Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge conventions of a real media product?

BRIEF SELF ANALYSIS


MUSIC VIDEO CONVENTIONS




MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT

After looking at the conventions of a typical magazine advertisement, I made sure I adapted these on my product. The most important elements of an advertisement is for the artist and album name to be bold and noticeable, and although I have used the same text throughout, by making my band name large and bold it is very noticeable, but the poster still looks simple and professional. The image is conventionally always of the artist, so I decided to take a screengrab from my video to use my on my advertisement, as not only does this follow conventions, it also reinforces the fact that my performer is also the artist of my song. By including Spotify and itunes on my advertisement emphasizes the fact that the album is available on all platforms to people worldwide, which will help build a mass audience and although for this genre that is not always what the artist wants, other platforms will always be displayed on advertisements so I decided to have them on mine. The release date was vital as the main function of the advert is to promote the album and encourage people to buy it. The only generally conventional thing that I did not include on my advertisement was names of some songs included on the album. This is usually done so people have a rough idea of what songs are going to appear however I do not think it is always necessary as people tend to buy an album for the artist and not a particular song, as it is easy to buy a single song online, with no need to purchase the full album. Overall I think I have really used and developed conventions on my magazine advertisement, and it would not look out of place in an actual magazine.

DIGIPACK
I am actually using an unconventional form of digipack, as not many albums use a 6 panel case. However despite this, it still follows the main conventions of any CD case:

• The artist name and album name on the front cover
• The track number and name on the back
• Inserts such as a booklet or Thank-you messages on the inside of the cover
• Images of either the artist or related images
• Barcode, record label logo, reference number and copyright message

I made sure I incorporated all of these onto my product, to make it as professional as possible. For the front, like most albums, I used an image of my artist and then several related images throughout the digipack. I listed the tracks on the back of the pack, along with a barcode and the copyright mesaage. I decided to place the record label logo on both the back of the pack and on the spine (along with the reference number here), and I also included the logo on the disks. It is important to include the record label logo everywhere as they are the most important people behind the artist. Instead of a booklet I decided to have a small thank-you page on the inside left of the digipack, along with another related image. Usually the album cover concides with the promotional advertisement so I followed the same colour scheme of black, white, and a pinkish red throughout both of my ancillary texts. When it came to my ancillary texts, I chose to conform to most conventions throughout and did not really ignore any of them, as using the conventions should lead to a successful product.

GENRE THEORY
David Chandler (2001) argues that genre refers to a distinctive type of text, and all genres have their own specific mise-en-scene, narratives and characters in order for the audience to recognize the genre. In order to incorporate this into my product I ensured that I undertook intensive research into the conventions of the indie genre, and adapted them into my own work. A key indication that my video falls within the indie genre was the mise-en-scene I used, for example the locations I filmed at, such as the woods, and the simple costumes the actors were wearing. The simplistic effects indicate that the video was produced with a low budget, and this is typical of indie music videos as usually they belong to an independent record label who do not have a lot of funding. Another theorist, Barry Keith Grant (1995) stated that all genres have sub-genres which are more select and allow audiences to easily recognise the genre through features of the sub genre. The melancholy tone is a sub genre of an indie video, and my choice of locations and colours support the implied tone, and therefore allowed the audience to immediately recognise the genre and identify with it.