Question 1

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

 For our advanced media project, we have been asked to produce a promotional package for a pop promo. This needs to be an unsigned band to ensure we don’t breach any rules of copyright. We have also been asked to develop two promotional materials relating to the song of our chosen band. We were asked to produce a promotional video, a digipak of our chosen band and a magazine advert.

 

 Magazine Adverts:

The music promo will allow the target market of the band to familiarise them with their appearances. Making a music promo for a band, allows them to appear on famous websites such as youtube, this is the biggest global platform for artists who want to get known. It allows audience’s to recognise the members of the group and display the groups branding and image to potential customers.

 Magazine advertisements and digipaks will be created in order to promote the band. This will give the target market the opportunity to become familiar with the individual look the band has, i.e. logo’s, colour themes and over all looks. The band needs to be sold as an image, a popular advertising strategy is to sell products through the use of a bands aesthetic image.

  Florence and the Machine use typical advertisement conventions and have based their image on the literal meaning on their song.  Rich colours are used in the advert, making the girl appear a very bright white character in the foreground. The title “Lungs” has been taken and used to shock the audience as an internal organ appears on her exterior. Due to the girl making no eye contact with the audience, the main focus on the shot is the dark brown lungs lying on the girl’s body. This will demand the audience’s attention due to the strong associations we have with dissection of the body, and organs with death. Instead of thinking of lungs as an internal organ to keep us alive, the aim of the magazine advert is to make us associate the lungs as a vocal instrument to produce a pleasing sound, rather than as a body part.

 The tone of white has been used for the text, it reflects the female singers image as she is shown to be extremely pale. White gives us the impression of cleanliness, making the idea of lungs a positive association with a clean cut voice. White is also seen as “neutral”, we could infer that the lead singer appears to also be neutral when it comes to her music. Due to her face being slanted on one side with no eye contact to the audience, the emotional connection isn’t made with the girl, but we look at interpret the image of the lungs due to the rarity of seeing a human organ in everyday life.

 The roses in the background could also reflect the idea of life and death, in the way the lungs do. The pink roses are in bloom, these flowers are associated with both life and death and juxtapose the uncomfortable unfamiliar image of the lungs, as roses are seen and appreciated for their beauty.

 Looking into 3 main music genre's convetions to select our prefered style.

 Rock:

Rock music is known for being very over the top. The make-up and costumes of rock bands are to make them stand out from anything else industry. Being original is vital for a rock band. They would include many shots of the band and focus more on the performance side of the promo, rather than the narrative side as rock music has great appreciation for the talents of the artist. This is demonstrated by Guns n Roses as their videos consists of strong performances throughout the song, with close up camera shots during things like guitar solos, drum solos and singing. Unlike today’s modern music, rock music if often an unedited recording and know for it sounding live.

   Acoustic:

Acoustic solo artists often appeal to a much larger market than the indie genre; however our audience research showed us that many of our friends found the genre “boring.” Due to most of our feedback being from students of our own age, we wanted to film a promo of a genre we knew would be popular and liked by many. Due to many conventions of the acoustic genre being natural, i.e. natural lighting, no amps or electrical complications to remember about and only one singer to position and film, we thought that acoustic music wouldn’t be a big enough challenge for our Alevel piece. We wanted to choose a track we knew would be a challenge for us. Acoustic music also usually has a singer playing the guitar whilst singing, due to no one in our group having the ability to play a guitar, we wanted to avoid the acoustic genre.

 Although Ed Sheeran is a very popular acoustic singer, he challenges conventions within his music video. Instead of starring in the video as the singer with his guitar, he is merely shown as a passer by appearing in the narrative in the piece. This is unconventional for an acoustic piece. Although we chose not to use this genre to base our piece upon, we were inspired by the way Ed Sheeran challenges conventions in such a clever way. Not only if the video based on the outside, but it is also set in a home environment. This contrasts between being out in the physically cold environment but remaining warm inside due to not feeling guilty for the prostitution involved in the narrative, and being physically warm but emotionally cold after making bad choices.

 This influenced us to use such a contrast in our pieces. The performance side of our narrative will be based in a location representing the outside. It needed to be physically cold inside, but showing the band to be happy and in a well lit area. Our narrative will be based in a home, where the character should be physically warm, but underlying relationship issues affect the feeling of warmth.

 The Indie Genre

When we looked into the Indie genre, we found that this was first introduced into the music industry when the recordings of home tapes were first introduced.Most of the bands try to break into the music world with their own pre-recorded music, which would then allow them to be signed and released on air as quickly as possible. The indie genre has a niche-market of young adults, often being students who can then download their music. Their music promo’s are most likely to take place in an urban location where lower to middle class society is usually shown. This reflects upon the bands level within the social hierarchy of music. Indie music also often includes bands. We know many people in our school studying music or drama who can mime words successfully and many musicians can learn our song in order to give a convincing performance, whilst the four of us in our group focus purely on the filming and development side of media. Due to this style of music having much in common with ourselves such as the student market, the low budget making of a video, and an urban location, we were convinced that this would be the best choice of genre for us where we could easily stick to or challenge the original conventions of the indie genre. Scouting for Girls show their conventional indie music promo in the song “heartbeat”.They clearly show the target market for their music, by basing their performance at a school disco/prom where a live audience of teenagers watch and dance along.

 Existing Indie Band/Conventions Successfully Used

Music Promo

When making a music promo, a large variety of different camera shots should be used in order to give the video versatility and keep the audience interested throughout. It is also important that the transitions are centred on the beats of the song in order to make the video work with the music and not against it. Although promos don’t have specific camera shots which must appear in them, they can be used to our advantage to create either an emotional connection, or an uncomfortable feeling depending upon the genre of music and lyrics of the song to ensure the right atmosphere is made.

Music promo’s also often use one style of post-production techniques to give a certain look to the genre of music. The Script in the video “Hall of Fame” uses the editing technique German Expressionism. This highlights one aspect in a shot. In this case, the rose petals thrown at the ballerina are the only existing colour within the shot. German expressionism is a form of extreme art, The Script are an indie band, making them the same genre as our selected band. This video influenced us to use a monochrome background. By having only one element in colour, it is easy to recognise the most important aspect in the shot as the colour enables it to catch your eye.

Although German Expressionism is usually focused on the colour red, our group took the idea of having monochrome backgrounds in our piece, allowing the performers to remain in colour. This will highlight the band members yet keep the convention of the location appearing urban.

Within the location of this video, the lighting has been very carefully placed in order to keep the performer in colour, yet make the surrounding area appear dark and mysterious. It appears to be an old abandoned warehouse where very little natural light gets to, giving it a spooky feel and focusing our attention as an audience on the foreground of the shot, showing the band members clearly.

 We have also used this typical convention of indie bands in our video. We had one piece of equipment to provide us with light in the warehouse we have chosen, and it was vital that this was chosen and placed in the right place. We wanted to create interesting shots and have the option to also create shadows on the brick wall background to make it appear more interesting from an audience’s view. The Script also use artificial lighting in order to film a successful narrative where the mise-en-scene looks realistic. No natural light has been recorded during the performance side of this video. We took this and it influenced us to make alternative arrangements to lighting. We knew our location had electricity where we could manipulate the light to work to our advantage and look good on camera, and we also took some flood lights to get the correct back lighting as well as front lighting. These flood lights also enabled us to create some interesting shadows on the floor which helped to set the scene for our passionate piece of music.

 Both performance and narrative is also usually included in many indie genre videos. The performance side can help to promote the band by showing their musical skills through their instruments or vocal ability. The narrative however is usually a story which has been created, often relating to the lyrics in some way in order to make the audience connect the characters and feel the meaning behind the song. The music video theorist Andrew Goodwin believes that within a video, many references of intertextuality will occur within music videos to give the audience different ideas and meanings behind their video, and a very strong link between the performance side of the video, and the narrative of a video linking together to ensure the best emoitionally connected response from the audience.

Within our music promo, we wanted to also include both performance and a narrative, showing us to be following the typical conventions used within the indie genre. We believed by showing a narrative, the audience would feel a bigger emotion gain when watching our video, as we wanted to take them on the journey of a modern day break up and the effects it can have on a person. Love is also a very conventional topic to show in a music promo. People beginning to fall in love, or the devastating effects love can have, are often shown in multiple genres of music videos. The Script kept to a monochrome style throughout their video during the ballerina’s performance. As a group we wanted to challenge this convention and show a difference in artistic creation between our performance and our narrative side of the promo. We used different camera’s for both factors, as we could borrow a high definition camera for our narrative side of the promo. When filming our performance side, we had to borrow equipment from the school, which are not high definition, showing a clear change when watching the video. A different external effect was also added to the performance and narrative, as a slight change in colour and effect will make the audience associate the two promo conventions differently and follow the plot better.

  The Script have kept the filming of the narrative very clear in black and white, where as the performance filming of the band members and external singer is filmed as monochrome. Although black and white is also included in this, many different shades of grey give the filming the urban vibe which is so popula within the indie genre. The filming of the narrative being so clear, allows us to juxtapose against the good and bad within the video, i.e. the dancer being deaf, logically she would be unable to dance as she cannot hear the music, however she is shown to be successful. We can infer that she is going against normality within this video, expression of good and bad is also a typical indie convention, which appears within this video and influenced us to film good and bad times in the characters of the narratives life.

 A strong narrative was very important to be produced during our filming. Andrew Goodwin also stated that the narrative would be open for audience interpretation. A sense of mystery should lie in it. Remembering this, we decided to add a character into our narrative which will leave our audience unsure. He needed to appear as if dead, the use of make-up allowed us to achieve this with ease. This ghostly figure of a character is shown "haunting" his ex girlfriend. In order to achieve this we needed to film good points of the relationship, and juxtapose them with images of this characters haunting. The audience will be left deciding how to take this when watching the video, we wanted to create the questions "is this ghostly figure a memory of a previous relationship, his appearence showing the death of the couple?" and/or "did the ghostly figure physically die, and is haunting the female character as his love is eternal, unlike his life?"

  Steve Archer beieved band members should be shown for similar amounts of time throughout the video so that each individual is seen, not just the lead singer. With this in mind to influence our media video, A clear contrast appears between the image of the couple happy, and the image of the couple after the "death" of the relationship were shown throughout the performance of the band. The girl is shown to not react to the male caracter at all, making us think that he is non existent to her anymore. This cold reaction makes the audience wonder what happened for the narrative to end up this way, with one person ignoring the other.

 Although music promo’s has many typical conventions, each different genre has various different elements which are most likely to appear.  Throughout the process of creating our music promo, we have used illustration, amplification and some disjuncture. 

 Illustration: 

This has been used by showing the breaking up of love. Illustration is the simplest type of video to create, due to the only challenge being demonstrating the literal meaning of the lyrics within the song. The song describes a male character feeling lost in the world, we show this male character looking very similar to a ghost in order to clearly show his "lost soul". We also show the anger inside the character which is demonstrated to the audience by the aggressive manner which the vocalist sings. Lots of passion and anger is shown through his voice, making the audience feel the emotion by seeing this frustration on our actors face.

 Amplification: 

 This usually means some more information being added in order to promote the illustration. Although the break up of love is clearly shown, it is unclear why. We as a group, decided to allow the audience members to decide why this has occurred within the video and form their own opinions and views on the promo.

 Disjuncture:

  This is when the visual has no meaning with the lyrics or the song. Showing the male character to be dead, had no mention throughout the song, however we decided it could make our video be viewed by the audience in a completely different way that it would be originally viewed. The shock of seeing the male character in this way, will make the audience even more intrigued in the visual aspect of our narrative side to our promo.

  An important aspect of the indie genre to remember is the familiarising of the band members. In order to get our audience to make a strong emotional connection with our band, each member needs to be shown in full, and have various camera shots of each of them in order to clearly show them.

 Typical conventions of a digipak:

http://prezi.com/rfg_zwkzcsgv/digipak-conventions/

 Influentional Band's Existing Digipak:

 The Script have created a digipak where repetition is used. The two hands have been used shown in various emotive poses however the theme runs throughout my showing these hands as the front and the back cover of the promotional package. In order to make ours as successful as The Scripts, a continuous theme throughout the pannels of our digipak needs to occur, this will allow the audience to familiar the style of the band and also becomes interesting to look at.

 We have managed to successfully stick to a theme when creating our digipak.

All of the text appearing on our digipak is white. This fits with the writing appearing on the base drum which our band used when filming. In order for the digipak to look appealing, a continuous colour theme needed to be stuck to in order for each pannel to relate to the other. The front cover of our digipak is a powerful shot of the band, each displaying a typical indie stance (hands hanging in pockets) and the people are shown brightly, with the background looking dark in the monochrome format we decided upon. The back of the digipak is the narrative of our music promo. We wanted to do this to show that there is more than first thought of the band, and a narrative behind the main new song "I Never Get Lost, Except By Your Side."

 The other pannels are also shown with a monochrome background and bright foreground image which demands the audience's attention. We wanted to show the intruments as well as the people within the band, as after all they should be famous for their talent as well as their image. In order to include all the typical conventions of a digipak, we included performance images, images of an instrument appearing on its own, the narrative and the band. In order to make it look realistic we wanted to make sure our attention to detail was of a high standard. The barcode was added in order to ensure that the product could appear professional. On the back cover, we also added the picture of the house, showing that the track is one that will "raise the roof", appealing with such slang will attract our modern student life target market to buy the album.

 When looking back at The Script

A typical staggered shot of the existing band features within the digipak, this is a typical convention of a digipak. Many indie bands are shown to appear in an external location. The Script here are appearing in a field with the sun on their face, showing them to be in colour with only black clothing worn. The idea of putting an indie band into a location such as this, influenced to try out the new idea on 4kicks. In order to do this, we needed to use photoshop and add the corn field as a background to an existing photograph of the band which was took on filming day. At first we were going to use this image as one picture in our digipak, however the theme didn't mean with the digipak as we opted for a monochrome background with foreground elements being put into colour. This image didn't fit into that category and so we did an additional package and attempted to make a front cover of a magazine to see how the image would look when fully edited.

 Unfortunately, the existing picture didn't look asthetically pleasing, the band looked like they were placed in the field afterwards instead of being shot in the field properly. This showed photo shop to not be the appropriate editing programme to use. Although we did everything we should have to make the image work, it ended up letting us down as we had much higher hopes for the image.

Knowing this, we wanted to look into other ideas of magazine adverts

 The Smiths are also a pre-existing band who have also wanted to stick to the theme of black and white/monochrome within their magazine advert. Although the image has no colour, each band member is seen clearly. No shadows cover a part of them and it is an image which is easy to notice due to the bright lighting on each of their faces.

 We took this as an influencing image for when making our magazine advert as we wanted to successfully use monochrome.

 Like "The Smiths" we also wanted to add a font which is brightly coloured so that the name of the band stands out against the black and white background. Our first attempt of a magazine advert took us a long time to produce due to us being fairly unfamiliar with potoshop, and unaware of the highlg complex things we were able to produce. The lighting in this shot appears extremely unprofessional, the band can barely be seen and the only part of the picture which stands out is the lead singers t shirt, due to the intensity of it being the only white pieces of clothing withn the shot. The appearence of each band member isn't visable, and without recognising faces with names, the band would struggle to sell many records as no audience members would be drawn in by this image. It isn't an eye catchy image with bright colours which will demand our audience's attention, but appears dark and unexciting to people who are unfamiliar with the band. This negative vibe is what we need to stay away from if hoping to promote and sell the band successfully.

 Our final Magazine Advert:

 

  This magazine advert has been created to be eye catchy to our potenial audience. The bright faces of the band stand out a lot on the dark monochrome background, allowing the audience to easily recognise the band for future purposes. The white text has been kept as a theme throughout the promotional packaging, and we have given the band two different star ratings. This makes our audience think that professional music promoters think their music is also very good, persuading potential customers to buy their music after getting good responses. We would put this magazine advertisement in "Q" magazine in order to show the band off to the largest amount of people targetting our potential market. They could also put this magazine advertisement and upload it on their website as a vertual ad. This will help to target even more potential consumers of "4kicks".  

 

 With all of this in mind we wanted all of our products to work well when looking at them together as a full promotional package.

 Both our ancillary texts consist of monochrome backgrounds, leaving the over all look appearing dark, however each member of the band clearly visible. When thinking about Steve Archer's theory of music video's, each band member is equal to another, so one pannel of the digipak is devoted to each band member in order to get the target market to familiarise themselves with the faces of the band, attaching to each of them, not just the lead singer.

 Intense lighting on the band on the main cover of boh the digipak and magazine article occurs. The white font is used throughout our ancillary tasks in order to make them relate to each other. They also both show the conventional indie genre location of an urban background, suggesting low social class and self production, like many other indie bands. The only unconventional aspect added to our digipak which doesn't relate to the indie genre, is the image of the male character appearing as a ghost. This would be seen as a "rock" genre element to add, due to their regular mention of death.