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

Before answering this question i thought it would be a good idea to look at the most common conventions of both music videos and pop.

What are conventions?
-They are ingredients that you would expect to find/see in a music video, even though these can vary between different genres. For example in a rock song you would expect to see the band usually wearing all black, with piercings/tattoos and playing somewhere at a gig but on the other hand in a pop song you would expect to see a more narrative video where the video matches the lyrics of the song, and usually the main theme of a pop song would be romance.

Music video:

Conventions of a music video:
-The conventions of a music video vary depending on the genre of the music. However some general conventions that appear in most genres are:

• The artist/band is shown performing
• The lyrics of the song influence what is shown in the video
• The pace of the editing fits with the pace of the music
• The codes of dress reflect the mood of the song

Camera Shots:
-Music videos tend to include a range of shots for example long shots, mid shots and close up's. These are used to create emphasis on the artist, locations and emotions. Also close up's are used not only to show emotions but to reflect the words of the song with the movements of the lip from the artist.
Camera Movements:
-Camera movements in a music video are used to follow and track the artist or band and sometimes even follow the dancers. To do these they include tilts, pans, tracking and crane shots.
Mise-En-Scene:
- This refers to the arrangement of performers and props on stage or in a scene for a music video. Mise-en-scene puts an importance on the representation of something. A music video that portrays this well is 'Neyo-Mad', as this mise-en-scene involves him walking down a road alone, being in an isolated room. This reflects the isolation from his lover. Also the props, and the colour of the clothing used represent the down mood of the song. Similarly, the lighting is kept very dark as it is black and white; and this connotes the angry, depressed mood that the artist feels in this video.
Editing:
-The predominant editing technique used in a music video are jump cuts and this is to allow a sudden change from one scene to another and vice versa. Also transitions such as fades and dissolves are very common in music videos as they create a different effect to cuts, and can also match the mood of the song.
Costume:
-This goes with the scene in the song, and reflects the genre and sometimes even the artist, for example in 'Katy Perry - Last Friday Night' she is shown to wear a bright neon crop top and bright neon green shorts, and this reflects her personality as she is known to be an influential artist. Costume is an important factor because it has an influence on how the viewers will dress because they use some of the celebrities they see in music videos as role models.
Colour:
- Colours are used in a song to set the mood of the song through creating an atmosphere. For example in rock songs such as Kings Of Leon darker colours like blacks are used whereas in pop and hip-hop videos there tends to be brighter colours used more.

Conventions of Pop Music Videos:

Camera Shots:
- Long shots, close up's and extreme close up's are constantly used, as close up's are usually used in music videos as it puts emphasis on the artist or bands face for promotional reasons and their lips to show lip syncing.
Camera Movements:
-Pan's, dolly tracking shots, crane shots and tilts are used to follow the movements of the singer/band or even the dancers if they play an important role in the music video.
Editing:
- Jump cuts are the most commonly used as it's purpose is to jump from a scene of the location to the artist to the instruments(if any are used) and vice versa. Reaction shots are used with music video's with narrative as it expresses the relationship between two or more people. The pace of the editing is always in sync with the beat of the track.
Mise-en-scene:
-This is associated to the inter-textual link of the music video, therefore it depends on the representation that is shown in the video.
Lighting:
-Extreme artificial lighting is the most common type of lighting used in pop music videos, as this is used to help enhance the look of the artist or the band through making them seem ageless and this is commonly used in music videos where the artist/dancers are shown performing on stage. Lighting also enhances the atmosphere as it can be used to give a bright and upbeat feel particularly in dance music videos or a dark and eerie feel which is used more commonly in rock music videos.
Props:

-These are essential in music videos as they can highlight the importance of the artist or band, or they might not be used at all which could help show the importance of not having any props as this allows the audience to focus more onto the singer.
Costume:
-These reflect the genre of the music and the style of the artist, therefore costumers are essential because they complement the artist and the audience are more likely to watch the music video if the artist is portrayed positively.
Colour:
-Colour represents the mood of the song, for example bright colours are used in feel good pop songs, and more red colours are used in pop songs when the theme is romance.
Sound:
-Usually the sound is the music and the vocals of the artist; however some music videos are similar to short films with acting, therefore in these clips there are various sounds which can be heard such as non diagetic and diagetic sounds.

When we looked into what conventions music videos had, and what are the most common conventions of pop music videos the ones that we felt would help to promote the artist more successfully were:

• Costume - we wanted to show that our main female actor was just like any other modern teenager, and to do this we dressed her in casual clothes.

We chose to dress the female in a white top as this implies her innocence and purity, and we also wanted her to wear a black jacket over the top which implies dark depressed and felt that these two both contrasted with each other and gave the audience the idea that there are two completely different sides to her. We also wanted her to wear just some denim jeans as they matched the outfit and she looked like a modern teenager which is what we wanted to portray her like.

Throughout the video we kept what the female was wearing pretty much the same as we wanted to keep her portrayal the same throughout. Even though throughout when things were going wrong for the female we decided to have her wearing a black jacket so that it implied dark, something was about to happen and you can see this in the screen shot above as the female is shown with another male without realising that her boyfriend is watching everything that is going on.

In this screen shot from the music video we see the female wearing all white, and at this point in the video she knows what she has done is wrong and realises that what she used to have she may never get back. We wanted her to particularly to wear all white in this scene as the location was all quite plain and pastel colours which set the mood of this part of the song.

 Although we didn't use the typical conventions for costume in a pop music video, we felt that the costume's used help promote the artist in a positive way, and we challenged the typical conventions.

•  Location - As there are no typical conventions of where a pop music video is set, we decided on a few different locations to highlight the females isolation from her ex lovers as the theme of the song was love and heartbreak.

We chose a deserted lane for the female to walk down at the start of the video, which she also again walks down at the end of the video and we chose to do this because it then looked like the music video was an entire part in the females life. We chose a deserted lane especially for this part because we wanted the audience to focus just on the female and no-one else, and deserted would highlight her isolation from the world and society. It also gives the connotations of dark and something about to happen.

We also chose a park for the female and one male for the love triangle scene and this is the point in the video where the female realises where she has gone wrong, and we chose to have them sat on the bench which you can see on the left of this image as this was on the bank of a river so we thought that it looked quite casual but romantic at the same time.

For the video that we show right at the start of the music video showing past memories of her and her ex, we chose to have it near the tree which you can see on the right of the photo and i chose this because i thought all the leaves that had fallen off the tree would look good with them having fun and throwing leaves at each other which shows the closeness between the two lovers.

When the female is looking out of the window in her house waiting for her ex to come even though she knows deep down he probably isn't going to come, we see the room is red and this implies love and romance something in the females life isn't going well.

We also chose a beach location, as this highlighted the females isolation which was evident to the audience. We chose a part of the beach which was deserted as this worked well, even though on the other hand we could have shown her walking down a busy part of the beach and people walked into her as they couldn't see she was there, again this is showing her isolation from society.

One of the last locations that we chose to show the female at home in her room, and we chose this room in particular because it was white or pastel colours. In this scene we showed the female struggling to get out of bed now that she is alone and to do this we added fades and dissolves onto the top of the clip so that they all over lapped each other.

We wanted to show a variety of locations because all of these showed the female alone, which highlights her isolation from her lover and the audience can see that no matter where the female goes she is always going to be alone, so although this is what happens to some teenagers at some point in their life it also shows a message to them as to what can happen if they ever get into the same situation that our female did.

• Theme - When we watched music videos from our chosen genre and listened closely to the lyrics we found that the recurring them of pop music video's was romance, and this is something that happens daily in everyone life, and this was a reason why we chose the theme for our music video because I felt that a lot of people would be able to appeal to the song, and the situation that the female was in the music video, a lot of our target audience would be also able to appeal to that as well.
• Target audience - When watching pop music videos and researching our chosen genre on sites like 'Bauer Media', we thought that the genre pop would appeal to a very wide audience but in particular it would appeal to more people in the age category 16-34 and the vast majority of the audience are ABC1 demographic. We took this into consideration and decided that our target audience would be from the ages 16-34 as this would appeal to a large range of people.
  
  Music videos that influenced us to give us ideas for our own, that would make it unique:
  
  

  Keri Hilson - Knock You Down

- Two males squaring up to each other, both fighting over the female(love triangle)

Cher Lloyd - Want You Back

- Egg timer

- Photos show the past memories of her and her ex

NSync - Gone

- Party Scene

Neyo - Mad

- Black and White
- Arguing between a couple in a relationship
- Something terrible happens to threaten their relationship

Beyonce - Broken Hearted Girl

- Beach(isolated)

- Black and white

- Footprints in the sand

- Relationship break up

- Female narrative/performance

- Sepia effect - old memories

Leona Lewis - Run

- Isolated field

- Isolated away from other people throughout

-mainly performance

- narrative told through the lyrics

Rihanna - California King Bed

- Focused on the female artist 
- Isolated location
- Fade from one clip to another, they symbolise memories fading away, something that you will never get back again.
- Black and white
- Expression - Close up's
- Relationship problems
- The female was wearing all white, something which connotes her purity and innocence

All these videos, have a mix of narrative/performance ratio and when we looked more deeply into the romance genre and how much of each is shown in romance music videos, we saw that the artist is shown performing the song but also the story behind the video is where the artist/singer is telling the narrative aspect of the video. For example, Rihanna - California King Bed shows the main female artist Rihanna performing throughout the song but also jumps to the narrative part of the song where she is shown with the male, and with the help of the lyrics the audience is able to understand the story behind the song more deeply.
During my research it became clear that the main conventions of romance videos were:
 - that they included the main artist in both the narrative and performance 
 - its more performance ratio than narrative, which we challenged because we had more narrative ratio in our video than performance as we wanted the audience to understand what the whole song was about.

Digipak:

A digipak is a style of CD or DVD packaging that promotes the artist. When we looked at digipaks from the romance genre, we decided to follow with the conventions that promoted the artists more positively.

What are conventions of a digipak?

Front cover:
Image of the main artist/band
Artist/band's name
Album name

Inside panels:
Lyrics
Back catalogue
Artist information
''With thanks to''
Tour dates/competitions - usually a freebie/cards

Spine:
Name of the song
Name of the artist
Record company
Logo

Back cover:
Writers&Producers(basic song information)
Track listing
Bar code
Background image
Record Label
Copyright information
Where it's made?

Conventions of a pop digipak:

Front cover:

Bright colours
Different fonts used, but all keep within the theme of the digipak

Mid shot of the artist

Plain background

Features the artist

Close up shots

Matches the personality of the artist

Props shown link back to the genre of the song

Simple

Feminine colour scheme, for example pink or red

Attracts both genders

Vague idea about what music to expect

Back cover:

Long shot of the artist

Track listing

Record company logo

Bar code, to make it look professional

Colour scheme is kept the same throughout the digipak

Copyright information

Bright colours

When researching different digipaks from our chosen genre the ones that we looked at and inspired us, and helped us chose what we would need to include in our digipak are:

Cheryl Cole - Messy Little Raindrops:

The front cover for this follows the conventions for pop as the colours are all bright and vibrant. The title is in font that looks like it has been written instead of typed which gives the cover a more personal feel. As the title and the image take up about half of the cover each it looks balanced. The edit that is used on the female to make her looks like shes moving away, it symbolises like a raindrop running down the cover. The name of the artist is more subtle and in the corner so that it doesn't take away any focus from the image of the artist and therefore the audience is able to focus more onto her. The plain black and white background help to emphasise everything that is on the cover, as if it was a dark background it wouldn't look as good, and wouldn't meet the conventions of pop.

The back cover for this album isn't traditionally what you would on a pop album because there is no image of the artist, but instead of an image they have the signature from the artist which again is giving the album a more personal feel and the audience can feel closer to her. The background is the colours of a sunset which give the album a more calming feel and this contrasts to the songs on the album because they are all emotional romantic songs from the artist's real situation. The track listing is written in a simple font that is easy for the readers to read and understand, and all the copyright information and artist information is on the right hand side out of the way of the stuff that the audience want to see on the album. The bar code is furthest away from the 'Cheryl Cole' writing so that it has less chance of taking away focus from this.

Jls - Jukebox:

The front cover of this album includes all four members of the band, and this automatically allows the audience to see exactly who is in the band. The band's name is written in large white font across the centre of the image which is something that the audience would expect to see on a digipak that includes the band members. Having the album name just underneath this written in black simple font makes it easy to read and also the colours behind 'Jukebox' each represent a band member as they each have their own colour which is something quite significant and unique to this band and again this makes them stand out against all other boy bands in the industry. The background image is a fantasy abstract building which you see in their video 'Eyes Wide Shut' which also includes the rapper Tinie Tempah. I think this is a unique idea, because although the song doesn't include on this album the audience will instantly recognise the background and this is brand identity.

This is the back cover, and it automatically is different from the others because it doesn't include a picture of the band on the back, which is different and challenging the conventions of pop. There is an image on the back though and it is taken again from the video 'Eyes Wide Shut'. This makes the album stand out from all others in the pop genre because it challenges more conventions. The track listing is set out differently, as it is all in one block in the centre of the cover compared to a list down the side. The important copyright information, record company logo and information and the bar code are all the bottom of the cover so that it meets the conventions of pop and doesn't take away any focus from anything else on the cover.

The Script - Science and Faith: 

The front cover of The Script album is something quite unique and different because we see just one plain image of two hands grasped together and this could symbolise the tight friendship that the band have. The use of the one image lets the audience focus onto that only instead of lots of different images which could be quite confusing. The title is written in simple black font at the top of the cover which allows the reader to easily read this. The back cover for this album is two hands facing and touching each other, and this could imply that the band members help each other and support each other when they need it, which shows the audience they are a popular band with their target audience. The track listing is in slighting smaller font and is placed on the bottom right of the cover away from the image so that it doesn't take away any focus from the image. Even though this album isn't from my chosen genre i thought it would be a good one to analyse and compare with my genre because you can easily see the difference between different genres and how they all promote their artists.

We chose to have this image of the female on the front of our digipak because it showed the facial expression clearly and therefore the audience can identify with her. This was following the conventions of pop digipaks because we made sure the audience was able to see her facial expression clearly. We chose to have the writing 'On My Own' in simple black font that the audience would be able to read easily, and although black isn't keeping with the pop we challenged this as we wanted two colours that both contrasted with each other so that they stood out against each other, which is why we placed the 'Alice Hare' writing in red and in font that looked like she had written it herself. This was to create a more personal feel on the digipak and the red drew the readers eye into the image. We didn't include anything else on this as we felt anything else took the focus away from the female and it was un-needed.

On the inside panel we chose to have footprints in the sand as the background image as this was something that we took the idea from the video, because we see the female walking along the beach, and they show something that used to be there but isn't there anymore and this is why we chose to edit pictures of her and her ex onto the footprints to show that she left them behind in the past and is moving on from them something in which keeps the theme of romance evident throughout. To match the conventions of pop we chose to include the lyrics down the left hand side, and we chose white colouring for this as it allowed it to stand out against the background and it also showed the connotations of purity and innocence something in which we tried to portray the female as throughout the video. 

 
 On the right inside panel we chose to include a simple picture of the female. We chose a plain background for this so she stood out more and we didn't have her holding any props as we wanted the audience to focus on the female and nothing else. The clothing that she is shown in this image is what she wears at the start of the video, the white top connotes purity and innocence whereas the denim jeans show her natural side, and that there are two sides to every person something in which the audience see is true for this female in the video.

 On the back cover we chose to take a screen shot of the female walking down the path, which you see at the start and the end of the video and this shows that the video is like a circle of time in the females life. We had her walking away from the camera as this is showing that she is walking away from everything and we chose to have this particular image on the back as this symbolises the end. We kept with the conventions for pop and only included 3 different songs on the album, and we placed all the information like the record company, artist information, track information at the bottom so that it didn't take away any focus from the image and it looked professional.

Magazine Advert

Essentially a magazine advert is a slot that will appear within a magazine advertising the release of a new album that is due to be released. The album cover and the magazine for the album are normally either the same image or from the same photo shoot, and this is to help the audience make a visual connection between the two.

Conventions of a magazine advert:

• The release date
• Place of purchase
• Image of the digipak cover/logo/band symbol/prominent image
• Artist's name
• Record label
• Reviews
• Genre of the band reflected in text/colour/font/images
• Information about what is included in the digipak
• Tour information
• Use of new media
• Persuasive/eye catching text or imagery
• An image of the artist, usually a close up or long shot
• Well known songs that have already been released that feature on the album, that the audience will be familiar too.

This was the advert for JLS's single 'Beat Again'. The colour scheme that it again unique to this band is shown on the advert, when each of the band members have their own unique colour and these colours are evident in the title of the band which is at the top of the advert to let the audience know that the whole advert is about them. Placing the name of the band in colour makes it stand out against the black background and is different to other pop adverts because usually the fonts just have one colour for the title. Having the release date at the bottom lets the audience see everything else first to get them excited and then they see when it is released so they will want to go and buy it. Placing the colour of each band member behind them allows them to stand out against the black background as they are wearing black. Overall i think this advert matches many conventions of pop and promotes the band successfully.

Placing the female artist on the right hand side of the advert with her facing away allows the audience to see one side of her face and because she is lit from the front they can clearly see her facial expression. Again the 'Cheryl Cole' writing is in a font that looks like it has been written by her which creates a more personal feel to it, and the name of the single is subtle but in the same colour but different font underneath as it isn't as important as the artists name but when they see the name the next thing they see is the title. Overall I think this advert matches many of the pop conventions as it promotes the artist successfully.
This advert is for Katy Perry's album 'Teenage Dream'. Just firstly glancing at the image you can see that its use of bright colours make it stand out well, and the use of the fantasy or surreal as a background match the theme of fantasy and sweets that she showed on the album cover. The way that she is positioned suggests that she is showing who she is to the audience, someone that is a confident person and this reflects in her music. The 'Katy Perry' writing is again the same used on the album cover keeping brand identity so therefore the audience can create a visual image between the two. 'Featuring Teenage Dream and California Gurls' are both singles that reached high in the UK charts so therefore the audience already know some well known songs, and showing the release date is keeping with the pop conventions. Overall I think this advert matches many of the pop conventions and because of this it promotes the artist well.
My Magazine Advert

For our advert we used the same image that was the front cover for our digipak, so that the audience was able to make a visual connection between our products and was keeping brand identity. We also used the same font type for the album name and the artists name, the 'Alice Hare' writing was in a font that made it look like she had written it and this was to create a more personal feel to the advert and also was in red colouring so that it attracted the audience's eye into the advert and then we had a simple font for the 'On My Own' writing so it contrasted with the writing. Although the black colouring isn't a pop convention we challenged this as we wanted two different colours that contrasted with each other and found that the best two colours for this was red and black. As our target audience were known for liking to keep up to date with the latest celebrity gossip and liked talking to their friends on social networking sites, we felt the best place to also advertise our product was on 'Facebook' and 'Twitter' as these proved to be the most popular social networking sites when we did our target audience questionnaire. Also we put a website address that the audience could go on if they wanted to find out any more information about the artist or new releases as they are more likely to spend time on the Internet. Also our target audience liked keeping up to date with the latest fashion trends and keep up to date with the latest celebrity gossip and to do this they read magazines such as 'Heat' and 'Ok' and we decided the most popular magazine was 'Heat' and this is why we decided to write a review from this magazine as this would make more readers want to watch it if their favourite magazine had rated it well, and we then also chose to include star ratings as they give an idea as to how good other people have rated the song, because if it is a high number of stars then they have more chance of wanting to buy the song, whereas if it was a lower number of stars they would have less chance to want to watch it and this is something that we didn't see a lot on pop magazine adverts but we thought it would work well on ours, and we matched the conventions having the magazine review as this attracts more people to buy our product.

Overall, throughout each of our products we have met, developed and challenged pop conventions.

Music video:

Met:

- We used a variety of camera shots, including close up's so that the audience can clearly see the females facial expression and we used long shots to highlight the females isolation.

This screen shot is showing a close up of the females face and we did this so that it allowed the audience to see her facial expression clearly. At this point in the music video the female is stood at her window waiting for her ex to come back to her but he never does

We chose a long shot for this image because it allowed the audience to see how isolated the female was on her own now, and the best location to highlight her isolation was an empty beach because you could see for miles and there was no-one else around it was just her

- We used more bright colours which is something that the audience would expect to see in a pop video instead of black/dark clothing which is associated with rock songs.

- Locations that we used are typical ones that you would expect to see in pop songs as you don't see the singer performing on stage at a gig somewhere, also the locations are stereotypical of romantic locations as this was the main theme of the song.

- When the couple were at the party and the part when the male broke up with her, we chose to use a reaction shot here so that the audience could see both sides of the break up and not just one.

Developed:

- On some of the pop videos that we saw, the past memories were shown in black and white, and whereas we thought that the audience would expect that too much we decided to have our past memories bit in a sepia effect as this made the whole clip look older. Even though we did include some black and white in our video over the clip of the couple having fun at the start before everything went wrong.

We chose to have black and white for this clip because we felt that it matched the mood at the start of the song better than what any other effect did. We included a time scale in the top right corner of the clip because we wanted the audience to feel that memories can go on forever but sometimes they are cut short.

However on this clip we did chose to use a sepia effect because we felt that we already had too much black and white, and the sepia made the whole clip look older, and because of the colour this clip stood out from the rest of the video so therefore the audience remembered this clip and also because it was the turning point in the video for the female.

Challenged:

- When we watched videos from our chosen genre we saw that there was a higher performance ratio than narrative, so we challenged this and had a higher narrative ratio than performance as we wanted the audience to understand the story behind the lyrics more.

- Usually in a pop video you would expect to see two different clips for the start and the end of the video, but we challenged this and had the same one at the start and the end so that the audience got the impression that the video was a part in the females life.

 Digipak:

 Met:

- Having a image on the front cover that features the artist

- Having only the needed information on the front of the digipak and nothing that wasn't needed, as this would have made it looked cramped.
- We kept the front cover as simple as we could to keep to the conventions of pop digipaks, and included all the information on the inside panels and the back where it was needed.
- On the back cover we kept to the pop digipak conventions and included the information that was necessary for example the track listing we only included three songs as this kept to the conventions, and we included the bar code and artist/record company information to make it look professional

- On the spine we included the name of the artist and the name of the song along with the record company logo to meet the pop conventions. 

Developed:
- Not all pop digipaks included the lyrics on the album cover, and if it was it was on a handout, but we chose to place them on the inside panel, as we felt a handout would fit other genre's more appropriately than ours.

We chose to place the lyrics on top of the image with the footprints in the sand. We did this because it was a simple image and therefore the font and the colour of the lyrics would stand out and it would be clear to the audience what the lyrics say. We wanted the theme of 'white' to be evident through all our products as it implies purity and innocence something in which the female in the video is proved not to be.

Challenged:

- The font colour that we used for the name of the song wasn't a convention of pop, as they would tend to use brighter colours but because our video had two sides we chose two colours that contrasted with each other.

 

Magazine Advert:

Met:

 - Again we wanted to keep brand identity throughout our products and to achieve that on our advert we decided to have the same image as the front cover on the digipak so the audience would be able to associate each with each other
- We included reviews from magazines that our target audience enjoy reading as this would persuade them to buy our products.
- As our target audience were more social people, we thought it would be a good idea to include other ways to get more information about our artist, for example 'Facebook' and 'twitter' as this were popular social networking sites among our target audience and this was also keeping to pop conventions

Developed:
- Putting star ratings isn't something that you would typically see on a pop advert but we thought that it would fit well into ours, so we chose to put one on, and also it persuades the audience to buy our products if they see a high rating

Challenged:
- The colours that we used aren't colours that you would expect to see, but we wanted to keep brand identity evident throughout our products and this is why we challenged the typical colours that you would expect to see