1) In What Ways Do Your Media Products Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

When we were creating our three products, we researched real media texts to understand the conventions and apply them to our own. We made sure to comply to certain conventions but went against some across our music video, album digipack and website.

Music Video:

We researched conventions of music videos in general as well as conventions of our genre: indie-pop. One convention of music videos are that they are usually based around performance, narrative or concept. For our music video, it's mainly performance based with some narrative to it, giving it some depth and allowing the audience to relate to it in some way.

Visually, we wanted the music video to look like a real one, so we researched what the conventions are. Some music videos we looked at the most are:

Girls by The 1975

Awkward by San Cisco

Love Is On The Radio by McFly

When looking for the conventions, we made sure to follow Andrew Goodwin's theory for music videos which stated that music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. If our music video had the genre conventions then it would be easily recognised by the genre fans, so they could enjoy it and relate to it.

Genre Conventions:

Most indie-pop bands tend to have the ideal that their music videos have to be unique and different, leaving an impact on the audience. We wanted to conform to the general music video convention of the authentic band shots as the music videos we took inspiration had these shots included. For example:

• Performance Shot(wide shot of band)

Left: The 1975                                                                                         Right: Our Band

This wide shot of the band is used to establish the roles of each member in the band, especially since our band is still just debuting. This allows the audience to become familiar with the band as well as their personalities shown through the performance. Also performance shots generally attract fans to want to see the artist perform live,therefore buying the tickets to see them live.

• Beauty/Money Shots

Fred Astaire - San Cisco

Jacob - Our Music Video

By using beauty shots, we are packaging the artist in an appealing way for the audience to consume. As Richard Dyer stated, an artist has to be packaged well and sold to the audience.  Close ups are used to attract the audience as well; as Goodwin said, record labels need close ups to gratify the audience's expectations, which in our case are innocent but clear and direct. This gives an identity for the audience to become familiar with and hold on to.

• Instrument Close Ups

Awkward - San Cisco

Audrey playing guitar

Like the Awkward video, they started off with a close up of the guitar being played, which is quite conventional. Close ups also give a variation in shot types, keeping the audience engaged and making it more interesting.

• As well as individual band shots

Top: Girls - The 1975       Bottom: Audrey in our MV

These shots are also conventional of the indie genre. We needed shots of each member to establish what role they play and what their personalities are like. Also since we have a multiracial band, close ups of each band member would help reach a wider audience as more  people can relate to the band and possibly aspire to be like the members.

Conventions We Challenged/Developed:

• Same Race Male Band

As you can see our band consists of 2 females and 2 males, breaking the all-male indie band convention. Despite this, there are some that break that convention. For example, 'Paramore' and Florence and The Machine' both have females lead singers in their bands. However, we went against the genre stereotype that females sing over playing the instruments.

Also in our band, we have a variety of ethnic backgrounds, representing a large part of the British audience. This appeals to audience of different races as they can relate to the different band members. This is also a representation of Britain itself, as a multicultural society.

Intertexual References

Intertexuality is a significant theme in our music video, since we have a lot of references in it. Most of our music video consists of our narrative scenes which are told in different eras. For the audience to understand the references we've made in the different eras, we had to pick out well-known iconography.
Below is a prezi I made explaining the intertexual references of our eras:

Having so many specific references would make the audience want to watch it over and over, in order to understand them all. Once they have understood the references they could share and discuss it with their friends, gratifying their entertainment and social interactions,  while exploiting the artist. We made sure that the references we used would be recognised by our audience aged 16-25 years old, however these references are iconic so a wider demographic may understand too. Without the references, the audience wouldn't understand the meaning of our music video; love is the same no matter what era.

We got the idea of filling our music video with references from Iggy Azalea's 'Fancy' music video:

                    Left: Clueless Screenshot                                                   Right: Iggy Azalea's 'Fancy' Screenshot

Her video references the popular film 'Clueless', as pictured above. This appeals to her audience of 16-25 year olds, as they would understand the references. The link between the song and the film attracts a wider audience who, if they enjoy both the film and the song, will like the music video and could trigger some nostalgia of the film.

Relationship between Lyric and Visual

As Andrew Goodwin's theory on music videos imply, there should be some sort of relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. Here are some examples we took inspiration from:

Lyrics: 'But she can't be what you need if she's 17'

In The 1975's music video for 'Girls', a girl blows her '17th birthday cake' at the time that lyrics end.

Lyrics: 'Stick figures silicon barbie doll'

In Meghan Trainor's music video for 'All About The Bass', they act out stick figurines for that line, emphasising the falseness of the stick figurines.

From these examples, we made our own lyric-visual links in our music video:

Lyrics: 'She took my arm, I don't know how it happened'

In the gif above, Juliette takes Jacob's hand and to express the lyrics clearly, Jacob directly addresses the camera with a confused look, showing he didn't know how it happened.

Editing

Carol Vernallis states that editing may match the music phrases or the beat. For our music video, we conform to her theory and cut to the beat for all the narrative scenes. However to have some variety, during the band scenes, we use fast-paced editing, breaking the convention.

We also use match-on-actions for the narrative scenes as we thought it was appropriate to tell a story, breaking another convention of music videos. Though for the performance scenes, we did not worry about match-on-actions as it wouldn't be breaking continuity of the sequence.

Album Digipak:

Website: