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

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

At the beginning of the project we thought about the genre of music we all as a group enjoyed and listened to in our own time. This meant when it came to researching into the existing genre we were already quite well informed about the main features and most common things that fit with this indie pop. We looked at some artists such as Ben Howard, Lana Del Rey and Mumford & Sons etc. Particularly in the music video Old Pine by Ben Howard was a key focus of our research as we felt the ideas we already had for our own music video seemed to link well with this video. We particularly liked the naturalistic setting and feel this music video had and how the majority of the music video was quick shots of beach settings and mountains. This led us to pick a beach setting for the main location of our music video, digi pak imagery and advert.

This is a screen shot from the music video of Old Pine by Ben Howard. Throughout the music video there are various quick shots of waves and a beach setting which led to be a heavy influence in our own work. Like Old Pine, the song we picked (Lover’s Eyes) is a slow and quite relaxing song and we felt the beach setting with the waves fit perfectly as the sea is something that is often associated with calmness. We also felt this type of location fit well with the indie pop genre and usually wouldn’t be seen in music videos going by any other genre. 

We also looked at how the focus of this music video was the one main character and there was various shots showing him walking around. We used a similar idea and made our music video focus around the one female and her past relationship as we felt this fit well with the song we picked. 

As you can see in this shot it shows Ben Howard walking down a quite natural pleasant place. This is similar to ours and I think it works well as a way of telling a story and showing the character is heading somewhere.

We also looked a lot at two music videos in particular for their use of black and white. No Hope by the Vaccines and Waiting For My Chance To Come by Noah & The Whale. These two effectively use the black and white effect to give a rather monotone calm feel to the video and this is something we wanted to represent in our own. In No Hope it is clearly quite a old fashioned vintage style. This is shown obviously by the black and white effect as well as the clothing used. This is something we also wanted to introduce into our music video as well as the digi pak and advert, we did this by dressing the female character in particular in quite vintage clothing giving the products a distinct and quite unique look as well as fitting with the codes and conventions of indie pop media products.

(Vintage old fashioned style clothing)

(Stark melancholy effect) 

(Flip from colour to black and white gives immediate change in mood)

Furthermore in the music video by Noah & the Whale throughout it is shown to flip from black and white back to colour. This is something we thought about doing before our research when we were discussing ideas for the music video. We wanted an effective yet subtle way of demonstrating the shift in change between how the female character was feeling when she is alone at the beach and how she felt when she was in a relationship. I think the black and white clips immediately give a softer and more melancholy mood and this represents the feeling of loss and loneliness of the girl. Whereas with the coloured shots we decided we wanted to make them more hand held and home footage type of style. This makes these shots feel more personal to the audience and give an insight into the relationship. It also lightens the mood and signifies the love and happiness the couple were sharing at that time.


Aswell as the black and white effect we also wanted to use a hand-held old fashioned style of effect over the shots showing the couples relationship. Our initial idea of this was influenced from the music video for Your Song by Ellie Goulding. This type of effect and theme made the piece feel more personal and help involve the audience more and this is the feel we wanted to represent through the shots of the relationship.The colouring of these shots lifted the mood and i think contrasted well with the stark black and white shots. We wanted to make this part of the narrative create a more intimate, happy and warm feel and this effect did that perfectly.

I think we both followed and developed the codes and conventions of existing indie pop media products. For example we wanted to make our project a significant package that worked well separately but even better together. At the beginning of our project we all decided a beach location was what we wanted to use and while we were shooting for our music video and going on location scouts we got some good images of the beach and Catherine’s character (the female in the music video) at the beach. This then led us to use these images for our digi pak as well as the advert. By using the same style of images at the same location for the music video and the print products it tied the whole project together and made it evident that each product was by the artist Elliot Guy. During our research this is something we didn’t find very common in indie pop media products as existing artists tended to use different locations and different imagery throughout their work. For example although Noah & the Whale’s First Days of Spring album and album advert did use the same images their music videos didn’t follow the same theme. We wanted to develop the link between our artist’s products and make it a unique package that had the iconic red balloon and beach environment throughout.

I think we challenged the codes and conventions of existing media products by the use of the red balloon. This idea first came from watching the film Schindler’s List. Although clearly this film had no link to our music video we thought the whole focus of the red against the black and white would work really well as a way of representing our idea of love and the relationship that the music video and album focuses around. This idea had not yet been used as we found in our research so we thought it gave our work an extremely unique quality that the audience would recognise and know the artist Elliot Guy for. We decided to use a balloon as the iconic idea of happiness and hope and then picked the colour red to signify love and passion. I think this was a clear message representing throughout the music video and as a group we all think it worked well and decided it would be good to link this idea with the digi pak and advert and be a main focus of the whole project.

When we were planning this project and deciding on the appropriate target audience we didn’t want to limit ourselves in terms of gender. We realised in our research that male artists tend to focus their album art on males (usually themselves) and a lot of their music videos either involved themselves or someone of the same gender. Although their music was something both male and female could listen to it also meant it seemed more likely for males to favour them. We wanted to make sure we tried something different in terms of appealing to an audience so we made our artists a male artist but designed the album work and music video to fit for females as well. I think this is a good way to reach a wider audience and appeal equally to both male and female ultimately leading to the artist being more successful and popular.

Print Products 

When researching into the genre we had chosen we focused a lot on artists such as Mumford & Sons and Lana Del Rey. These two artists led to be of heavy influence for the digi pak. We found that the majority of existing indie pop album artwork tended to use quite simple imagery and a lot of them are photography rather than animated imagery that tends to be common in genres such as rock etc. 

As you can see from the back cover of Lana Del Reys album we were influenced by the layout aswell as the bold font. Existing indie pop album work tend to deviate from the typical layout of the album back cover which is usually positing the song titles in a list form. But just like this album art indie pop genre tend to look more unique and we decided this went well with the image and flowed alot better without taking any emphasis from the image we picked. It also meant our piece fit correctly with the genre we had chosen.

 

(Mumford & Sons existing album work)             

 

(The Root of Memories inside album work)

We were also influenced by the digi pak work of Mumford & Sons. Having a 'thank you' page inside the album seems to be common for this genre as we found in our research and we felt it would make our piece fit well with the genre and the typical conventions as well as making our digi pak look over all a lot more professional.

We also developed the codes and conventions of indie pop genre by looking at other genres that were very similar to the one we had chosen. We looked at album work from Coldplay and although this band does not fit into the indie pop genre completely we were inspired and this led us to develop our ideas more. For example as you can see in the picture of Coldplays work below it shows a quite vibrant and interesting picture that can be found inside the album of Mylo zyloto. Much like our own digi pak photos this image is quite unique and works well as a plain image alone without written work over the top. We considered adding lyrics but felt this would take emphasis from the background image. So instead we were influenced by this Coldplay piece to add subtle text at the bottom of the image giving a little bit of information on the song and the album.This made the whole piece feel more a personal message and involved the audience into the music and the message behind the album.

When researching into the typical typography used for existing media products going by the 'indie pop' genre we found that they tend to stick to quite a simple clean cut text of the band or artists name and use this almost as a logo itself. Other genres tend to use an cartoon picture logo such as the rolling stones lips or the logo used for guns and roses. We felt this wasn't something that fit with the genre and the style of music our artist is. We wanted to make sure our piece did challenge the typical codes and conventions for this genre but also fit to them and make it recognisable for our target audience and people familiar and fond of this genre of music. We made sure throughout all our print products we used the same font to ensure it all tied and worked together as a whole package. We decided the font 'Bookman Old Style' was the most appropriate and professional.

 As you can see from the existing logo and font used for the artist 'lana del rey' it is made to look almost iconic and effective purely for how simple it is. We wanted to go down this root and use the simple effective font of the name of the artist and no other images that could make it over crowded and less professional.