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

Video influences


The original text of our video was The ting tings- 'That's mot my name'. The genre of the song falls categorically into indie/pop music. The sound of the video had a bold, fun feel to it and so therefore we tried to emulate and capture this by use of bright colour mostly and split screening. We opted to use these conventions as we didn't want our video to be to similar to the original. I personally feel that our video isn't similar to the original in any form as The ting tings video follows a narrative of disjuncture, however our video has a strong narrative and follows a narrative pattern of illustration.

 

We took the idea of body swapping by using split screening techniques taken from 'Example-Kickstarts'

in order to add an element of fun to the video. We also wanted to follolw media conventions as this technique is a common feature that can be seen across numeral urban music video's. However whilst this is quite a common convention, it can be argued that in fact this is quite an unconventional convention in that in most video's the artist is seen in a whole format as opposed to being chopped up into different sections. However, arguablly,  in the videos  that opt to incorporate this convention it seemsto work well. Other videos that use this convention include the likes of ' nothing on you' by B.O.B which can be seen below. 



                    



Our body swapping attempt



Initially we were aiming to have a different colour behind each figure for the back ground,

however there were issues with the chroma keying and so therefore we decided to leave the body swapping shots with the green screen as the background.

 

We were influenced by the idea of close ups of lips from 3OH!3's ' My first kiss' and Dizze Rascal's 'I luv u' and so used it to represent each individual girl and to add an element of  'sex appeal' without

appearing too degrading or appealing We wanted to challenge conventions of pop video's that commonly see women being dismembered and depicted as sex objects. Most commonly this convention is seen across hip hop and pop video's. We try to depict the main artist as being a strong independent female and so we did not want to confuse this by turning her into a sex object and so she is seen in the video fully clothed in a floral playsuit accomponeid by a leather jacket to avoid looking over sexualised. However we do follow conventions of pop video by allowing the male counterpart character to play the womanizer or the "player" which is a common convention seen across a number of musical genres, most commonly hip-hop.



We also used the concept of split screening for our video, inspired by example's 'kickstarts again'   another convention that is commonly seen across a number of music video's. We opted to use this convention as we felt that it looked effective opposed to just using the simple close up shots on their own all the time, creating a more interesting visual approach.

Digipak/advert influences

I took the butterfly theme for both my digipak and advertisement from the mariah carey album  to add an element of freedom and to show independence.

The girls aloud album cover influenced my colour scheme as I thought the costumes the girls were wearing complemented the colour scheme along with the text.

 I used the idea of the positioning of the image in the corner as opposed to a centred image as I felt that it looked more effective as it's a simpler and less common approach.

  
A number of album cover's inspired my final choice to have a close up image of the artist featured on the front cover, as through research I have identified that this is a common convention of not just indie artists but female artists. It is also a highly conevntional marketing device to have a close up image of a new artist, who isn't as established, as it is important for the audience to  be able to identify the artist. I opted for a close up image as I believe it creates a sensual and intimate connection with the audience aswell as following media conventions. I particularly like the fact that on my digipak cover the artist can be seen looking directly into the camera, this creates a direct connection with the audience as the artist is looking directly at them. 






Overall I feel that my digipak and advertisement follow basic media conventions as I incorporate barcodes, logos, and use the same text across both products. In addition to this I have used similar images in that the main image for the advertisement is taken from the inside left panel. Finally The artist is also seen wearing the same costume in all three products.