In what ways does your media product use, develop

or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

By Sarah Warren

Evaluation Question 1

Introduction• In this task we were given a brief  of making a promotional

package for a music video. This included a music video, an album advert and a digipak.

• We decided to go for a song in the pop genre so while making our music video and promotional package we had to take into consideration all of the characteristics and style of music videos and the key characteristics and styles that distinguish a pop music video, as being in the pop genre.

Andrew Goodwin's conventions of a music video

Genre Characteristics• A genre characteristic is different components that distinguish a genre of music video for example

a pop video uses bright colours, and dance routines. These are the characteristics of the genre.Link between the lyrics and  the visuals• Goodwin believed that there is always a link between the lyrics and the visuals even when the

visuals seem to have nothing to do with the lyrics. These links fall into three categories illustrative, amplifying and contradicting. An example of an illustrative link would be if the lyrics are talking about someone reading and the visuals also display someone reading.

Intertextual references• Sometimes music videos use their visuals to pay homage to other media texts. This is done by

using the visuals to reference other media texts within their music video. They can use references from films, other music videos etc.

Genre characteristics of  a pop video

• In pop music videos one of the key genre characteristics is the link between the visuals and the lyrics. In a pop video the link is usually illustrative in nature and adopt a narrative style meaning they tell a story using their visuals that relates to the lyrics of the song.

• One of the other key features in the pop genre of music video is bright colours being incorporated into the visuals. Often pop videos are brightly lit and contain a variety of bright colours so that they seem lively, up beat and cheerful.

• And lastly another key feature in a pop music video is having a well choreographed dance scene. Usually with the artist as the main focus with a couple of back up dancers.

Here are some visual examples of conventions of a pop music video

Link between visuals and lyricsIn Taylor Swift “Love Story”

Bright coloursIn Katy Perry’s

“Last Friday Night”

Dance routineIn Meghan

Trainor’s “All About That Bass”

Styles of a music video• Narrative – The visuals tell a story• Parody – The visuals mock other media texts • Animation – The visuals use animation/ stop motion• Pastiche – The visuals depict something set in a particular era• Performance – The visuals depict the artist preforming the song (singing and dancing).• Live concert – The visuals consist of footage of the artist preforming in concert• Intertextual – The visuals references other media texts sometimes is homage.• Cinematic – This is when the music video long and narrative based (more like a short film).• Abstract – The visuals are strange or not like the lyrics, usually more artistic and

experimental.

Styles of a pop video• A regular music video will usually mix certain styles the

most popular type of music video incorporates both the narrative and performance based styles.

• Here is and example of a narrative and performance based music video.

Narrative: Katy Perry “Part of Me”

Performance: James Bay “Hold Back The River”

The styles we used• In our music video we opted to make a narrative based music video with some performance based

elements. This idea came about as a result to the feedback we got when conducting our audience feedback. Narrative proved to be our audiences second most popular style of music video and is the most common style used in pop music videos. After we decided to make a music video in the narrative style we decided to also incorporate some of the performance style into our music video as we knew this was popular among the pop music video genre. By taking both of these styles and incorporating them into our music video we were able to create something that resembles a generic pop music video which was our aim as these are the most popular among audiences.

• When conducting our audience research the feedback we received showed that the style that was considered the most popular among our audience from our research was the style of a parody music video. We decided however not to use a parody as this would have been extremely difficult and could have gone wrong very easily as one people all have very different senses of humour and it would have been easy for our video to not be found universally funny. Therefore instead of going for a full blow parody music video we decided instead to just incorporate comical elements into our narrative music video.

The conventions we used• One of the conventions we focused on first was creating the link between the lyrics and the visuals.

We did this by focusing on the theme of cool kids vs un cool kids within our music video. You can see this in the character of Shelby and how she goes from being an un cool kid who is continuously bullied to a cool looking kid. This was important as we thought is would be most effective if we used an illustrative link between the lyrics and the visuals as these are the most popular and they also make the most sense to viewers, meaning that they are the most successful among our audience.

The conventions we used • There is a point in the song where the lyrics state "Yeah they're living the good life

can's see what he is going through". For this we decided to interpret it differently and try to convey a sense of the cool kid Louis also going through challenges in life we did this to try and convey the message to our audience that no matter what clique you're in everyone has things they are dealing with. We did by showing Louis' character looking completely miserable while he knocks Shelby's character over, it is his unhappiness and his own challenges he's facing that motivates him to carry out his actions 

The conventions we used

• We decided against using the genre characteristic of a dance routine as we do not have any experienced dancers in our group and thought it would look awful to have an amateurish dance sequence. For this reason we scrapped a dance routine as it would have looked unprofessional and substandard and this was not something that we wanted to convey in our music video we wanted it to look as well made as possible.

Compared to other music videos 

• One of the music videos that we found while making our music video was Little Mix's video for "Black Magic". It is very similar to our own music video with the exception of a few details. Some of the key features it has in common with our music video is the styles that it incorporates into the video. Like our music video "Black Magic" makes use of the narrative and performance styles. "Black Magic" music video also choses to use an illustrative link between its lyrics and it's visuals for example the song is called "Black Magic" and the visuals show Little Mix performing acts of magic through out the music video. Another similarity between our music video and "Black Magic" is that it incorporates a comical element in the music video. 

Digipak• This is an insert inside of a CD. • Key Features: the six panels which are placed in the correct order, the name of the artist and

the name of the album, the barcode, the spines and the list of songs. • Here is an example of a real digipak for the pop band One Direction compared to out digipak.

• Both have bright colours which is a common trait of pop albums.

• Both have images of the artist on the panels.One Direction’s

digipakOur digipak

Advert • Adverts are used to promote a new album. Key features of a magazine advert: the

name of the artist and the name of the album, a linking factor between the digipak and the advert (such as a similar image), different font for different texts, a method of distribution, iTunes and a website, Here is an example of an advert that I found for the artist Olly Murs compared to my finished advert:Ollu Murs’

AdvertOur Advert

Both adverts can be seen to display the artists name and album name in big font so that it is easily recognisable.

Both also have a way of finding the artist online for our it’s social media platforms for Olly Murs’ advert it’s a website address

Conclusion • In conclusion  we have managed to make a music video using Goodwin's

conventions which if Goodwin's theories on making a good and effective music video are to be believed this would mean that our music video is a good and effective music video. We chose to use the narrative and performance styles which we used successfully within our music video, in order to best appeal to our target audience based on our research into their viewing habits. We also tried to make sure that our music video could easily be identified as a pop music video. By comparing it to other examples in the same genre and finding similarities it shows us that we were successful in achieving our aim of creating a generic pop music video for the purposes of it being easily recognised as a pop video.