Draft of Evaluation Question 1

We have tried to make our video as realistic as possible. Using a solo artist, and showing her simply getting ready for work, changing outfits, doing her and make up. Also using the sweet shop, showing she’s working in a ‘retail store’ and her looking bored and not enjoying herself, is realistic, as this is what is like for a percentage of our target audience. Using aspects of realism in our media product, helps sell the stars image, and also create more of a fan base, as she is allowing her fans to relate to this. It is also showing that she too is also an ordinary teen, which also create an ‘idol’ image, which is what most pop artist have.

The conventions of solo artist videos, include a lot of “repeatability”. In the song that we have chosen, repeats the chorus a lot, and as it’s a pop song, it has a memorable chorus for an audience to sing along to. Although we didn’t repeat the same shots for the chorus sections, we tried to have the same amount of clips for each chorus, to keep it energetic and catching.
We added a lot of close up shots of our artists to add a ‘first person mode of address’ which directly engages the audience, and as our video cuts from acting a narrative, to lip syncing, it shows our artists to look professional and authentic. It also makes it look more realistic.
My video is all about my “Stars image”, and as our genre is pop/folk, we have also not only got to sell our artists voice, but also their looks and a nice wholesome safe image. As we’ve used a solo artist for our media product, it was easier to use real life conventions, and to make sure we sold our artists star image we included close up shots, movements shots and also shots of her in different outfits.
 

I have used the amplification genre, where the lyrics of my media product do sometimes illustrate the lyrics, but also they don’t link at all. However there still is a link to the song, as we’ve used pop conventions, by keeping it upbeat, and energetic by using close up shots, quick shots and movement/dancing shots. Also, 95% of the shots we have our artist lip syncing, looking directly at the camera, this is one of the main music video conventions, especially for pop videos. We’ve tried to add a lot of camera movement, but because out artist is already moving in the shot, and a lot are quick shots, we mainly used the panning on longer shots. This allows the energy to still be kept in the video.

DIGIPAK & POSTER STUFF 

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

Digipak and Poster;

I challenge a conventions by using the same photo of both of my ancillary texts. This is because I felt that it would be easier for people to identify my artist, as it’s almost a copy of the album cover, just a little different. This would help advertisement and sales of my album. By using the same photo for both media products, it helps linking my product together. A lot of artists use this convention, e.g. Jessie J uses her album cover at the top of her poster and Ellie Goulding uses the same photo and also has a small photo of the actual album in the right hand corner of the poster.

I challenged a convention by not having the name of my artist on my digipak. I felt that just having the album name ‘Keys’ spread out across the bottom below the picture was enough as I wanted to go for a simple but eye catching front cover. 

By using the same photo on both ancillary texts, I develop a convention by re-positioning the photo on the poster so it allows the photo to command the poster.
I’ve used a lot of forms and conventions from real life media products in my ancillary texts. I’ve positioned my artist central in my digipak, and had her looking directly at the camera. I’ve used colours like pink, and had her wearing pink lipstick, to give the audience a girly feel about the album. I’ve presented my artist well on both media products, and she is lit well, this is important on any pop products, as pop artists give off the ‘perfect’ look, however as our artist has a ‘pop/folk’ look, we still wanted her to look almost perfect, but we stayed away from any over the top make up like Jessie J’s lipstick. This is because we wanted to challenge the conventions, and make it simple and neat, linking in with her music, but to still get that poppy feel about the digipak we added a little booklet with the lyrics in. This idea is used in a lot of pop albums, and we wanted to copy this convention.