Evaluation question 1

Evaluation Question 1: Jack

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

The development of our media products was focused on the House genre, and specifically the use of the song 'All to you' by Ashaft. The house music genre is known to be vibrant and artistic in the way is conveys itself, in recent years gaining huge popularity, its high energy rhythm and beat is extremely popular in both clubs and in the mainstream pop scene while retaining a foothold on underground scenes across the globe. It often focuses on typical flash and dramatic themes, and concentrates on feelings which are portrayed in the chorus, usually conveying a message of love or feeling based around relationships. 


David Zowie's 'House every weekend' is a prime example of House music in recent years. Our music video attempted to mimic key conventions seen in this genre of music whilst developing out own ideas.

We discovered the music videos for this genre of music tended to show less of a narrative, and often random spontaneous dancing or following a certain character experiencing things,they tend not to have many codes and conventions allowing for more freedom when creating the video, they tend to feature themes of love, happiness, sexuality and laughter, things a young audience could relate to. With the producer of the music being a Dj, they are less likely to star in the video itself and therefore either the featuring singer, if there is one, or another individual would step in. 

Genre creates an increased chance of success because by following the codes and conventions, it becomes a formula which allows the audience to develop expectations of what the will be presented with. We conformed to the genre stereotype through using a young attractive male at the age of eighteen. Our music video followed the young man on a 'day in the life' from day to night time which is a common feature in the house music video genre. In the music video for 'House every weekend' people are shown dancing throughout, but attempts to show their highs and lows of their day, with the various characters being tracked from day until night. Our music video conforms and uses conventions of a real media product; we use themes of happiness, laughter, 

Our music video starts slowly and shows the protagonist at his happiest during each chorus/ drop. We attempted to use similar ideas from music videos like 'House every weekend', as an instrumental video for the house music genre scene, we wanted to mimic key conventions.


We also attempted to mimic key themes, conventions and the overall look of the music video; using 'The nights' by Avivii we attempted to mimic close ups of the protagonist, on his adventure and in the studio, a chronological order throughout creating depth as the narrative processes throughout the video capturing the audience's attention as more is revealed and kinetic camera movement and jump cuts to disturb the fluency to the video.

Goodwin’s Theory

In his book ‘Dancing in the distraction factory’ Andrew Goodwin identifies the following features of music videos:

• There's a relationship between lyrics and the visuals
• There's a relationship between the music and the visuals, the lyrics  (e.g. sad song with sad lyrics and vice versa)
• Some music genres may have their own music videos style and iconography (e.g. hip-hop with girls, cars and gold jewelry)
• There is often a demand for a lot of close-ups of the main artist or vocalist from the record company to establish the artist on screen and identify them with the music
• Likely to be a reference to voyeurism (notion of looking) usually for females but also in the methods of actually looking (e.g. screens within screens or cameras
• Likely to be intertextual references either to other music videos (usually to seminal videos) or to films and TV texts

Overall, I feel that when constructing my music video, I didn’t want a stereotypical video that showed teens going out to explore the world, I wanted to represent youth in an opposing way to which they may be represented at this moment in time, a perception of youth now days is connected to drink and drugs, which may be fun for them at the time, but from outside their perspective, others may see this as bad. This may fit with the house genre life, as the people who enjoy this music may live happy and energetic life. I did include Laura Mulvey’s theory of the ‘male gaze’, describing it as characters being ‘bearers of the look’ which is usually aimed at ‘physically desirable’, sexually submissive female characters. I challenged this through using a ‘physically desirable’ male protagonist. Although I did not show off the man’s body, he was given a ‘voyeuristic look’, so was still exposed to the camera, so the audience could gaze at him. I did this through several close up shots, showing off his attractive male features, enjoying himself which may be attractive to people.

Digipak cover

We wanted to reveal the protagonist of the album through the digipak, and therefore reject the house music genre album cover stereotype, as real media products in the house music genre tend to be bright and vibrant, with exotic colours. If they do include images they are of the DJ, voyeuristic images of females or an exotic setting. A recognised font is used for the artist, allowing audiences to recognise the artist and their products, drawing them towards the product.




An example of these digipak conventions; the 'Nobody to love' album cover from Sigma includes a beautiful taken, natural picture of a beach, with two young females walking along it. It completely conforms to the house genre music digipak cover, including a clear artist name, in their recognisable font, and a clear title name. Our digipak cover is similar to this and conforms to the genre in some ways, but breaks other conventions. We also aimed for a natural background, something which may be valued by the youth audience of the music, as often youth see themselves as stewards of nature, and so would be attractive looking. Our young, attractive male protagonist conforms to the conventions of the genre, although he is male and in this sense we revert the stereotype, he is someone who would be found attractive by the opposite sex and therefore conforms to the convention of voyeurism.
                                                 


Magazine advert

The purpose and basic objectives of a magazine advert are to:

-Promote the artist

-Promote the song

-Be eye catching and memorable

-Be recognizable

Conventions

Album/Song title: My magazine advert conforms to a stereotypical advert as it displays the album title at the top ‘All to you’ in a bold black text used in both the digipak and the magazine advert.
Eminem's Encore uses a similar technique, placing the big bold album title at the top of the advert, with the artist name Eminem underneath.



Record label: My magazine advert does not have a record label as this is usually seen in big artists as they are big enough to be under a company who help sell the artists music, and as our artist is a small DJ, we do not show one on our advert. Jessie J's Who you are is shown to have 'Lava' as it's record label. Jessie J would belong to this label and therefore everything sold to do with her music would have to be labelled by this.





Image of artist: This is not essential in every magazine advert as many artists and albums now feature artwork or simply a symbol. 
My magazine advert is dominated by the main image of the artist, relating him to the song/album and appealing to current fans and 
attracting new audiences. 
Lana Del Rey's Born to die is dominated by the main image of the artist herself. The image is here as they are recognizable by an audience, relating them to the song. This would mostly appeal to current fans of the artist or band but can be useful in attracting a new audience


Release date: This is one of the most important features of a magazine as it tells the audience when the song/album is available for them to purchase or download and be able to listen to. My magazine advert  shows that the album is ‘Out Now’, it is the second largest text on the advert so it is one of the first things you notice after the album title, making it easy to spot and quickly provides the audience with the information that the album is available for them to purchase. On other magazine adverts audiences would also commonly see 'Out now' for smaller marketing campaigns or an average album, but for bigger music albums for bigger artists, who have the money, may have marketing campaigns which advertise the song more than a month before. For example, Justin Beiber's What do you mean was advertised for up to 3 months before the album/ songs release, and became a huge hit, showing the more money and effort put in, the bigger the return.

 By using various celebrities who are popular on and off of social media he was able to countdown the days to the release of the album, creating a huge campaign.