Question 1 - In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Throughout the process of researching, and producing our music products, we wanted to remain original and creative throughout. Therefore, we looked deeply into other media texts, cultural products and images so that we had lots of inspiration, for our ideas.
To begin the process, George Bills, a close family friend of ours propositioned us and asked if we would do one of his songs, and we happily obliged as he is an incredible artist, the song was called 'Over Night' and it was an acoustic, 'folky' song, as I wasn't familiar with this genre of music, it was even  more interesting as we had to research what the traditional redundant conventions were, as well as the original, entropic ones.  

INSPIRATION FOR DIGIPAK & ARTWORK:

As I have explained, the song we will be using is called 'Over Night' written by the band Eyes like Giants/George Bills, the genre/style of music is acoustic and so for my research into the album artwork I looked at various other acoustic artists, and their album artwork/music videos- to therefore try and entwine that with my own to produce a realistic and professional digi-pack. Similarly, this also gave me the opportunity to look into forms and conventions in the acoustic genre, which I didn't want to include in my music video, therefore linking to Steve Neale's theory of gender, "instances of repetition and difference." I also looked into our specific target audience so that I produce a Digi-pack which would be relevant and appealing for my target audience - I thought that the song would be aimed at  a more individual audience because it is an acoustic piece of music and so therefore it isn't as generic as most pieces of music in the charts, as it could be considered to be more rural and original. However on the contrary, it could also be considered as being aimed at a more hedonist or inspirer audience, as the music video itself is quite mainstream - with an amplifying narrative, and in today's society, more acoustic pieces of music have been introduced into the charts by the likes of Ed Sheeran and Ben Howard, and so our piece of music could be seen as quite popular - and this is where I thought our mainstream audience could appear. On the jicnar scale, I thought our audience would be around B, C1 or C2 - and our age range is quite varied, however we are specifically aiming it at late teens - 30's.

BEN HOWARD:

I thought that the simplicity of this album cover could connote the simplicity in his music, and the raw talent he has as an artist - the first thing that catches the eye is the bold, big and clear name of the artist across the top of the album cover - this could mean that the artist wants the audience to notice his name instead of his image which isn't typical for a usual artist. (possibly an acoustic convention?) This could mean that he is trying to promote his music instead of himself as a person/'celebrity' /the star image..this is seen quite frequently within acoustic music, with close up's of key objects instead of people, for example guitars. The album itself looks very sophisticated, with simple fonts, very little detail to show his simplicity of himself and his music and simple, neutral colors throughout the cover - the blues, whites and greens create a very pastel effect which connote soothing and calmness, which could represent his music and what the artist tries to include in his music - the mise-en-scene also relates to this, as it is a man diving under water, with a long shot showing a full image of the man diving - this connotes a man in a world of his own doing the thing that he loves - which again connotes directly to the music that Ben Howard, the artist, makes. The layout of this album cover doesn't reinforce the artist as the star image as such, however it contributes to the creation of the music, and his style/attitude towards his music instead; which is what the artist is trying to achieve by this album artwork. The album artwork as a whole represents a high degree of entropy because without looking into it too deeply it doesn't show a very familiar or usual album cover and it is quite unique, however it is also interesting and inspiring to look at, and it does directly correspond to his music which is what the album artwork is supposed to do, as well as appealing to his target audience of teenage, to 30's, male and female. - therefore I think Ben Howard's album artwork is very good and achieves what it should in a very simple, yet intriguing way.

ED SHEERAN:

Another artist who is very similar to the artist I used for my Media Coursework is Ed Sheeran, as he is in the same genre: acoustic. I also looked at his album artwork to help me decide exactly what sort of digi-pack is appropriate for my style of genre and artist - which will appeal directly to my target audience. Ed Sheerans 2012 album, is shown to the left - the first thing that the audience can see is a close-up photograph of the artists face, this is quite common in a lot of Album covers as they aim to gain recognition for their star image, and so this follows the conventions of a usual album cover, it also adds reinforcement to the artist himself. The lighting in this photograph is very recognizably bright orange, this is to make the album stand out, and it also makes the artists face seem quite dark and gloomy - which could connote dark love or deepness, which can be heard in some of his music/songs. The fonts are mostly irrelevant on the front of the album cover because their is just a small, bold, white '+' on the  bottom right of the cover, which is made very noticeable by the contrast of colors, which enhances how important the name of the album is for the artist - it also reinforces what the name of his album is, to make it more recognizable for his target audience - thus could show how important the music is, more important than anything else - as there is no other writing on the front of the album cover.The simplicity in the album cover also connotes calmness, yet at the same time, bluntness, which suggests that his music is also quite edgy, yet with a calm, acoustic feel to it too - all of these features can relate to his target audience of the hedonists, male and female and families audience, as it a very wide, mainstream image - hence this album cover has a high degree of redundancy as it is quite common for an artist to have a close-up image of their face on their album cover, and so it is quite predictable - yet the album as a whole can also be seen as being very simplistic, with most of the detail on the back - which can be seen as the least important side... The back of both album covers is very plane and simple - with just the names of the songs in the album, again creating a sense of simplicity and directing the main focus onto just the music itself.

After looking into the main conventions of an advert and digipak for my acoustic genre, I then concluded which are frequent:

• Many tend to be quite simplistic, with a calm, relaxing feel
• The colour theme is coherent throughout, neutral is frequent to connote the feel of the peaceful music  
• Can have a high degree of redundancy (usually with a close up of the artists face) or alternatively you could have a completely entropic cover, with something bizarre and original 
• Most have a lot of significance to their music, instead of their star image
• The fonts are usually quite plain an simplistic - i.e. arial 
• The style is simplistic, yet intriguing at the same time
• Interesting and inspiring. 

After researching into other conventions of an acoustic genre, I collected a lot of inspiration for my actual ancillary texts, therefore I came up with the following conventions that I was going to include in my own:

• I want my print production to be quite simplistic, following the original forms and conventions of the acoustic genre, adding a calm and relaxing feel to the pieces, however I do want to make my designs slightly original by adding an exciting, entropic feel to the design. Possibly with the use of fireworks and sparks; therefore challenging the forms and conventions at the same time.
• I want the front cover of the DigiPak and the Advert to have a high degree of redundancy, like many other acoustic designs, in that I want the photographs of my artist to be either extreme close up's, or close-ups, capturing a lot of emotion within the shots.
• I want the colour theme to be coherent throughout, much like the real media, acoustic products, however instead of using neutral, pastel colours, I am going to be using a dark colour theme, with the 'sky' as the overall theme. I got inspiration from this when looking into various other music videos, which I will explain later.
• I will follow the the usual acoustic forms and conventions in that the font will be quite plain and simplistic.
• I want it to have a lot of significance to his music, possibly involving guitars.
• I want the style to be simplistic, yet intriguing for my audience.

As shown, is my finished DigiPak and Advert, and as you can see I included a lot of the forms and conventions which I found in my research about other artists from acoustic genre conventions. Therefore a lot of my inspiration for my Digipak and Advert was from what I found when looking at other artists work, however I added a unique twist to it to make it my own by challenging the usual forms and conventions - such as making it quite busy, yet keeping it quite soft, relaxing and simplistic, at the same time. 

We then looked into what we were going to involve in our actual music video; and as we already had our song we needed some inspiration in a number of ways; to increase our creativity, and to show our journey, we created a prezi:

http://prezi.com/rjn1nuj2ncio/copy-of-research/  - please see attached if HTML fail.

As shown in my DigiPack/Advert research, Ed Sheeran is an artist who is quite similar in the music and style, as our artist, and therefore a lot of our research was based on him. There was one video which we really liked, as shown below, 'The A Team, Ed Sheeran.'


Throughout this music video, like many other acoustic music there is a black and white theme throughout, connoting dull, emotional feelings, and we considered using this convention for our music video however after having a quantative vote with 7 people in our class, the results were as followed:

BLACK AND WHITE - 2
COLOUR                      - 5

The results showed that although it was an interesting idea, it was slightly unoriginal and may have made the music video look quite cheap or unprofessional; therefore we changed our ideas slightly because of this; we looked into our audience research a lot, especially our focus group votes and class discussions, and a lot of our decisions changed based on these results, thus directing our creativity throughout the process. Another example of this is when presenting our pitch, we had originally had an idea of having quite a poor girl and boy in a rural rough area, much like the video shown, (A Team, Ed Sheeran,) however after we looked at all of our feedback, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't a very original idea and that it had all been done before - previously we had been really focussed on that idea, and so after looking at our feedback it changed a lot of our ideas; and so the audience feedback was definitely a big help for us, and had a big impact on our creativity. Previously, we were quite set on the original forms and conventions for slow, acoustic music, however after looking into what our target audience actually thought, we came across Nicholas Abercrombie's theory, "Television producers set out to exploit genre conventions." This opened our eyes, and made us come up with some really interesting ideas, that were challenging the original forms and conventions, and our audience feedback gave us a lot of confidence to do this.

ORIGINAL FORMS AND CONVENTIONS KEPT:

In the A Team Video, we were particularly inspired by the amplifying narrative, and after a lot of research on a theorist, Todorov, and the Narrathology, describing "the study of narrative and narrative structure, and the way in which this affects our perception" we really wanted to entwine this within our music video; having a strong amplifying narrative, (a lot like that of the A Team), and in particular we liked how emotional and touched the audience feel after watching the video, and we wanted this effect in our music video, having a strong, emotional effect on our audience after watching the video, as well as feeling quite empathic to our characters.

Looking at our audience feedback, I think that this was a beneficial decision for our music video, with 2 people in my target audience stating:
"I understand the narrative, it's of a boy that finishes things with a girl, and then she goes out and has a good time, and he regrets it" "I'm guessing that the guy and the girl fall out, she maybe goes of the rails slightly?? Gets with another lad."
After showing various other people, we also received some verbal feedback; such as:
"I actually feel really touched, I just wanna give him a big hug!"
"You just want to shake him don't you!"
"Awww it's so cute! I just wanna cry"
Therefore I think that by looking at the audience feedback, the amplifying narrative was clear throughout, and the emotion was also received, adding a preferred reading to our music video, and therefore I think this is an extremely effective way in which our media products use and develop forms and conventions of real media products.

We then looked at Ben Howards, Only Love Video, and we particularly liked the blurring effect right at the beginning of the video, and throughout, we thought we would incorporate this in our video, as well as the slow paced editing to correspond with the slow paced music.



CHALLENGING FORMS AND CONVENTIONS:

The main way we have challenged forms and conventions of an acoustic genre is by entwining other forms and conventions of other genres into our video:

As you can see in Tinie Tempah's video, the miss-en-scene is quite a big feature, with the sky line a big significant background in front of his performance. We were very inspired by the use of big, bold backgrounds, and as my brother has an apartment in the Cube, Birmingham, overlooking the beautiful sky-line, we thought we would take this to our advantage; therefore, we filmed george in front of the skyline. This was quite a professional aspect to our music video, making it quite similar to real media products, however it was also quite entropic as in our research about acoustic artists, such as Ben Howard and Ed Sheeran, a lot of the music videos were quite simplistic, and lower-class. However we decided to challenge this, and make George appear very upper-class, and we thought that this would make our music video as professional as possible, which is what we wanted to achieve. We also thought having an extravagant skyline would, yet blending his stiletto over this with a screen effect, would create an interesting and unique effect, yet still linking to the relaxation and calmness of the acoustic style, forms and conventions.



We also looked into Justin Timerlakes, Cry me a River; this isn't acoustic genre, however we used many aspects of this video; possibly challenging the conventions of our actual genre.
For example we looked at many things, particularly the way in which his lip sync is quite near to the camera, with many close-up shots, yet he looks away into the distance quite frequently, like he is deep in thought. We wanted this effect in our video, to look like the artist was really into his music, thus relating back to acoustic genre forms and conventions, this has a high degree of redundancy in many videos, as it is expected for the artist to be really interested in his music.
We also liked how professional the video looks in his house because the house was empty, with not a lot of equipment or furniture, giving an extremely professional final shot. We liked this idea, and with my brothers apartment being new and empty, we were able to duplicate this effect.
Finally, we liked the shower scene in this video, and we wanted to use this (however completely changing the shot types and reasoning) We liked it because with our amplifying narrative, a raunchy shower scene could show the actress's worries flush away, especially straight before going out. We also liked the high degree of entropy with a raunchy, sexy shower scene in a slow, acoustic music video - as we thought it would be quite original, yet interesting to watch, and it would also relate to our mainstream audience, as these scenes can be quite frequent in other genres, such as hip-hop or pop.


We  then presented our PITCH to the group, with as much detail as possible about our ideas for our music video, again this movie shows in debth a large amount of our creativity throughout the process: