EVALUATION... QUESTION 1

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCTION USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS? 

Initially choosing our song was a hard decision, moving from ‘the clash’ slowly developing onto completely different genres, unfortunately not very know or conventional ones. But that was our choice because we love a challenge! Originally ‘Emel’ our artist is not particularly known. The song that we have used does not have a published copy, CD, or even an advertisement. We were starting from scratch. The original artist did not have any inspiration to give us except for her voice, not even an official genre. So we have used our imaginations and have decided that she was unconventional. She is unique, her music is an updated version of electronic music with beats called ‘dubstep’. The reason our artist doesn’t fit into this genre exactly is because of her voice which is somewhere between soul and R&B. Considering that this music is not as mainstream as say pop, adjusting the style of video was incredibly difficult provoking us to challenge conventions of the genre. This genre has a particularly niche audience which adds to the lack of influence from typical conventional pop videos. However, we used a pop video conventional strategy in terms of 'editing to the beat', where we'd mark the timeline every four or so beats and and adjust our imagery to those cuts. We turned to other artists that were most similar to ours reflecting on their style, one artist in particular that was recommended to us by teacher Dan, was Burial. His music is also very unique involving a similar style. 

We then also turned to artist such as Lykke Li, she isn’t a particularly well know artist either (hasn’t made it to the charts yet) but her video ‘Get some’ was perfect idealistic. The variety of camera shots made it interesting to observe, and promoted her as an artist belonging to a particular style. The close ups helped us to identify with the artist’s face and look closely at the pronunciation of the words, which was something that we later put into our own video. Cutaways in the editing to medium shots of her body levels reflects on her emotions and what you ought to feel when watching the video, we had also used this effect in our own video, because we found that having a variation of shots was really effective to watch and also kept us interested as an audience. Other great factors that make the video brilliant, is the variation of speed; fast and slow edits. 

They add to the mood and movements of the artist. Our video contained slower motion where we wanted to dramatise the scene and faster edits where we wanted to add on anticipation and tension. Mirror frames are used effectively in this video to provoke curiosity making the viewer want to watch it again. The image of the artist has been conveyed through mise en scene. The creators used the lighting well as the singer is constantly on a spotlight to draw full attention to her-self but also using split screen edits so that she is always in the shot using a variety of ways. The video I believe succeeds through the use of amplification, giving it the right amount of illustration “like a shot gun”, the artist hand gestures shot gun and it adds dramatic effect to the video making it all feel interlinked, or using the bird in a cage to express of 'entrapment' because of the connotations that the bird carries, similarly with our own where we’d use heavy make up to make our artist look desirable and have a contrast to make our black and white shots look intriguing giving the artist almost a Gothic feel, mixing its current styles to make it more appealing to a wider range of audiences. The same dedication went into the artist’s outfit all of it balances out and has a feel for the music and representation of the song. 

Looking at my previous study, the typical conventions of a digipak are to include the artist’s name, album name, a spine that includes both of those characteristics. Track listing on the back, a barcode, production at the bottom, the artist’s label/ sponsors, where you can buy the CD etc. The advertisement should also consist of artist’s name, album name etc, but doesn't need to go so far as the sponsors.

When working on my digipak, I thought about the imagery carefully, as I had over 150 photos to chose from, various locations and the big part of all this was trying to put it all together and make it flow. Every move that I made in the making of my digipak I thought everything through carefully. For instance, the font, what type of font I was going to use and how effective it will be, the front cover image, will it be capturing enough to the person who is browsing in store, are the letters big enough on the spine to be able to tell which CD you’re looking at from the side. When taking all this into consideration it took a while to put everything together, but I am proud of my finished product. What I could say it that I personally think that colourful CD covers are more effective, however, the reasons for mine being greyscale is because I wanted it to fit in with the music video, so that the ancillary work and video are interlinked in some way (not just including the same person). Looking at the Christina Aguilera cover, it seems that her eyes follow you around the room as you look at the cover from any angle I have tried to use this same technique in my digipak. The back and inside panels were a lot easier to work with, the only challenge that I found on the back was making sure that the writing was clear enough for the buyer to read the song titles easily and not forgetting to include little things that were crucial, like the bar code or the artist’s label. On the inside panel it was important to adjust the size of the circle where hypothetically the CD would be placed. To add a bit more creativity to it I added a quote that could have been from one of the songs on the album, but the imagery that I used on the inside panel didn’t include the artist’s face because I didn’t want to take the main focus off the front cover. This brings me to my advertisement. It is a convention to put the digipak cover on the poster, but I was afraid with it looking too clattered and possibly ‘tacky’ so what I decided to do instead, considering that it took me so long to find an effective video for my digipak I had decided to use the same image on the advertisement, this way it would be large memorable and most importantly, in a shop, recognisable. I decided to keep the advertisement simple because I wanted to show the release date, and ended up including a small amount of facts at the bottom , again following convention like the artist’s main website, or where you can purchase the album etc. My advertisement reminds me a lot of Rihanna’s advertisement for her album ‘loud’. It consists of the same simplicity and fulfils its purpose.