Evaluation - Question 1

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


In the research and development of our music video we were very inspired by contemporary artists visually, through editing and artistic movement and performance.

Here is a brief video showing the main videos we were influenced by. The projection videos are first shown, whereby I was influenced by the likes of Emily Osment, Imogen Heap and Rihanna. These videos show the way in which different types of projection looks on the artist, and all are related to the genre and the context of the song. Below are a few images taken from our video, whereby we have used projection on to our artist to create abstract art and link to the disjuncture theme of our video. The colours are quite dark, showing the type of artist she is perceived as. The red stands out and suggests danger and abnormality in this video rather than lust or sex.

We were also heavily influenced by other visual aspects of music videos, such as Leona Lewis and Bat For Lashes. We were influenced by the setting as well as make up ideas, whereby I similarly created our own version of this.  We wanted to created an animalistic angle to this video, by setting it in the woods, whereby the artist is shot with flowers around her hair and blue artistic tears down her face, contrasting the red dress. This was used to emphasise the disjuncture and almost random, unlikely scenarios in the video.

My Digipak is conventional in the way that it is similar to artists that fall in the same genre of my respected artist, Poppy Power. Through all of my products, we intended to stick closely to the alternative genre of music the artist produces and to convey her like this. In doing so we took a very artistic approach to our music video, whereby it involved woodland scenery  to link to the animalistic nature of the lyrics), projecting images onto the artist, as well as wrapping her with fairy lights and applying extravagant makeup. I believe this follows the conventions of the alternative pop/rock artists, as the artist aim to present themselves artistically rather than as an attractive sex symbol, commonly linked to the genre of RnB. Similarly to artists like Ellie Goulding and Florence and The Machine, I created artisitic work whereby I edited my images to create a cold darker theme to the Digipak, thus linking to the theme in the music video.

Here is a video of me describing the videos that inspired our work:

Here is another brief video of me describing my Digipak and Ancillary work. I briefly mention the codes and conventions of a Digipak and Advertisement and how I went about putting these conventions into my own work.

In creating my Digipak there were several codes and conventions that I had to follow, and I became fully aware of these through research and analysing other ancillary products - some that were of a similar genre to my artist and others that were weren't.

Above are ancillary products by myself, Rihanna, Florence and the Machine and Ellie Goulding. I was definitelu able to get a sense of how an Advertisement should look and I think I conveyed this in my work. I used a similar style to Ellie Goulding and Florence and the Machine. I understand that advertisements are most successful if they are kept simple, therefore I chose to minimise my use of text and use numbers like in the advert of Florence and the Machine. I think this makes the date more prominant and lets it and out more. Conventionally, I used a close up of the artist, as well as the same image as my Digipak to link both products and let the audience know what I am promoting. I feel a close up is important as I want to show the artists face on her debut so she is more likely to be recognised and remembered. Similarly to Ellie Goulding, I have used a yellow colour scheme, as I associate the colour with light, as well as a black background to make it stand out against it. I have included a quote at the bottoms, similarly to Ellie Gouldings debut album cover, to promote the artist and suggest how good she is! In addition, I also added the two main singles that are out on this album 'Includes the hit singles' this is to help persuade the audience to buy it, as we are aware that the song the artist is more famous and recognised for is included on the album, which will entice the audience.

Above is the video I created about our use of conventions and how we followed the theories of Andrew Goodwin and Carol Vernallis.