Evaluation Question 1

"In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"

Overall,

we used forms and conventions of other

Indie/Folk media products in order to ensure that we will gain our intended audience for the intended reasons.

How Did We Do This?

By following Carol Vernallis's theory...

Carol Vernallis studied editing and camerawork specifically in music videos. Through her research, she established that edits come much more frequent in music videos than in film. Often, the frequent edits have a rhythmic basis which mirrors the beat of the song.

Throughout her observations, she came up with many ideas. 

Here are the two in which we followed:

1. Jump cuts (abrupt transitions within the same scene) are often used.
2. Edits are deliberately made very obvious in order to draw attention to themselves, such as wipes and special effects.

1. Jump Cuts

Within our music video, we included a jump in the shot overlooking London.

This is an example of the jump cuts we included in our music video within this establishing shot which overlooks London. We chose to use this shot as I believe it highlights the artist's feelings of melancholy and loneliness now that his partner has left him, by focusing on his empty surroundings. This is made clear to the audience through the lyrics of the song as he sings about being stuck in the time when he was with her and struggling to move on.

2. Obvious Edits

We included obvious edits which draw attention to themselves and make the music video for visually pleasurable as a whole for the audience to watch.

This image is a representation of how we have used obvious edits within our music video. This shot captures the dissolve we included as a transition from a over-the-shoulder shot to a close up shot of the artist.

Andrew Goodwin

We also ensured we followed some conventions of the Indie genre by following some of Goodwin's main ideas which he discovered through his narrative analysis of music videos.

Here are the two ideas of Goodwin's which we followed in our media products...

1. The concept of illustration, which is where the video tells the story of the lyrics.
2. The video uses the artist both as the narrator and as a character in the narrative.

1. Illustration

 These images capture the concept of illustration within our video. Throughout the music video, we see the artist experience sadness and lose his way. We then see the artist have a flash of when his girlfriend left him which is when he results to this: he struggles to forget her and it drives him crazy. His feelings of sadness are conveyed through both the lyrics and the music video. 

2. Artist = Narrator/Character

Narrator

Character

Although Goodwin claims it is only generic amongst pop videos for the artist to be the character as well as the narrator, we decided to follow this convention.

This is because it is generic for Indie songs to be meaningful and close to the artist's past and experiences. We wanted to make this concept visually clear to the audience, therefore we used the artist as the character to convey the songs he creates are personal and raw to him and are not done for commercial success.

Inspirations?

Mumford & Sons - Hopeless Wanderer

In terms of mise en scene, I drew inspiration from the location in which they used. 

The use of a simple, nature-filled location is conventional to use within Indie/Folk music videos as the artists tend to use low budget locations and outfits to ensure that the central focus remains on the artist's musical talents rather than the visual aspects of the video, such as his outfits, locations and settings. 

As you can see, the band members are well dressed but in a subtle way, so that the attention from their performance is not taken away by their outfits or surroundings.

Ancillary Products

For my ancillary products, I followed the Indie genre conventions by drawing inspiration from Ed Sheeran's ancillary products for his album '+'.

Outside Panel

Inside Panel

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Ancillary Inspiration

Ed Sheeran '+'

Front Cover

I drew inspiration from the type-writer font as I believe it represents the 80s era which is when Indie was created. I also drew inspiration from the simplicity of the album cover as Indie genres are less focused on the visual aspects of things and are more dedicated to perfecting their music and sound rather than their appearance. The close up shot of the artist is an aspect I also used for my front cover as I believe it is a good way of introducing your artist, clearly to it's audience.

Sheeran's Back Cover

Back Cover

I drew inspiration from the simplicity of the back cover as it is very conventional in the Indie genre for the back cover to remain focused on the titles of the songs rather than including any special effects or images which will distract the audience away from the titles of the songs.

Sheeran's Advertisement

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It is very conventional for the advertisement to use the same colour scheme in order to visually establish synergy links between the products. Ed's advertisement features the close up which also features in his album's front cover. I took inspiration from this and used the close up of my artist on my front cover and in my advertisement.

Overall,

I followed many conventions of the Indie genre by drawing inspiration from real research and real ancillary products to ensure that my media products attract the intended target audience.