking out against them. The story is also told through the lyrics and the characters in the video are portraying their angry rebellious and uncaring manner against them as they think that this should change. The way that we have presented the video is in a conventional manner through the way that the narrative and story was shown and was cut to the band members playing their instruments which would be aspirational to the target audience. The video makes use of the stereotypes of the Indie rock genre as such as the uses and gratification of the audience in terms of aspiration to the target audience and also belonging. The storyline of the song rather subverts to the genre as it is focused on the government and corruption which generally is not the usual storyline for the Indie rock genre it follows the conventional stereotypes in the video with it relating to theories from Maslow with things such as uses and gratification and Dyers Star theory and Utopia theory. In our video we alos decided that we would go against typical music video conventions in having denouement and instead finish the video on a cliffhanger to engage the audience further and intentionally use this as part of the branding to put teh music videos they release into sections and create a story.

So the purpose of the forms in terms of Dyers Star Theory is the band in the music video should be portrayed and presented as modern stars and that they will be basically showed and sold as a product and cultural phantasies, so for not only our music but also the ancillary texts we wanted this effect so it gratifies the audience and makes them aspire to the ‘stars’.

The music chosen for our music video was ‘Sleeping pills' an indie rock song about the band and their point of view on how corruption is and how it affects us and their rebellioun against the government themselves. The reason why the song was chosen was due to the topic of the song which I found interesting and subvertive for most indie rock bands although we chose a song of a topic such as this as we could get creative with the filming and what we could do for the music video and could have the contrast of the narrative and then the objectification of the artists and them playing their instruments which would be conventional to the genre as well as aspirational for the audience. We also want to focus on the concept of a 'star' and the stereotyoe type of bands being rebellious and idealized. Conforming to the dominant media ideologies that indie rock bands should be rebellious as well as uncaring and chose to do things their way which relates to the male gaze theory that suggests mass media images such as those in music videos are filmed from and for the male perspective objectifying women.

The main artist in our video was the singer Joe who takes on similar roles in his music video, we noticed that establishing the bands character is a key convention of these music videos and especially for a new band so we tried to get shots that identified them to the target audience to help build their image and connection with the audience. At the start of our music video we set an equilibrium focused soley on the protaginist using close up and extreme close ups, which are used start narrative, but we didn’t us edirect mode of address in this to convert to the stereotypes of being uncaring, rather antisocial and rebellious and also to create a sense of enigma. This is used in the industry to bridge the gap between star and audience and establish a fanbase; the demographic that we aimed our production at were young people between the ages of 15-30 and for this we tried to create a sense of aspiration with the members having the most sought after cool guitars as well as keeping to the traditional simple look  and also filmed in a studio playing their instruments conforms to the stereotypes and would be something that the audience would relate to.  In the video we use some special effects of where to image distorts and then goes into the next part of the video and the next band member playing this is similar to the jay z and Kanye West video with their usage of special effects which in our video creates enigma whihc for our topic of running away from the government is appropraite.

We subverted the main narrative structure of conventional indie rock music videos, as usually the topics are usually tend to be more positive and focus on things more such as women and love stories or different trials and tribulations that people may face rather than serious topics such as the government developing an example of an Indie rock band is ‘The Killers’ ‘Human’. For the video we decided to put in special effects to create a sense of enigma and mystery due to the concept of running away from the government. In other shots though we concentrate on the bands instruments to convey to the typical image of indie rock bands that the audience would relate to and would be seen in many other indie rock products and videos.

After researching other similar productions mostly focusing on the Killers we noticed that these videos had a strong focus on the narrative and then would switch baack to the artists and focus on their performance closely and would show off their instruments and the way that they acted so we decided to use our camera shots to portray this and concentrate on the things such as instruments but still keep that cinematic feel when it was switched back to the narrative to keep the audience engaged and with a sense of enigma, to further this we then decied to put it into black and white to also convey to the genre more. Although we did challange the genre as for our video with the topic that it was about it differed strong to the convetional storyline so our narrative was very subvertive to this

Website

For the website we lookedat the website for the actual band of the silient film to get some direction about how to deisgh the website to make effective to our target audience and also tried to use features to have it apply to Dyers Star theory so the band is presented almost like a product. This showed us the conventions of the website of a real indie rock band and how to make it effective, I realized that the main design feature of the sites pages is the artists brand name in large lettering to make it clear and establish it to audience. The font is a bold font and is made to be a striking feature through the use of black, blue and greycolours which both complement each other and allow for the text to stand of from the background easily. The visitor to the website will also then have to option of connecting with them through several different forms of social media ranging from instagram, twitter etc which is all ways of creating aspiration and presenting them as stars and giving the audience belonging by sighing up.Teh audience also has images and videos of the stars and they becomes the centre of the page in which this sells the artist well and would gratify audiences who have come to the site especially as a fan of the artist and also creates aspiration and escapism for the fans.

The website home page has been kept simple in terms of features but has the important page bar with tabs that allow users to select other pages on the website such as 'Home, News, Videos, Photos, Music, Store,  the different pages are regular on artist websites because they provide interactive services that allow audiences to interact and connect and feel like they can relate with the star by being apart of his music etc and having the different galleries to look at their different pictures and then also different and new information about them which keeps them interested and hopefully bring them back by having that persistant attraction and interaction which comes after the intial interest gained from the music and the music videos. Once we went over the bands professional website we followed the conveyed stereotypes to them by using bold serif font to grab the users attention and put the brand name in the forefront along with a small image of the band members to make it clear to the target audience to identify them.

The colour scheme matches the house style we have established across our three media texts using the funky purple as a symbol of our genre and music culture; by including a biography, picture gallery, contact information and links to social networking sites we followed the   conventions and allowed users a level of interaction different from our main product.



The Digi Pack


The design of  the digi pack I found that by researching the conventions of other similar media texts with other bands such as coldplay to find inspiration and also have a guide into making the most effective digi pack for our project. Looking at several different covers from the genre such as coldplay it beceame clear that there was a massive focus on the memebrs and they followed several media conventions such as direct mode of address with the target audience

 The band for our cover are put simply the focus of the album cover and with the background beign kept simple and also with the rugged indie rock effect to convey to the stereotypes and also have to audience feel that sense of belonging and instantly when a person looks at it then they can know the type of genre and what the band could possibly be about and it was without any complicated designs or colours and font as it was kept simple and in black and white to keep to our branding and image of the band to keep it consistent to the target audience, the design that our group did has similarities to the album cover of Coldplay with the rugged background , simple clothing and the way they present and portray themselves with their aggressive and uncaring faces.

Since we are a new and for the project an unknown band this the creates the effect that the people the would focus on the band more closely and intensely and then there would have to be more consideration for what the different band members are wearing and the way that they are presented as well as many other issues, so due to the fact that the target audience will not know them it will force them to focus on them more closely to find out whether they can relate to them or aspire to them etc.