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

Our task was to create a promotional package for an album release. In the package their needed to be a music video, advert and digipak. All three of these elements help to attract the audience and help to promote the package. For example the digipak makes the audience fell they are getting something extra that is worth investing their money into and the video adds visuals to the song. The genre we chose was indie/ indie-pop so we took inspiration from other artists of this genre and aimed to create an authentic package.

Music video

Mise-en-scene

Setting

The indie genre is often very low budget so most settings that you will see in videos will often be natural/ outdoor everyday settings. In our video we adhered to this was nearly all of our settings were outdoors. We also used the setting as a way to link the song and the video together more, the song is titles The Tide and in the song she sings about the sea and the waves. By having one of our settings as the beach it helps to create an image and link in the lyrics. Often with all music videos you will find multiple locations, we also chose to do this as it helps to keep the audience engaged.

You can see here if you compare our video to one of a similar genre that they feature a similar amount of settings. In each video this is a mixture of performance and narrative and you can see that their is a fairly equal split with the amount of settings that go with each. They also feature the same setting but at different angles or different lighting. for examples we have the performance setting although the projections change and in the other video their is an outside performance setting yet you see it from different angles. 

Costume
Our band has described themselves as ‘90s inspired’ group and we wanted this to show through in the costume. We chose to go for a vintage/ retro look for the costumes. Much like the setting we also wanted to use the costume as a way to look in with the lyrics, the song references ‘baggy jeans’ so we created this visual in the video through the costume. Indie videos typically have a very casual vibe to them so we conformed to this through our costume as we did not choose to have any extreme costumes in the video and everyone wore causal everyday clothing.

Lighting/ colour
Indie videos are often very natural and this will show through in the lighting and colours used. Indie videos will often feature very natural colours such and greens, blues, browns and yellows. However indie- pop videos will often be much more heavily lit and feature much more saturated bright colours. For our video we took inspiration from both, in settings where we were in a natural environment we simply used the natural light. However in sections such as the projections we use much more bright vibrant colours.

Performance and narrative 

In the video we used a combination of performance and narrative. The narrative that we chose to create was an amplification narrative, as there was not a strong storyline to the narrative it left it open for the audience’s interpretation although we did create some images within the video. Our narrative was more of a montage showing shots of our couple over time. For this part of the video we took inspiration from the video to the song Bridges by Broods. It is fairly typical for an indie video to feature the narrative of the couple/ love interest as it is often the theme of the song. For the performance aspect of the song we chose to only use lip syncing, we did this at the beach and also with multiple projection backgrounds. By not choosing to include instruments we subverted the typical conventions for a video as there is usually shots of the band/ instruments. However we felt that the lip syncing was appropriate and fitted best with the style of the song. Our performance and narrative is possibly one of the more unconventional aspects of the video as we did not include a band or instruments, however we did include lip syncing. The narrative was fairly conventional however this was not a clear story to the narrative that we created.

Cinematography

Not just indie music videos but in all genres you will find that the most common shot type used will be a close up or an extreme close up.  This denotes everything in the video in much more detail and helps the audience feel close to the band/ artist. In our video we stuck to this and the majority of our shots were close ups. However we did use more wide shots during some parts of the performance to show the setting, when it was relevant to the lyrics, this also makes the video more engaging for the audience as it gives them more to look at in a shot. We also made sure that we stuck to the rule of thirds or golden mean, this helped us to assure that the audience would always have something to focus on and see what is happening in the video.   

Editing

The main editing technique that is used in music videos is editing to the beat. This technique helps to connect the song and the video more as they fit together much nicer. The audience will be able to make more of a connection between the two as they will fit together.
Every cut that we made within our video was to the beat. We also made a lot of cuts as it helped to add pace to the video as the song was such an upbeat one. For example on the chorus we cut to every word as it really helped to cut out long shots that did not fit with the pace of the video. It also made the video much more engaging as it gave out audience much more to look at rather than one long take. You can see this convention used in many music videos and it is not just exclusive to the indie genre as it is such a conventional technique to use in a video. 

Inspirations/ influences

Theory

Todorov

Our video subverted Todorov’s theory as our narrative did not really feature any of this narrative stages. You could say that our narrative had a constant equilibrium, the couple in the video did not experience any upset and it was constantly the same. We chose not to feature any disruption or recognition as we felt that it would have been inappropriate for the song. The song sings about love and it is a very positive song. If we were to contradict this in the narrative then the song and video may not have fitted together as nicely. However in most indie videos it is quite conventional to find that you can apply Todorov’s theory so you could say that the narrative that we created subverted conventions.

Goodwin

Created with Padlet

This was a theory that we considered a lot during the planning process of the video. We took into consideration what sort of narrative we wanted to create. We knew that we did not want to create a disjunctive narrative as it did not fit with the convention of the genre. It was then the decision of would we like to create an illustrative or amplification narrative. Overall we felt that we had created an amplified narrative. It depicts images from the lyrics in the video and follows themes of the song such as love. However is does not create the lyrics on screen in every shot which you would expect in a illustrative narrative. After watching other indie indie-pop videos we also came to the conclusion that amplification was also the most convention narrative for the genre.

Digipak and magazine advert
The main inspiration for our digipack mostly came from the song title 'The Tide' and the lyrics referencing the sea in the song. However to make it conventional we took inspiration from other digipaks. You can see that we found packs that had a similar to ours and also the colour scheme.

Positioning and Layout

After looking at the layout of digipaks that we took inspiration from we decided on what a conventional didipak looks like. You can see that if you look at our digipack and the conventions of each panel and what is expected in each.  

You can see that once we felt we knew the basic layout conventions of a digipack that we kept to them. we felt it best to keep the digipack layout conventional otherwise the digipack simply would not have worked effectively. Also in terms of layout we placed text where we had found it to conventionally be placed, for example the title would be on the top of the front cover and lyrics would be on the inside.

Text

One of the key things to creating a conventional package was to make sure that there was synergy throughout. One of the key ways we achieved this was to make the text one each product the same.  We used the same text throughout the video, advert and digipak. We also needed to look at what texts were conventional to the genre. We found that it was mostly sans serif font what was used on digipaks and adverts as they stand out more and also appeal to a younger audience which the indie genre usually has.

Colour

The indie genre is known for its use of earth colours and yet indie-pop for its use of bright colours. So for the colours on our advert and digipak took some considering. In the end we decided to stick with the theme of the beach, so the colours we went for were blues and yellows so very earthy colours but can be made brighter. We also used colours such as white for the text and this was to help make the title stand out more and key information.

Information

We found that information is often quite minimalistic on both the advert and digipak, the information that is included will only be the key information. The digipak is often where this will mostly be seen, band information is quite common of some digipaks although we found it to not be that conventional for the indie genre so chose not to include it. The only large amounts of text that we included in the digipak was the lyrics, we felt that this worked best instead of having only blank images. We also included small bits of information on here such as the record label and other places that the song could be found. This information was then repeated on the advert, the label and where they could find the song was the key information as this was the advert so we wanted people to be able to then easily go and find the song. A release date was also key on the advert so people knew when they would be able to download the song. We also included some reviews from music magazines so people would feel that it was something worth investing in.

Images
Once we had decided the appropriate place for the images. We then needed to decide on the images that would be conventional. For the cover we knew that we would want a close up of the artists face, so when people saw the digipack they would know who's it was. We knew that we also needed to include other images of the artist, although they did not need to be a close up of the face again. We decided to place another image of the artist on the back of the didipak. This image was a long shot of the artist walking into the sea, this allowed for more of the setting to be visible on the didgipak.  


Advert

Images
We created some drafts of our music advert however the image that we used was one of the artist facing away from the camera. We got feed back on this and most people felt that the picture was quite unconventional and didn't work very well. We then went and found some music adverts we felt adhered to conventions, we found that the most effective posters were the ones that had a mid/ close up of the artist facing forwards. So we changed our image so we would be adhering to this convention and the advert would be more effective. By making the artist visible on the advert it means that the audience will straight away be able to recognise the advert rather than having to read the information. An advert is also meant to be engaging, and to be able to do this an image of your artist facing forward would be more engaging for the audience.  

Text
We used this text on the advert so that is synergised with the whole package. We also found that most music adverts use a sans serif font so that it stands out more as it is an advert. The text is also placed along the top of the advert so that it is easy to see the key information. As it is an advert you need all of the key information to be easily visible as people do not want to spend time reading through masses of text they want the key bits of information given to them directly.   
Information
With the information it was important that we gave a good amount of ratio of text to image, we didn't want the advert to be overcrowded however we needed enough information so people find out all that they need. The main thing that the advert was advertising was the album release so we made this part of information almost central along with the image. We also included positive reviews so people would feel that the album would be something worth investing their money into.