In What Ways Does Your Media Products Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

The digipak challenges conventions in some ways because it almost entirely focuses on one specific video, however, with the dedication I think it works well overall.

The music video challenges conventions of having a large amount of performance within the video. I did come across some music videos without any performance at all which I found created a lot of shock, which worked well within my video since almost the whole thing was about shocking the audience. 

I was very conscious that I didn't want the point of the video to become clear until the end of the video, and even then there is still some element of guess work. However, to achieve this I faced the problem of a weak narrative. Pop-rock video's tend to have a weak narrative, when there is a large amount of performance, because in that sort of video the emphasis is on the band and not the narrative, however with my video being the other way around, the narrative had to be strong. 

Pop-Rock albums are almost never entirely dedicated to someone in the way that mine is, however, I think the way it is done works well, and has a warm and friendly feel to it. It feels like something that a band would do for their fans. 

Technology...

Something that I used for my AS coursework as well as my A2 is InDesign: With this I created my poster and album. I didn't have any adobe software on my laptop, so I downloaded the free trial, which meant that it came with all the best features but I had a tight deadline to have everything done and saved.

The trial came with the dimensions to make a compact disk, which made everything a lot easier. Something I really liked about InDesign was the simplicity of it all, it wasn't particularly complicated or as scary as it looks which meant that there were loads of things that I could do.





Something I knew I wanted to do but wasn't sure how to do was on the CD to write the name in a circle, and have all the text going around the edge of the disk. To do this I simply googled 'writing in a circle on InDesign' and it came up with loads of tutorials and Youtube videos that I could watch which showed me everything I could do.

InDesign also allows you to edit some of the photo's in a very basic way, however I wanted to create a more professional look in my photography so I also downloaded the Photoshop trial.





Photoshop was harder to use and I spent a lot of time watching tutorials, however, once I got the hang of it I found that there were some clever things that I could do to make my photography look better and cleaner. After I had edited some of my favourite photo's I went onto a photo editing website called picmonkey.com and created a collage of all the photos. Originally this was all I was going to do, however, when I had trouble reading the writing on the poster, I went back to Photoshop and played around until I thought to turn the image black and white and turn the colours and saturation. Then going back to InDesign I added in the opaque white background and was finally happy with the result.

During that making of my music video, I also had to learn to use iMovie. I have never had to edit a video before, so I was learning new things through the whole process.














One of the first things that I had to learn to do was make the clips black and white, I knew from the start that I wanted to represent the 'past' footage in black and white and so had to work out how to do that. It turned out to be very easy on iMovie, which made the process of editing a lot easier.

I also learnt how to adjust the speed of a clip, enabling slow motion shots. I really liked the simplicity of iMovie, I had always thought that editing a video would be a lot harder, but once I had learnt some of the keyboard shortcuts the whole thing became a lot easier and I was able to edit a lot faster, therefore getting more done.




I also used website blogger.com to present my research and final products. I was vaguely aware of blogger and how it's used, however I had never made a post, so it was interesting for me to use. When I began using it, my blogs were very basic, they didn't look particularly professional, however, after getting to grips with it, I found that you could change the themes and ended up with a more professional finish.

What Did You Learn From Your Audience Feedback?

After making my music video, I asked my target audience, a group of 14-18 year old girls what they thought. Here are my results:

What do you like about my music video?

• It was well put together and reflected the genre well
• The continuity was good considering you were filming outside
• The focus was on the meaning of the song and not the attractive singers which is uncommon in the music industry at the moment
• I like the fact that you have to keep watching to understand why there is a video about these two girls
• There was a good use of locations

What could I have changed to improve it?

• Maybe a little bit of performance would have made it more interesting, or some sort of appearance of the artist
• Sometimes the hand held camera is a little bit too shaky and it makes it hard to watch
• Some of the colour shots are a little bit similar, maybe more use of camera angles and movements
• Sometimes the editing didn't reflect the music, for example there'll be a fade when the beat is strong, which was slightly disorientating

I agree with some of these comments, and many of them were expected. I agree with the comment about some sort of appearance of the artist, and my initial plans did include an appearance from the band at the end of the video, however, it wasn't plausible, I couldn't get a cast who looked the part which gave me the choice of whether to have a group of people who didn't look like they were in a band or not have a band at all and I chose the second. 

Which age group do you think it will appeal to?

• 15-20
• 13-17
• 15-18 (ish?)
• 14-18
• 15-17

I'm happy with theses results, this is generally the age range that I was aiming for when making it, so the fact that the audience knew that is good. 

Do you think the music video suits the genre? And why?

• Yes - Recently this genre of music video have broken more and more conventions, so I guess by not having any performance, and 'breaking a convention' you're actually sticking to the convention
• Maybe - In some respects it does fit it, with the meaningful narrative however, the lack of performance is sort of a deal breaker
• No - but it's less the music video doesn't feel pop-rock, more the actual music doesn't feel it. The video, however suits the music
• Yes - There is a basic yet interesting narrative, which makes you want to watch it again and again
• Yes - It feels like a music video made by and independent pop-rock group

I thought that this question would have mixed results, mostly because one of the main conventions of a pop-rock music video is the performance part, something which my video didn't have. However, I'm  happy with the results, I think that even though it broke some big conventions, the video portrayed what I wanted it to correctly, and successfully. 

Would the ancillary texts make you want to buy the album?

• Yes
• Yes
• No
• Maybe
• yes

  How did this part of the video make you feel?

• I really liked this bit, because it feels as though the world is kind of empty because she's not there
• It just shows that the world moves on after someone dies, like this girl is really upset over her friends death, but the world hasn't really noticed
• I really liked it, just because it kind of felt like the calm before the storm, it felt like you were going to find out what happened to her. 

I was surprised by some of the comments on this sections, I hadn't expected that much thought to go into such a small moment in the video, however I'm glad that there were so many interpretations of it. I had a few thoughts when planning this moment in the video, I mostly wanted to somehow portray the grief that the girl is feeling, and represent that you can move on from the death of a close friend, and that the world keeps spinning. I was glad that some people understood this and even took it further. 

Synergy in my texts

There is a lot of synergy within my texts, the first and possibly most obvious is the people within both my music video and the ancillary texts. The album was dedicated to two girls and so the digipak and music video represented this.

There is synergy within the ancillary texts itself with the border around the edge. I wanted to include a border on my music video as well, however I didn't know how to do that on iMovie, and couldn't find anywhere to explain it.

There is synergy in the font used within all the text used, on my ancillary texts and music video, I think this created a more professional look.

I wanted the font to be clean and grown up, because of the theme of the video, to have a typically pop-rock font, would create the wrong impression of the video. I wanted it to be clear from the beginning that it is a serious video, not your typical pop-rock music video.

The same for the ancillary texts - I wanted them to be taken seriously.













In terms of colour scheme, I wanted to have fairly warm colours, in the music video, the girl who died is wearing a red coat, the same colour that the girl in wearing in the 'present time' shots. However, this only becomes clear when you look at the album cover, because in the video we only see the girl in black and white.

Music Video

This music video was challenging for me, because I faced the challenge of whether to attempt to film a performance section, with lip sinking of someone who wouldn't fit the convention of the genre, or try to work around the performance and break the conventions of the genre in a clever way. 

 However, pop-rock music videos tend to be 90% performance based, leaving me with a lot of space to fill with a narrative. Because of all the extra space I knew that I needed to do something that required thought from the audience. I wanted to create something where they would, firstly have to keep watching to understand, and secondly something that would stand out amongst it's genre. 

 I did write a shot breakdown in my planning stage for the video, however, specifically in the black and white footage, I found that everything felt slightly forced and wasn't believable. To solve this I ended up only using my shot breakdown during the colour footage and allowing my actors to improvise with the black and white stuff, which turned out a lot better than my original attempts. 

I did write a shot breakdown in my planning stage for the video, however, specifically in the black and white footage, I found that everything felt slightly forced and wasn't believable. To solve this I ended up only using my shot breakdown during the colour footage and allowing my actors to improvise with the black and white stuff, which turned out a lot better than my original attempts.

Final Digipak

Overall, this music video and ancillary texts are fairly conventional in their layout and creative qualities. The synergy of the text throughout all the pieces creates a more professional feel, especially with everything being in capitals. I had originally only put the title in capitals, however when I experimented with capitals I thought it felt more conventional and changed everything. 

The colour scheme of the album cover and poster link with the music video. Originally all of my ancillary texts were in colour, however I was having issues with some text being read, and decided to change my poster to black and white. I liked the effect so much that I decided to keep it, and then changed by back cover as well. This meant that, although the front cover and back cover of the album are the same image, they have still look different. Furthermore, the music video has a black and white/colour theme, which is echoed by the ancillary texts. 

Finally the border around the edges, originally I used the border on the CD to add in the copyright information, however once putting it in I decided that it made the disk look neater and more grown up. It also mirrored popular images in my genre on social networking sites such as tumblr, so I put it on all of my texts.