Q4. In what ways does your product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

Lauren Brown

Introduction

In order to make our chosen genre clear through our promotional package, we followed the conventions of both the genre and media products in general. However, as we had discovered in our audience research, our primary target audience enjoy seeing products that further develop the genre and create their own style. As a result of this, we decided to add some unconventional features into our music video, digi-pak and website in order to make our products stand out against other promotional packages that all resemble each other.

We decided to follow the conventions of music videos such as ‘It’s My Life’ by Bon Jovi and ‘From Yesterday’ by 30 Seconds to Mars by including a mixture of narrative and performance throughout the video. This allowed us to have more creative opportunities than we would have if we had created a performance-only video. However, our narrative section was incredibly unconventional as we used a lot of b-movie references and intertextuality throughout, an uncommon feature in many music videos, not just within the rock music genre. Despite this, our narrative followed Goodwin’s theory of music videos that states that the visuals should link with the lyrics, specifically “b-movie, gimme some gore.” It is also uncommon for a music video to feature an actor as the narrative’s protagonist. However, there are exceptions to this convention, for example, in ‘It’s My Life’ by Bon Jovi, the role of Tommy is played by an actor who is entirely separate from the artist. We chose to break this convention as we wanted to place more emphasis on the band’s musical performance.

We thought that it would be appropriate to maintain the conventional positioning of the band members so that we didn’t confuse an audience who would be familiar with the traditional set-up. In each performance section, we had the lead singer at the front of the shot, with a guitarist either side on him and the drummer at the rear.

Although live performance is a key convention of the genre, it is rare to see two separate performances within one video. As we were unable to get the quality of shots that we wanted at our first location, we made the decision to relocate to an environment which was easier to light. We also found that our chosen artist, Queens of the Stone Age, had also used two performance locations in their video “Sick, Sick, Sick”. By breaking conventions they are supporting the rebellious ideologies of the genre and we wanted to replicate this.

As shown in the Bring Me The Horizon video “Can You Feel My Heart”, rock/metal bands are conventionally represented as being crazy and aggressive performers, giving a lot of energy and passion into their performance. Unfortunately, our band were unable to emulate the same degree of performance and power so our performance section is unconventional in that sense.

Within the performance sections of the video, there are a large number of close ups on instruments and the lead singer. This supports ideologies of rock being a music-focused genre as fans enjoy seeing how the songs are played and the skill of the artist. Our audience research indicates that our primary target audience believes that the lead singer is the most important member of the band. This is supported in our video through the close-ups on our lead singer’s face as he is performing, a feature that is also found in the Bring Me The Horizon video “Sleepwalking”. By including these shots we are allowing the audience to form a connection to the artist.

As in the videos for “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi and “From Yesterday” by 30 Seconds to Mars, we included an introduction to make the narrative clearer. As our video concept is very original and creative, were concerned that it would be unclear to audiences if not explained properly. Therefore we broke conventions by surpassing the typical length of music video introductions. The mundane life of the protagonist that is presented in the introduction contrasts to the rebellious and chaotic conventions of the genre. By including this, we were able to show the impact that the music can have on someone’s life, supporting the fans’ beliefs in the power of music.

We decided to film the majority of the performance without using a tripod, a convention of rock music videos. This allowed us to manoeuvre around instruments easily and get a variety of shot types. However, we were careful to keep the camera steady as we wanted smooth shots, unlike the constant shaking and rocking of the camera in “Shadow Moses” by Bring Me The Horizon. Whilst this effect could add to the narrative and the chaotic nature of the genre, we decided that it would look too exaggerated and detract from the narrative and performance.

Our music video supports Todorov’s theory of equilibrium; he states that a narrative begins with a state of equilibrium, then falls into disequilibrium, which is then followed by a new state of equilibrium. The protagonist’s mundane life is then torn apart from by the onslaught of b-movie characters who take over his car during his morning commute. The state of equilibrium is the restored as he realises that it was a figment of his imagination, and did not really happen. This structure is also found in Bon Jovi’s video “It’s My Life” as the protagonist races to reach his girlfriend.

The importance of the lead singer within the video is shown through the band’s costumes; whilst the other members are all dressed in t-shirts, the lead singer is wearing a coat. This connotes his status within the group and supports the convention of music videos focusing on the lead singer over the other band members. The colours of the costumes worn in the performance section are all black, a colour that is conventional of rock music and supports the ideologies of audience members. These dark coloured costumes are also found in “Up in the Air” by 30 Seconds to Mars.

Despite the conventional performance costumes, we decided to match the other costumes to the narrative, as opposed to the genre. Because of this, we had a wide range of colours and styles within our video. Although this is unconventional, these narrative/feature specific costumes are also found in “Up in the Air” by 30 Seconds to Mars. For example, the feminine bull rider in pink and the gymnast in white.

We learnt from our research that the performance elements of music videos typically featured low lighting and darkness. This is a feature that we emulated through our night-time performance on the common as the darkness surrounding the band gave a sinister and mysterious effect. The low lighting effects are also found in Enter Shikari’svideo “Radiate”.

According to Goodwin’s theory, there should be a clear relationship between the music and the visuals, because of this, we edited our video to change shots at the same pace as the music. These temporal relations allowed our video to flow well with the music and it gave each shot purpose. The fast cutting speed along with the music is found in the video to “The Paddington Frisk” by Enter Shikari.

For our digi-pak design we included an image of our band on the cover, although this is unconventional of the genre, we felt that it helped to create brand identity between our three products, a convention of rock digi-paks. We had also decided to design the cover as a b-movie poster, so were following the conventions of these instead. Typically rock music digi-paks feature a graphic or drawing on the cover, for example, ‘Era Vulgaris’ and ‘Like Clockwork’ by Queens of the Stone Age.

Our chosen colour scheme was both conventional and unconventional, we featured red, black and white prominently on our digi-pak, but added in yellow and blue to fit with our b-movie inspired design. Conventionally, dark colours are associated with the rock genre so we decided to use a black background to lower the tone of our digi-pak. Although bright colours are not conventionally associated with the genre, the design of “Wasting Light” by the Foo Fighters features a dark background with pink, green, and red images of the band members. This showed us that, when done correctly, an unconventional design can still represent the genre.

Our back cover design is also unconventional in its complexity. The reverse of rock music digi-paks traditionally have a simplistic design with the track listing and occasionally a small image. Examples of these include Bon Jovi’s album ‘Greatest Hits’ and ‘Tonight’ by Franz Ferdinand. Our design features extra elements that contribute to the b-movie design, causing it to link to our other products.

The inclusion of a lyric booklet is conventional of digi-paks of all genres as they allow the audience to connect with the music and the meanings of the songs. The album ‘American Idiot’ by Green Day features a lyric booklet that also contains images that link to the cover design of the album. We decided that we would expand on this by designing the whole booklet to resemble our cover design, and included images of the band rehearsing. This supports conventions of bands including behind-the-scenes photos within their digi-paks.

For the inside of our digi-pak we used a double-page image of the band standing together in Horsell Common, the location of our performance section within the video. Although this is unconventional, it can be found within the digi-pak for ‘Like Clockwork’ by Queens of the Stone Age. The image links to the images on our website and provides an alternative location for the band. We also decided to have the band wearing the same costumes as they had during the video performances. This was to create continuity and connections across our promotional package.

Our website and digi-pak designs are closely linked, supporting the convention of connected ancillary products as it enforces brand identity. Our ancillary products both include b-movie inspired designs that also link them to our music video. The connections between products is also found on the Green Day website, as their background design and colour scheme matches that of their most recent albums, ¡uno!, ¡dos!, and ¡tré! We also used the same colour scheme as the digi-pak but without the blue. This not only connects the two products together, but also supports the genre conventions of dark colours.

We used an image background for our webpage as we wanted our band to be clearly represented. As is conventional of the genre, we kept the background stationary whilst the audience can scroll up or down through the centre page. This is a convention that we discovered on the 30 Seconds to Mars website as they had a fixed background image behind a moving overlay with all of the information on.

The importance of social media for an artist has meant that it is now conventional to include social media links on a band website. On Bon Jovi’s website, they have dedicated an entire section of their homepage to Twitter pictures from their tour. We decided to place a Twitter feed on the side of our page so that it is easily accessible and visible to audiences, but doesn’t take up too much room.