Jayne: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real

media texts? Daisy: For our product, we created a music video, with acoompanying album artwork and a poster, to promote the album. Jayne: Nick Lacey theory of a product being the same but different keeps the audience aware of what to expect but also gives them something different to prevent boredom. This is similar with G Burtons genre theory that (show quote repetition and recognition leads to expectation and anticipation) that keeping similar eliments in different music videos will excite the audience. In order to achieve our brief we need to know the conventions of a typical music video. To do this we analysed a couple of standard, popular music videos by Taylor Swift and The band Outcast. (clips) Daisy: The main conventions which we see in these, and indeed most other music videos are: typical locations, such as studio and location shots, a protagonist who is usually the artist themselves or the main singer of the band. Jayne: But youll also sometimes have dancers and actors for other roles. The iconography of the artist in their videos is mainly determined by their own image, as this quote by Andrew Goodwin, shows that the image of an artist can easily be continued throughout different medias. (quote appears on screen: Artists may develop their own star iconography, in and out of their videos, which over time, becomes a part of their star image.) Daisy: However, the conventions dont need to be followed completely and are often broken in very successful music videos, as Peter Fraiser clearly states. (Quote on screen: A distictive art form which can allow really interesting creative opportunities .) If the music video is narrative based, then usually romance is a major factor. However, if narritve is shown, it is usually interwieved with the performance shots. Some videos though, are purely perfomance or purely narrative based! Jayne: And if the narrative is promanantly featured it will be based around Todorovs narrative theory of equillibrim, disruption and re-equillibrium. Daisy: Media language is a key part of the music video. The most important features are: editing pace in time with the music and the frequent use of close ups to connect the audience with the artist.

Jayne: The song we used for our video was Big Black Horse and the Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall, which is an acoustic rock song. Therefore we had to research the conventions for the acoustic rock genre. Daisy: Above are the most important conventions for the sub genre of music video. (on screen slide of the typical conventions of acoustic rock, which we will read through see Research Singer-Songwriter / Acoustic Rock Subgenre blog post) Daisy: First we analysed an Ed Sheeran music video before we focused on our own, which helped us because the songs are of the same genre. This video is also completely narrative, which we looked at as an example of such. However, we chose to do a video which was only partially narrative. Jayne: We used four main theories in our video: Todorovs, Levi-Strauss, Propps and Barthes. There is a clear equllibrium, disruption and re-equillibrium shown in the narrative of our video. The equilibrium is show here (show footage) with Kathy wandering through the forest perfectly happily. Daisy: The disruption is the disturbance in the wood and presence of the unknown wolf (show footage) and the re-equilibrium is the end of the video where Kathy is dead. (Show footage.) For Levi-Strausss theory, our main binary opposite is the idea of good vs evil, which is shown in the next clip (show footage) where the protagonist is beating the wolf about the head with a stick. Jayne: There are obvious enigmas within out video, which according to Barthes theory, drive the narrative. Examples of these are: where is she? Is something following her? Whats going to happen to her? Is she dead? And so on. (show footage of her walking through the forest, in a panicked state) Daisy: Propps theory of spheres of action is used with the protagonist presented as the hero and the wolf as the villain. These are the only two clear character types, as they are the only two characters! Jayne: In preparation for planning our own video we watched a few acoustic rock music videos including Please Dont stop the Rain by James Morrison and This is the Life by Amy McDonald. (show clip of James Morrison first) when analysing these videos, we noted a few important things such as: (words on the screen describing main media language used in the video which is read through.) Daisy: When we looked at Amy McDonalds video (show footage), we noted similar conventions of the genre. Once we looked at the media language of both videos, we applied them to our storyboard for our own acoustic rock video.

Jayne: So moving on to our own video, (show footage from start) which begins with the opening of a fairy-tale like book. This introduction of the character links back to the happy equilibrium for the first minute or so of the video. Daisy: As half of the video is narrative based, we see the protagonist, Kathy, walking and running around a forest. Although the location if quite typical of an acoustic rock video, as seen in James Morrisons video, we find that we have broken the conventions by using long shots during these forest scenes and few close ups. Hand held tracking shots are also used frequently, which creates realism for the viewers. Making it the same but different. Jayne: The performance side of the video, which we shot in the studio, clearly shows the artists iconography through costume choice and props, which are used. The majority of the performance shots stick to conventions, with plenty of close ups and well paced editing. However, we wanted to avoid using the male gaze (Laura Mulvey) in any section of the video, as voyeuristic cinematography is typical of the music video genre but as other acoustic artists such as Amy McDonald (quick clip) do not use this in theirs. The fact that the artist also plays the main protagonist in the narrative side of the video also fits into the conventions of a music video. Daisy: We used a lot of intertextuality in the narrative of our video, which according to Andrew Goodwin and Peter Fraiser is likely to appear in most music videos. This can be seen through the iconography of the artist during these scenes as she is wearing a red cape, linking to Little Red Riding Hood. We used the theme of fairy-tales throughout the narrative because we thought the title of the song links itself to a more fantasy based plot and we thought it would be very striking. This involved Cinderella when she looses a shoe and Snow White at the end of the video when she bites into the apple. This iconography fits with the quirky nature of the artist. Jayne: The lighting we use in the studio is, we think youll agree, quite striking. The idea for this came from another music video we saw during our research Ed Sheerans song You Need Me, I Dont Need You. (Show clip from the ES video). As you can see, the lighting is similar to our own video and we thought the way that the light fell on the artist was very defining and looked good. We thought mainly of this lighting style when setting our lighting up. (appropriate clips) Daisy: The editing we did for our video suits the conventions of a typical music video which has a pace matching the track. However, we kept in mind that we wanted as even a distribution as possible between studio and location shots. We tried to make it as seamless as possible and obviously tried to make sure the lip syncing was in time with the music, which we think we have achieved. We also used fast paced editing which is typical of the music video genre.

Jayne: Although there are no obviously dominant ideologies in our video, we have not used any alternate ones either, so the video can be considered very much mainstream and fitting to the acoustic rock conventions and artists image. Daisy: I think that we have developed the feel of our video by the muted colour pallet (blue filter) used for the location shots, which gives a slight old-film look and made the tone of the footage more sinister, making it stand out from the norm. We were aware that the lighting and some of the shaky camera movement in the location footage could have been better, as confirmed by audience feedback, but we didnt have equipment to make it so. Jayne: Although a lot of our video followed typical conventions, such as editing pace, frequent close ups and protagonist being the artist, according to audience feedback we broke conventions with the narrative and the fact that it was based on fairy tales. The fact that we also have the protagonist dying at the end of the video is unusual and not a happy ending, also breaking the conventions as in mainstream music videos this doesnt happen often and creating an enigma that is never answered does she really die? Especially because of the fairytale book opening and closing at the beginning and end of the video is also quite unique. Daisy: Moving onto our print products, we BROUGHT TO LIFE an album advertisement for a music magazine and an album cover, back and booklet. The conventions of the album cover are: usually prominently focused on an image of the artists face, with the artists logo (usually their name in a certain font), the cover should also be representative of the artists individual iconography. (show picture of album) For inspiration and research we analysed Ingrid Michaelsons album Be Ok. We noticed the conventions in the album cover which is primarily the fact that the image of the artist is the focus and the logo is underneath this. Jayne: Ingrids album is also representative of the artist herself because of the natural image/lack of makeup and simplistic colour scheme. The title of the album is written across the artists face in black paint, which acted as inspiration for the logo of Kathy Striker being painted across her face in our own album cover. (show picture of our album cover) We also looked at A Curious Thing the album from Amy McDonald, which showed the same conventions and also had the logo, as her name, which is in itself a convention of an album cover. However, some albums, particularly ones with a graphic design do break these conventions. Daisy: (photo of thank you panel) The inside panels of our album booklet contained a montage and a thank you page. For our thank you page, we didnt look for a specific example, but noticed that throughout album booklets that did have thank you pages, they tended to have one photo, with text over or next to it. We also noticed that their signature or name would be at the end of this text, to connect with the audience. When we created our own panel, we used a striking on

location shot of our artist, which fit with the colour scheme of the album (red, black, white). We used the same text as we used on the back and front covers of the album to stick to the same style and signed the artists name using the font chloes handwriting from dafont.com. Jayne: We found that the text itself usually contains thank yous to the artists family, friends and record label people, as well as their fans. We recreated this, as you can see above, by thanking the appropriate people. This makes the album seem more believable as a real product, that connects to real people. Our second panel for the album was our montage panel, (show image of Florence montage) which was inspired by the montage in the Florence and The Machine booklet for the album Lungs. (show picture of our montage). We created this with a range of pictures taken both on location and in the studio. We used the program inDesign in order to cut them out and layer them appropriately. We also think that the montage fits in with the quirky image of the artist and allows the consumer a closer look into the process of creating the album as some of the shots are not seen anywhere else. All the clothes and mise en scene of the pictures again fit with the iconography of the artist. Daisy: (show image of back cover) The back cover of the album sticks to the conventions of what you would expect of a back cover in the fact that it includes the track titles and name of the artist. It also has another image of the artist and all the small print usually on album covers in order to make it seem more authentic. The mise en scene that we used for the shot fits with the artists image and the guitar reinforces the fact that it is an acoustic rock album. The border around the edge of back cover connotes the fairy tale feel of the video and could also link in with the woods we see in the inside panels and on video. Overall, the front and back cover together come across as quite simplistic but still manage to convey the artist well, which is common of the acoustic rock genre. Jayne: The conventions of album adverts for magazines are an image of the artist (usually a medium shot to long shot), the artists name and logo and the date of the upcoming album. The genre is quite easy to identify in the posters, such as this one (show KT Tunstall poster) in which KT Tunstall is holding a guitar, linking to acoustic rock. Her clothing is black and simple with not much makeup, which links to the artists iconography and the fact that acoustic rock artists are more about the music than image because of the lack of promiscuity. The poster also has the artists name and album title. We have noticed that studio shots also seem the most popular option for advertisements. This is where we got the idea to break the conventions slightly and use an on location shot. Daisy: We also looked at this (show image) poster, which contains many of the same features but more information about the album itself. Our poster includes all the vital details artists and album name, logo and date of album release. The colour coding for

the text fits with the artists image. The fact that the poster links to the video, through costume and location, makes it perhaps more recognizable to an audience who may have seen the video but do not know of the artist. Although we broke conventions with the location we did use a long shot of the artist to show her whole costume and gave her a guitar to link to the genre of music. We also brightened the photo we used in photoshop to make the background slightly darker and her stand out more. The eye contact she has with the camera connects the artist more to the audience so hopefully they will buy the album! THE END.