Sunday 4 December 2011

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

Our media products use, develop and challenge many of the conventions used in professional ‘Alternative Hip-Hop’ and ‘Rap’ music videos. The aforementioned genres are those which I feel best represented the Black Eyed Peas at the time they released the song “Where Is The Love”, however since they have released this song they have produced more Pop/R&B style music. I detected elements of the song “Where Is The Love” that do meet expectations of the R&B genre, as it is quite an upbeat song. For these reasons I will compare our media products to the conventions of Hip-Hop, Rap and R&B genres.

AKON - Ghetto



Shots from AKON's music video










Shots from our music video








As you can see from the above images above, the locations used in our video meet the conventions of the locations used in the music video for “Ghetto” by AKON as they are both rundown and urban scenes. “Ghetto” fits into the R&B category and I feel that our music video uses many conventions of this particular media product. For example the use of tracking shots of the performer. Also the music video for “Ghetto” uses tracking shots of the artist to show their importance and track their ‘Journey’ through the song, we decided to use these shots as it would help to track the performers through the narrative of our video.

Eminem – Lose Yourself




Shots from Eminem's music video














Shots from our music video















Our media products use conventions of the Hip-Hop/Rap style song “Lose Yourself” by Eminem, we used shots of the artists performing to a crowd in our video. This is a popular convention of the Hip-Hop and Rap genre because this style of shot helps to promote the artists, and possibly make the audience want to be part of that crowd and therefore buy tickets for concerts etc.

50 Cent – In Da Club



Shots from 50 Cents music video













Shots from our music video














In our video we challenged the conventions of “In Da Club” along with the majority of rap videos, as they tend to be performed by black male artists, whereas we have used white English artists. Also the artists in rap videos tend to be very muscular, we have challenged this convention as our performers are quite an average size.

Justin Timberlake – I’m Lovin It

Our music video uses conventions of this video, it uses a series of fast shots to flow with the upbeat tempo of the song.

RizzleKicks – Down With The Trumpets

This video uses natural lighting, our video uses this convention but also develops it towards the end of the video when we include shots of the artists performing to a crowd, where artificial lighting is created by spotlights and mobile phones.

Ancillary Tasks


Below is the front cover of Eminem's album 'Recovery'.












We have challenged conventions of this album cover because in the background of the image a built up city can be seen. On our digipaks front cover we have used a run-down urban setting to emphasise the poverty and economic crisis which relates to the lyrics of our song choice.











Another difference between these two Album covers are that our cover clearly shows the band name, whereas Eminem's album cover does not have his name on it. We chose to include the band name as it is the band that we are trying to promote.

Our Digipak has met the majority of conventions of this genre for example the artists on the front of the digipak, this helps promote the artists and makes the album cover easily recognisable to fans of these arists. We have followed this convention as you can see from the picture above, this is our front cover for our digipak and we have promoted the artists on the front to introduce them to the audience and to portray their importance.

Other conventions of a digipak include things such as:
Record label
Bar code
Track list
Image of the artists
The artists website
Release date
Copyright logo
Album name

We used all of these conventions to make our digipak seem more professional and authentic, we have also developed the conventions of a digipak by using a Quick Response code on our digipak back cover along with a bar code so that audiences who have access to this technology can be taken directly to the band website via smartphone or otherwise.

As you can see from the image below, we have created a digipak not dissimilar style to the real Black Eyed Peas digipak, as we have used an image of the four artists and have included the band name and song name.












Magazine Advert
Some common conventions of a magazine advert are as follows:

Logo
Website
Similar image to the digipak
Name of artist/band
Record label
Release date
Same Font/Colour Scheme as digipak

We used the majority of these conventions on our magazine advert. We have also challenged and developed conventions of a magazine advert, as we produceed our magazine advert in  landscape format which is not a very common convention of a magazine advert. The image below is of a real magazine advert promoting the Black Eyed Peas, it is produced in portrait.

















The magazine advert above is very colourful and and attracts the audiences attention, and also the font and artists are clear and gives the audience a clear understanding of who these people are. Also the text is style is fairly similar to our magazine advert as we wanted these to look similar in terms of the artists on the front and the font used which we have done so in order to make it look more professional. Our magazine advert is similar as it includes the website, retailer name, the artists on the front, the logo, the digipak front cover and the name of the band. This shows that we have met conventions specific to this genre which is Hip Hop, Rap and R&B.















We met with the convention of using a similar or the same picture as to the digipak. We edited it so that the background as in black and white, but the artists remained in colour. We did this so this image which is used for the magazine advert can promote the artists more than the song because we wanted the audience to know what the band looks like to make them more recognisable.

We wanted to use the same font as the title of the front cover of the digipak because then audiences will relate the two products together, as they share a clear brand identity.

Another convention we met was of the website. We met this because we wanted to give some leading information to the audience if they wanted to know more about the album or the band as a whole. Not only that but we felt by imprinting this onto the magazine advert it would give it a more professional finish, which it did.

In conclusion we mainly used conventions rather than challenge them as we felt it would make the magazine advert look more professional, although we have developed and challenged various conventions to make our music video stand out from similar products.

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