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In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Presentation
Music Video - Conforming to & Challenging Conventions
Notions of Looking
I used a wide range of well thought out camera angles to capture footage of the artists' body to conform to Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze' theory. The theory suggests that a media text will appeal more to a male audience when the camera focuses on the 'assets' a woman has. A clear example of this in my music video would be when the artist is laying on the beach during the final hook. One of the reasons I chose to present my artist in this way is because it is very prominent in music videos by female stars. Artists including Rihanna, Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus often use their bodies as a means to promote themselves and their music.
Theme of Depression
As with many music videos of the alternative genre, the overarching theme is depression. Depression is typically conveyed in music videos through a lack of colour and clear distress and emotion in facial expressions. Some media texts, including my own, take these conventions a step further and portray a suicide or an attempt. Shown through a loose narrative, my video is a metaphor for the artist contemplating suicide but deciding against it; and ultimately overcoming her demons. I have shown this through the transitions between a colour and black & white image, as this represents her conflicting state of mind. For the narrative itself; I have conveyed the suicide attempt by having the artist walk into the ocean until she is fully submerged, before rising back out. I achieved the effect by reversing a shot of the artist falling back into the sea. Depression is a topic covered by many alternative artists, including LP (the artist for 'Muddy Waters'). In the music video 'Lost on You' her depression is conveyed in the more subtle way of cigarettes and empty bottles in her home to show she is struggling to cope with a breakup, as well as the overall tone of the video being very dark with a limited colour palette.
Lip Syncing
To aid the visuals of my music video, I had the artist lip sync the lyrics of the song. In several scenes, I used a close up of the artist lip-syncing and converted it to a black & white image to disorient the viewer from the rest of the narrative and performance. This makes the performance much more believable and can also allow for the audience to feel closer to the artist. Music videos are often a substitute for a live performance if the audience cannot reach a venue to see the artist to perform live, so the inclusion of lip syncing allows for this media text to strongly resemble a live performance. Most real world artists, especially mainstream A List stars, lip sync in their music videos for this exact reason, including Ariana Grande and Bruno Mars.
Visuals & Music
Each shot cut to the underlying beat of the instrumental. I also confined the transitions between black & white and colour to the deep elongated vocals heard near the beginning of the track. This gives the effect of the visuals and music working together to create links throughout the music video. This can also be conveyed in other ways, as in Bon Jovi's 'Livin' On a Prayer' where the instruments that the audience can see being played are also the instruments that can be heard on the track. As I did not feature a band performance in my music video, I could not include this particular convention within my own product.
Mise-en-Scene
When it comes to my choice of costume, I decided for the artist to wear black clothing to show her depressive state of mind. This works well as the locations are bright and exotic, so it makes it clear that her depression is all within her head and the outside world does not feel as she does. This also gives the uplifting message that things do get better and she will not always feel this way. 'High by The Beach' also uses a similar location of the beach, even though Lana Del Rey is singing about a breakup with an ex-partner. Like Del Rey's clothing, the artist is wearing an outfit that is very minimalistic to show her vulnerability to the situation.
Visuals and Lyrics
The lyrics to the song are about contemplating suicide and feeling alone. However, instead of conforming to generic conventions and using a dark setting, I used beaches and mountains in Spain to contrast the lyrics. As the song is titled 'Muddy Waters' I did include water into my production as a symbol, but used the sea rather than a literal body of muddy water. Although this is uncommon in music videos, 'Rockabye' by Clean Bandit and Anne-Marie have also challenged this convention. The song is about a single mother struggling to raise her young child, yet the visuals and colours are similar to that of my own music video.
Digipak - Conforming to & Challenging Conventions
Front Cover
On the front cover of my digipak, I have included an image of the artist. This enables a consumer to easily recognise the star; possibly from a music video or a previous album. Almost every real world album cover features an image of the artist, including those of the A list stars featured below. These real world front covers also display the name of the artist or their logo much larger than the title of the album, which is something I purposely challenged when creating my own digipak. I instead decided to have the name of the album title in a font slightly larger than the name of the artist. I chose to do this because whilst LP is a relatively unknown artist, the title 'Death Valley' is eye catching, and immediately gives an impression of dark themes within the lyrics of the tracks that my target audience can identify with. The typography is large, bold and easily noticed in order to catch the eyes of the consumer.
Back Cover
For the back cover of my digipak I used an image from the sunset over mountains shot in my music video. I chose this because it is very vibrant and just as appealing as the front cover. As well as this, the mountains could be the 'Death Valley' that the title is referring to. I also numbered the track list as this appears to be common in real world media products including Ariana Grande's 'Yours Truly' and Adele's '21'. Another convention I followed is including the copyright information, record label logo and a barcode at the bottom of the image. However, I challenged the convention of using another picture of the artist on the back cover. Real artists use exclusive images on the back cover of their albums to make the consumer feel closer and more connected to the star. I decided against this because I have exclusive images inside the digipak on a separate panel, so did not feel that this was necessary.
Disk
For the disk, I have the name of the artist and the album title centred at the top, similarly to Rihanna's CD below. I have also included legal information and a track list on my disk. However, the copyright information is written on the circumference of the disk in a different font as this is not part of the product or the LP brand. I haven't challenged any conventions here, but rather conformed to them in order to create an authentic media product.
Advert - Conforming to & Challenging Conventions
Image
Many female artists are featured on their magazine adverts when promoting their album, and the more conceptual ideas are usually left to bands or artists of the rock genre. I chose to not feature my artist on my magazine advert. I decided on this when realising that my image of the sunset is very memorable to my target audience through the use of composition and colours that will catch their attention. 'Love Is Noise' by The Verve also uses this technique by featuring a scenic landscape on their advert. However, whilst this is an enlarged version of the image on their album cover, my digipak features a different picture as the front cover; challenging this convention further.
Titles
Adding titles within the music video helps create a brand identity for the artist. In the case of my music video, using a white sans serif font gives a sophisticated yet hard hitting feel to the LP brand. A similar effect was intended for the music video for 'Wild'. The hard hitting instrumental compliments the bold white font used for the titles.
I used Google Drive to upload my Music Video, Advert & Digipak. Although most Music Videos are uploaded to sites such as Vevo or YouTube, I had to conform to copyright laws so could not upload my work on these sites. I chose to use Google Drive because it is fast and easy to upload content. The Music Video can then be embedded to my online portfolio or posted to social media to receive audience feedback. I would consider this a drawback because my audience need to either visit my portfolio or obtain a link to see my final product. Feedback can also only be given via comments on social media and not at the source of the video itself.
Star Image
Throughout my music video, I presented my artist as a real world star through the use of her performance and lip syncing during the song. 'Star Image' is important for real-world artists because it gives them their own identity, which is something I tried to recreate within my music video. Through her movements and facial expressions, I think that I have created a specific identity for my star. She is presented as damaged and hurt, which is also identifiable within my primary target audience. 'Star Image' is also important for real world stars including Jessie J who used to sport a black bob hairstyle, and Michael Jackson who owned his iconic sequin-covered glove.
Titles
Although the titles in are in large, bold typography to conform to advert conventions, I have confined them to the lower half of the advert. This was in order for the sunset on the top half to grab the attention of the target audience. For the same reasons as for my digipak, the album title is in the largest font with the name of the artist underneath. Below this is information on the main singles as well as the address to their web page, similarly to the poster for Jessie J's 'Who You Are'. Another similarity between this advert and my own is the black background. However, where Jessie uses a clear black box to display her information, my advert uses a dark area within the image to display information.
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