Evaluation Task 1 - Part 5: In what ways does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Conventions are the generally accepted ways of doing something.  Conventions can be used, supported, reiterated.  They can be challenged to deliberately broke to subvert conventions.  In evaluation of the question set I feel that I have drawn on the conventions of media products in my own campaign.  The use of these conventions is evident in the construction of my own products, for example the use of a lip sync and performance element in my music video as well as the psychological thriller style narrative that was used in my thriller opening sequence , this is supported by my own research into the forms and conventions  of music videos and opening sequences for thrillers.  

At the same time I have sought to develop and been able to challenge conventions, for example, I have decided to not use an imagery of the band on my CD Digipak and I have decided to place the track list on the inside of the CD Digipak rather than the back cover.  The reason why I decided to do these things was to differentiate my product in a competitive music industry market and I have attempted to challenge audience expectations in order to bring something new to the media forms.  

Media Conventions are ultimately relied upon for communicating the right message to the intended audience, but they can also deviate from these expectations in order to aid the sale of the star image that I wanted to promote.

Evaluation Task 1 - Part 4: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Task 1 - Part 3: In what ways does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Task 1 - Part 2: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms ad conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Task 1 - Part 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

PART 1 - INTRODUCTION

I am going to be looking at how my music video, website and CD Digipak have used, developed and challenged conventions that have been used in real media products. I will essentially be looking at how my music publicity campaign is similar to other media products as well as how it differs from other media products.

Before I started to evaluate my own product, I first looked up what conventions are and what some typical conventions of music videos, websites and CD Digipaks are. This helped me to understand in what ways my music publicity campaign was conventional and in what ways it was unconventional. 

In terms of music videos, the conventions you are likely to see can be separated into technical and symbolic conventions. Technical conventions relate to the styles of camera, editing, lighting and sound whereas symbolic conventions relate to mise-en-scene, costumes, props, location/setting colours, makeup and arrangement of band members. For websites, some of the conventions include having a homepage, biography, music video and album links as well as photos of the band members and information about upcoming tours. CD Digipak conventions include having the band name in a larger font than the album name, having a track list on the back as well as having the band name and album name on the spine.

From my research I gained a deeper understanding about how utilising conventions makes it easy for an audience to understand what type of text they are consuming and enable them to situate a song and artist within a musical genre. By following established conventions, I was able to, as a producer, increase the chances that our music publicity campaign would convey our intended message to the target audience.

Negus argues that music videos are essentially the explicit and unashamed promotion of the artists's 'image' as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption, therefore, comparing them to a promotional tool.

CONVENTIONAL - Typical/ Expected/ The 'norm'

UNCONVENTIONAL - Atypical/Unexpected/Not the 'norm' 

Coming up with a band name

We have been trying to come up with a band name for quite a long time now but nothing seemed to be working and we didn't like any of the ideas that we had come up with enough to put the on the products. 

We wanted to come up with a band name that tied in well with the star image that we have created for them as well as work harmoniously with their USP and their organic style. I had also suggested that we come up with something that reflects a theme or idea that we have referenced or used within the 3 products of the campaign as I thought that this would give us a good starting point. From that point we started to brainstorm ideas. 

One day, whilst Chris and I were working on the website, Chris had the idea of B-side label. We liked this idea as it was ambiguous and it would get the audience intrigued as to what it meant, however we weren't sure whether it was appropriate for the genre of music that the and create and we also thought that it was too long. We then realised that we liked this name because it was ambiguous abut we wanted something shorter. 

I had the idea that we could use a fancy word for time travelling or something to do with the movement of time or the concept of time due to the fact that this was reflected in our music video when the time period jumped from the 1929's to the future. I thought that we could use the word for the fear of time travelling or eve the fear of time. However, upon our research we realised that there were no specific words that were short and ambiguous that related to this theme and so we abandoned this idea. 

Evelyn then had the idea of coming up with something that related to the scientific element that we explored in the music video. She suggested that we look at the names of the elements in the periodic table as these are occasionally short and ambiguous words. 

She found 'aether' and instantly we knew it was going to work. It was scientific, ambiguous and a short and snappy word that was easy for audiences to remember. It then felt even more appropriate as a band name when Evelyn started telling us about the history of this scientific element as it was very popular around the 1920's which not only ties in well with the 1920's element of our music video but it also reflects the genre of music very well. 

We then decided to go with aether as our band name as it just felt right and all the members of our production group liked it. 

This is what the element aether looks like

Generating song names for the website

We have been trying to come up with some song names to go on the website and the album. We had to think about what kind of feel we want audiences to get from our album and we also had to consider names that would tie in with the genre of music and also with the name of the track used for our music video. 

I was responsible for coming up with some options for the band name whilst Chris and Evelyn worked on the album and the website. I came up with some of the song names purely from my imagination and creativity but for some of them I used the website song name which helps you to generate song names.

Song Name Generator

Here were my first options for song names:

After sending this email I got some feedback from the other members of my group on the suggestions that I provided them. They said that they liked the suggestions but that they were quite long and so I then decided to come up with some more suggestions that were shorter.

My other, shorter suggestions

They said that they liked these ones but they were quite short. So I then suggested that we should take a selection of the ones that they liked from both lists and use of combination as then we would get the best of both worlds. 

We then proceeded to choose a section from both lists that I had generated in order to get a combination of long and short song names. Chris then had the task of translating these into Thai as this was a convention that we wanted to not only use for the album name but also for the list of songs. 

Here is the finalised list of songs that we produced and they are also translated in to Thai. I think that the song names look very good and carry on the theme that we created in the album name as well as tying in well with the genre of music that the band create and their star image.