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

When creating my media product I realised that certain aspects of my music video would have to be similar to other established music videos in order to target the audience that my product is intended.

In order to do this I conducted research into other media products of a similar genre to my own. One of my main influences was Ed Sheeran and his music video for The A Team and his video for Bloodstream. This was because his videos focus purely on narrative, and hold a deep meaning and subtext.

For my own media product to have the same effect as my style model, I had to use similar conventions which would allow my music video to be professional and recognisable to the target audience, while also having a deep, thought provoking subtext that is unique to my product.

My music video challenges the conventions of ordinary media products by being based on narrative more than the musical artist performing the song. As some audiences could find the concept of a narrative based music video to be a lot more like watching a movie, as it is something that requires your attention. Where as average music video's don't require much of the audiences attention and therefore are more commonly enjoyed, however I wanted to cater to my niche audience and decided that the song which I have chosen is perfectly suitable to the style of video I have decided to make.

These are the videos I used as references, the one to the right is The A Team and the one below is Bloodstream. I used certain aspects from each videos, for example I decided to have some scenes in my video black and white, as they are in The A Team. However i also used dark, and poorly lit scenes, like in Bloodstream. I have chosen to do this because the scenes empathise the emotions of my characters and also represent memories of how things once where. I developed this by having select scenes which would be memories (These are the black and white ones) and others which show how things are now. (These are the dimly lit scenes)


I wanted my video to seem ammeter and almost like it was lots of home videos pieced together, rather than the more staged video's that are more commonly seen on music channels. I decided to do this as my characters are portraying a story of their lives and I wanted it to be realistic and therefore I didn't use a tripod much, I used a hand held camera which gave my video a sort of rustic feel to it.

I believe that my music video challenges the conventions but still I have developed my used of conventions also. For example I have used camera angles that i know will provoke an emotional response from my audience. I used close ups on facial expressions and establishing shots to show the location of filming. I've also used different angles, using low shots to record the feet of the characters running and I've even used a time lapse of the sky to establish what time of day it was.

2. How effective is the combination of you main tasks and ancillary tasks?

3. How have you learned from you audience feedback?

 

4. How did you use media tech in construction, planning and evaluation stages?

Ancillary Task - Magazine Advert

This is my magazine advert for my digipak. As you can see from the image I have chosen to have rather dark  house colours, this is because I really like the idea of using silhouettes and creating them myself as I have demonstrated in previous posts. 
Also the genre of my Music Video is a sub-genre of Indie music and from research I noted that indie music is all about personality and individuality, which is what I wanted my advert to have. While also having its own sense of character 

The Main Cover Image is a tiled college of the musical artists face. I wanted to use this because I thought it was a quite unique idea and would draw in an audiences attention. I have then placed three silhouettes on to of the main image, the first being the large tree. Second the three birds and thirdly the couple who're holding hands.

I chose to place the silhouettes on top of the background image because I believe it gives my advert a sense of character and moves away from the main conventions of other magazine advertisements.

The text on my advert is minimal and this is because I wanted the audience to focus mainly on the images. The main head of the advert is the artists name in a bold font with a white outline to make it stand out that much more. The other text is a basic 'OUT NOW' announcement and the name of the album/digipak. There is also a small three word review type quote at the foot of the page and an RSS scan which allowed me to incorporate social media without it being all over the page.

My Production company name is also in the left corner of the header of the page, its of a low opacity as I didn't want it to stand out to much and take attention away from the actual advertisement.

People silhouette cont...

This is the progression of editing the original image (top) and then creating a silhouette by applying a colour overlay and then I added an additional blur to the image to minimise the affect of jagged edges.

Digipak editing cont...

This is a photograph I have taken to use as a silhouette on my Digipak and advertisement. Using photoshop I will cut out all of the background and use a colour overly to gain the silhouette affect.