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

The Music Video and Digipak production that we have made represent the target genre that we intended to go for. We had done this in many different ways. First of all we research all about our specific target audiences of similar artists and bands and worked from that. we looked at bands such as the 'Foals' and 'Heavy Vegetable'. The specific target audience was indie/folk. The main generalization of a person would be skinny jeans buttoned up polo shirt or just plain tee, with longish hair and some sort of plimsolls shoe e.g. Vans or Converse.

'The Foals'


This is an image of the foals, which represents the target audience of indie/geek rock.

 

 The way we chose the actors to adjust the way they behaved throughout the video in the shoot. We planned quite a lot before hand to know what we were doing with the costume and what was happening within the shots to specifically suit the target audience and therefore they can relate or see themselves reflected on to them. This links in with the (Lacan theory)of the audience being able to view themselves or what they look like through media. The costume we decided to use in the music video shoot fitted well with the specific genre of indie folk which the dress code was based on a 'geeky masculinity theme'. The costumes alone, we dont think was enough to make the video all the 'indie' genre, so we decided on touching on other little things such as the mise en scene like the bicycle and the whole theme of the beach. We realised during our research that the specific genre of music type was very dominated by the male gender, so therefore we made sure this suited our music video as well.

Research into similar artists and their album covers and adverts showed us a lot about the genre, so therefore when i had done my digipak i had made sure that it didnt look to mainstream and indie/folk music is more low fi music. So when i chose my format of the CD case i decided to chose a simplistic format with just the fold in and out case. On top of that the font that i used seemed to fit well as it looked handmade and amateur yet artistic and stylistic.

Our music video has many conventions of the intended genre thqat we were going for, which includes the narrative and how it is simplistic but yet has chapters to give it a good storyline. The lifestyle which is represented by the narrative and actors is very carefree and relaxed which i believe sets the scene to the intended target audience and therefore they can relate to it well.

Also the other part of my coursework shows the same intention of the genre but as a digipak and an advert. As we researched into similar artists from details from the content, e.g. the NME rating (the indie/rock/folk genre would be in this particular magazine) to just the layout of the advert and all of the album cover (front, insides and back). I think that the imagery and font work particuarly well with the genre as the font is artistic yet amateur and the images used are of the actors in their costumes so it suits it well.

Todays youth is predominantly seen as either a 'hoody' or some other sort of word which comes across as threatening, as teenagers today have a very negative representation. During the video shootand the album cover artwork, we and i tried to make to the audience seem rather carefree and fun, therefore showing the opposing side to the negativity of teens.