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

In our music video we have used, challenged, and developed Goodwin's principals. We have produced a narrative based video which challenges one of Goodwins

characteristics of a music video. This is, ‘A particular music genre may have their own music video style and iconography’.

A conventional indie music video contains performance based in at least the chorus but we decided to make our video original we would use a narrative base all the way

through. Another reason which added to this decision was it would not be convenient to film our artist’s performance due to regulations at venues and some of

the band members being away at university.

We have used close ups of our character instead of the conventional closeup of the artist, to express emotion in the story and allow the audience to connect with the

storyline. This allows them to understand how the character is feeling. As the lyrics tell such a strong story, we felt we could use a narrative base throughout which along

side the lyrics tells the story. We felt this would capture and interest the audience. Also, the fact it’s a male voice singing and we have used a girl character, I feel is

original as it is not the typical thing to do.

Conventional Indie video. The artist is performing for the chorus of the track. This makes it partly performance based.

Our video. The artist is not featured at all throughout the video. It is all narrative based which means it is focused on telling a story.

Challenging the Conventions of an Indie Rock genre Music Video

Relationship between music and visuals

Our music video, Dear Diary, uses Goodwins convention having a relationship between the music and visuals. We use this a lot in our music video as it is narrative based and the story is based on the lyrics of the song. We tried to link each part of the track to something in the video for example in the first verse the lyrics say ‘ tell me why in this life am I so disliked by the social elite and even my own kind’. When this line was playing, we made sure that the scene of the girl watching social groups through the window wishing she could be part of the group played.

Another example is the part of the track which is ‘sticks and stones might break my bones but blood I cant ignore’. In the video for this line two bullys are throwing sticks at the girl and laughing as she walks off quickly.

The most obvious link between the visuals and lyrics is probably the chorus ‘ Dear Diary’. We made it essential that we matched uop the scene of our character in the woodland writing her diary when these lyrics played. We also had her writing lines from the song like ‘Im not fine’’ which is the type of thing someone would typically write in their diary.

For all three of our products we have featured the diary as a main image. This signifies a link between the three and shows the diary’s importance.

Voyeurism

One of Goodwins conventions of a music video was use of voyeurism. This is seen in videos such as ‘Don’t Stop the Music’ by Rihanna and ‘Cry me a River’ by Justin Timberlake. We decided to used this convention in our video as the opening line is ‘Please inform me, as it may seem too unkind’ so we instantly thought of the character asking herself this question. I thought looking in a mirror would reflect the characters thoughts and act as if she was really asking her self these questions that are in the lyrics. This makes it more personal and may allow the audience to understand what the character is going through.

Use of voyeurism in our music video.

Character looking through the window, camera facing her. This show did not work as well as we hoped as our plan was to be able to see her expression through the window.

View from characters perspective.

Closer shot of girl at the window.

We have developed a visual style and brand identity by using simular colours in all of our products. We liked the idea of using black and white images, which we used in our ancillary tasks to represent the dark storyline. We also used a black and white shot in the last scene of our video which can be portrayed in more ways than one.

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Visual Style and Brand Identity

We also used the same fonts in each of our products. The font of the artist name and the title of the song are the same anywhere they are written.

The lyrics tell the story of what happens but it is left to the imagination. We also have the re occuring image of the diary in each. The colours used in our ancilary taks and video are all quite dark, as it is not a happy storyline

Conventions of digipack and advertIn order to create our digipack and magazine advert, I researched existing ones to find out the conventions and how we could make ours original. I found out about different music magazines so we knew which would suit our artist the best and this was NME magazine. I found that many adverts had a quote and a star rating from a magazine so this is the magazine we used on our advert. Also, I found out which information is crucial for a digipack and advert. We wanted to keep our advert and digipack fairly simple so it gets the message across clearly even through just a glance.

We used a template for a digipack with 6 sides including the front and back cover and the disc.

Linking the advert and digipack/CD cover design. This suggests a clear relationship between the two making it recognisable and giving it an identity.

Noah and the WhaleOur digipack and advert for Vinyl Junkies

Using the same fonts

Using the same house colours

Industry information