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

The task assigned to us was to produce a Music Video Promo, a Digipak and a Website as a package for a specific genre and target audience to promote an unsigned artist’s album release. Each element of the package works in different ways to entice the target audience into buying the album. A Music Promo is designed to show the audience the band image. It gives the audience a chance to see the band giving them the opportunity to understand what the band would be like if they were going to see them live. It also gives sponsors that may be supporting the band a chance to advertise some of their other products as product placement, for example, Katy Perry’s ‘this is how we do’ music promo features brands like Gucci, Prada and YSL (all popular brands that cost a lot of money and are known for high-end fashion that a lot of celebrities wear).

This is a good way for different well-known brands to be advertised as young, impressionable teenagers will be drawn more to these product placements as they associate them with famous Celebrities and singers making them more susceptible to it. In our promowe used product placement by showing the names of the makers of each of the insturments we used as this would make some audience members inclined to purchase the same instruments. Digipak’s are a way of giving the audience more than just a CD as a digipak gives the purchaser a brief insight into the bands biography as well as a little biography about each member of the band. They can also be used as a way of getting a limited edition version of the album on release but with added extras such as mini posters and individual images of the band. The Digipak is also designed for the purchaser to be given a DVD of one of their live performances as well as the CD so that they can hear the album beforehand and they can watch the live gig to see how the band perform the songs live. Digipaks can be a way of promoting some of the bands merchandise and discounts for that merchandise on either the bands or the manufacture’s website giving the band a better opportunity at promoting the merchandise as well as more indepth information about the bands background and the band members. An essential part of the bands advertising scheme is to have a website for additional information such as tour dates and locations, ticket prices as well as the bands official merchandise. The website will have some of the same information as the Digipak however it will be in more detail giving the audience additional information on the band members and the tour dates/locations so that the band can become globally recognisable.  We used inspiration from the limited edition ‘Green Day’ albums ‘Bullet in a Bible’
and ‘Greatest Hits’ as we felt that they conveyed the bands personalities and the simplicity of the digipak’s made the look more appealing as they are not over crowded with unnecessary items which was the look we wanted to achieve with our own digipak as we felt that it would be more beneficial to go with a more simplistic approach to the text.  We decided to use amplification for the digipak as we wanted to take a line from the song and use it as a visual representation for the rest of the texts that we are creating as we felt that this would make the texts recognisable when being advertised and would also make the products more unique. The Green Day digipak’s are mainly image based however as this is the band’s first digipak, we wanted to give the audience more detail about the band itself and the band members so that they could become more acquainted to them making them more recognisable.   

The products that we will be producing will be synergised as this will make it easier for the audience to associate certain products or images with the band making them more inclined to purchase the products. The same images will be used throughout the product line as we want to make it recognisable straight away. There have been discussions of using convergence to ensure that the products can be used on multiple platforms such as gaming consoles and tablets as there are vast quantities  of audience members who would benefit from having these products on these platforms as they can store the products or download them on iTunes etc making the text more accessible and the more platforms the product is sold on the more profit the band would make and would also make it more appealing to the audience as it is using modern media technologies.

 A pop promo has a multitude of elements that need to be considered when being created such as the mise-en-scene, performance, narrative, camera work, editing and actors because everything that appears in a promo has a reason and so these things need to be thought about in great detail before being put into the promo. For each genre of music these elements change. For example, in Nikki Minaj’s Anaconda, the mise-en-scene is very exotic and the costume is very provocative making it very appealing to the male gaze and uses close ups of some of the phallic symbols and provocative areas of the women’s body.

Whereas in Oasis’ Some Might Say promo, the mise-en-scene is very 1990’s (baggy jumpers and jeans with trainers) and is set in a concert area. The camera work is slopping in places however this adds to the authenticity of the promo as it represents the bands persona and shows them as being a relaxed group. The conventions also change depending on which genre and target audience the promo is being made for. The genre that our group decided to study was Pop Punk as we felt that it would be the most interesting genre to study and it was also a favoured genre throughout the group. This genre also comes with a multitude of benefits for editing as it is fast paced and requires a lot of instruments which tested our editing skills as the music needed to be lip synced and the instruments needed to be in time with the music as well as the pace being quickened to make the video more exciting.

Our Influences

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLjTOpkplyI

Location/ Set – Narrative

The location for our narrative was set in the lead singer’s (Courtney) house as we felt that it looked the most appropriate due to the colour scheme of her living room and also it is a large house allowing us to film multiple shots at different angles giving us more footage to use when editing. The reason we wanted her living room for filming was because the colour scheme was different shades of green and slight hints of blue and white which is the main colour scheme of our ancillaries and we wanted to make the colours stand out as the colours emphasise feelings such as jealousy, sadness and envy which is what we wanted to convey throughout the video. We felt that having the promo in a homely environment would be unconventional as it wouldn’t be common for a promo to be based in a comforting environment.

Location/ Set- Performance:

The location for our performance was on the stage in the school hall as we felt that it would benefit the promo as we wanted to create a concert like situation as we wanted to use our inspiration for Oasis as we saw this a lot in their videos and we felt that it would be appropriate for the circumstances. The colour of the curtain also linked with the colour scheme for the ancillaries which were another appeal for filming there. We used inspiration from Paramore’s music promo ’That’s what you get’ as it was set in a homely environment and we felt that this would be appropriate as it was unconventional for a band of  the pop punk genre to be in a and it would set as a good contrast for the promo as the stage is generally associated with a lot of nervous energy whereas the home is thought of as a calm environment, whoch we found evident in Paramore’s video.  

Costumes:

Courtney- we wanted the lead singer to stand out from the other band members and looking at the colours that other bands had been wearing, we felt that a baggy white shirt and skinny jean were the most appropriate as it shows the artists being quite relaxed and casual however looking smart which is what we wanted to convey through the costume. We were also using the conventions of a typical 90’s pop promo as we felt it give the promo a more retro vibe but still keeping in with modern styles   

Luke- because we were looking at the pop punk genre, we wanted to have an actor that looked very pop punk however we wanted him look fashionable for this era of music so we decided that he should look similar to Courtney and have a plain black t-shirt and black jeans showing that he is very casual. This is also represents his frame of mind about the relationship between him and Courtney. We wanted to make Luke look retro too, as the style of modern day clothing is resulting back to that era and we wanted to make the promo relatable to the modern day audience which was why we felt that we should use a retro style of clothing but put in in a modern environment.

Tom, Bailey and Sam- again leading with the smart casual theme we decided to have the three boys wearing smart trousers and shirts. We decided to have Bailey and Tom wearing black as we felt that the small amount of colour being shown form Sam’s shirt would be enough to resemble the colour scheme.

Props- to make sure that the promo was believable we decided to use real instruments as this would create the illusion that the actors playing the instruments were actually playing the song. The instruments consisted of two guitars (which looked like Fender Stratocaster’s which were are very popular brand of guitar used by bands of the pop punk genre) a drum kit (which was a white colour making it a contrast to the black costume) and a microphone so that it looked like Courtney was actually singing the song and like she was at a band practice.  We also used an iPhone for the narrative props as we wanted the video to be relatable to our target audience and now days a lot of people have an
iPhone making it more relatable and modern. One of the key elements the we decided to focus on was the high heels that are featured in the song as we felt that this would be an unconventional way of representing the genre as it has elements of both pop and punk throughout and we wanted to convey these elements by using the conventions from both and combining them. We felt that the guitars conveyed the punk elements as they are most commonly associated with the punk genre and we wanted to use a prop or an item of clothing that would be associated with the pop genre which was why we decided to make the high heel shoes a key element of the production as they are items of clothing that people would associate with the pop genre which also gave us the opportunity to incorporate the illustrated high heels from the lyrics of the song as this would synergistically link with the other media texts. 

Editing

The editing for the promo was the most difficult aspect out of everything as it needed to be lip-synced and needed to be cut to the beat of the song. The reason we wanted the promo to be cut to the beat was because it is a very popular aspect of a lot of music promos as it builds pace and makes it more exciting when the audience member is watching it. We wanted to conform to the stereotypical editing style of most pop punk videos by cutting to the beat as we felt that this would be the best way to edit as it would fit in more with the conventions of a pop punk promo. Even though we didn’t use Final Cut Pro, we still found it challenging as we found new ways of editing on iMovie as we found ways that would allow us to use more precision with our editing rather than using the traditional methods.