Jordan Payne

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1.

In this still image we can see Ben Howard, the singer/songwriter of the song I used in my music video project, “Keep your head up”. The media convention that is being used in this still is that the composer/artists is in the music video and is seen performing the song in the music video. This convention is used in a lot of singer/songwriter music videos. The artists has a guitar in his hand and is singing along to the song. This image of a guitarist links to his magazine advert which you will see later on.

2.

In this still we can see Alex the male character in the music video. The convention that is being used is the use of actors/ characters to tell a story that relates usually to the artist or the song in the video. In our music video Alex was a guy who had just broken up with his girlfriend and was struggling to recover from it. We follow him on his emotional journey to get over his ex girlfriend. Acting out the story is the media convention in our music video.

3.

Here you can see the magazine advert or our music video. The convention seen in the magazine advert is the Largest text on the advert will have the Artists name in it. This is shown above. We put our artists name at the top as well so that the audience read that bit first. It is in big lettering so that it stands out above the rest of the writing and the reader will remember the name because it’s the first thing they read on the magazine advert.

4.

Here you can see the digipak layout. The convention used here is the symbolic image of the guitar on the front of the album cover. This image is used in the digipak, the magazine advert and the music video so the guitar links all three of the medias together. The guitar is a representation of the artists. When people think of ben Howard they think of his guitar and his acoustic sounds in his songs. This symbol is then effectively used on the front of the album cover and when people see it they will know straight away that the guitars represent Ben Howard. The guitar is like Ben Howards trademark.

5.

Here you can see another convention that we used in our music video. We involved the artists in the music video performance. This till is from the end of the video. When you watch the clip you can see him walking away into a woodland. This is a convention because the artists is also acting in the music video. By having the artists walk into the woods this relates to the girl character in the music video as she is also in the wooded area.

6.

Here you can see the still image of Hannah, the female character. In this shot we panned around her slightly. This is a media convention used in music videos. It is to get different viewpoints and angles of the certain person in the shot. We had our camera on rollers but which is also another media convention of music videos. This is used a lot to create a spinning effect of the camera going around the character.

7.

Camerawork is a very big part of any music video. The use of long shots are common in a lot of music videos. The still image above is showing off one of our long shots that we used in our video. We used this media convention because it establishes the shot location and gives the audience time to analyse the location and work our where the video is set. The long shot in our video is quite effective because the next shot of our female character is of her exiting the wooded area. So this shot basically shows that she is heading towards the exit through the long shot of the camerawork.

8.

Here we can see the female character looking into the distance. This shows she is thinking about her past. This shot not only shows her emotions but it also reflects the words in the shot. The lyrics about keeping your head up and staying strong through hard times and this is exactly what she is doing in the shot. This is a convention of music videos. We used this conventions as we thought it would be an effective way to link the shots to the lyrics.

9.

Lip syncing is the main focus of our editing. We collected all of our footage and synced it all together so that it looked as if each person in the shot was actually singing the song. Lip syncing is a media convention used to emphasise the lyrics and in this still image we have edited many people lip syncing together so it creates a better effect because they are all singing at the same time and in tune with each other.

10.

In a lot of singer/songwriter music video’s you see male artists with a unclean scruffy fashion look. While in our music we decided to challenge this convention and have our artists looking clean and trendy and fashionable. This made our artists stand out from all of the other singer/songwriter artists. We were trying to add the effect that our artists doesn’t follow the rule, he just does what he feels. We were hoping to set a new trend/look for all singer/songwriters. This is what made our character different in his music video.