Evaluation question 1

Evaluation question 1In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For our A2 coursework we were asked to create a music video as well as two ancillary tasks which were our album poster and digipack. We had to create these three things using the computer programs Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premier elements which as a group we had quite a bit of experience with since we had had to use these programs extensively in in our AS coursework as we had to use it to create our music magazine.For our music video our group decided on our video being part performance based and part narrative based as this is the most common type of video in the indie rock genre and we tried to makes sure that our video conformed to quite a lot of the typical codes and conventions of indie rock music videos as from our audience feedback questionnaire we saw that this is what our target audience would most like to see so we tried to make sure that it would appeal to them. We felt a mixture of narrative and performance would work well in our music video as we wanted to show the theme of the song which we interpreted as loneliness and depression and we felt that just through performance it wouldnt quite show the audience how the lead singer is meant to be very sad and lonely.Our music video implements Goodwins theory in a number of ways. There is a very clear link between lyrics and visuals, this is shown when our lead singer says earth is the loneliest planet of all whilst he says this a number of times he is shown to be alone in a field to represent the loneliness he feels and how the lead singer feels that he has no-one. We have further tried to represent this with how the artist is alone on the stage which further represents that he has no-one but finds some solace in the music he makes and sings.We also tried to implement genre characteristics into our music video. Our music video is of the indie rock genre and in this genre of music videos their is often a big focus on performance. We felt we had to make sure that our video would focus a lot of performance as it is a key feature of indie rock music video and we also saw in our feedback from our questionnaire of what our target audience would like to see in our music video, which was performance from the lead singer so we made sure that we implemented that into our music video. Another characteristic we tried to tie into our music video was making it clear who the star image and selling point of the music video was. It is very common in indie videos for their to be a clear star image and for the video to be concentrated on one person who is usually the main selling point of the song and video. This is very often implemented in Morrisseys videos (a pioneer of the indie rock genre and the artists music video we are covering.)

How our video implements Goodwins theory.The music video we created challenged previous media products in the fact that our music video featured only the one artist which goes against other indie rock music where the entire band is often featured along with other people, however we felt that this would not fit into the narrative of our music video as our song is about loneliness and if the artist was surrounded by people the narrative and video wouldn't really make sense as the lead singer would not appear lonely. Also we chose not to have the band in the background so that more of the video was concentrated on the star image of the singer who is the main selling point of the video. We also challenged previous media products in that in our video we used desolate places to film our video which is quite uncommon in the indie rock genre, however we decided that this would work with our music video due to the meaning of the song and the depressive tone of this song so we felt that it would be inappropriate to film the video in a more busy place amongst people which is quite a common feature in other indie rock music videos. An example of where we challenged an existing media product is in the oasis live forever music video where it is similar as a lot of the music video is outside but we challenged it as in our music video we did not include the rest of the band as we felt that with the rest of the band our lead singer wouldnt be portrayed as lonely and we also felt that we didnt want to take any of the focus off the lead singer. However we did seem to conform to some things in the live forever music video as both our lead singers were dressed fairly casual in shirt and jeans which is very common in indie rock music videos.Conventions challenged from previous media products.

One of the main music videos that we took a lot of inspiration for our product is from is Morrisseys Certain People I Know music video. This is because the song was also of the indie rock genre and the vast majority of the music video was based around the lead singer and the video featured a lot of facial close ups and focused mainly on one person much like our video did so we felt that this video we be a good one to take inspiration from as it also featured a mixture of performance and narrative in a similar way to which we implemented narrative and performance in ours.Conventions from existing music videos

The poster we decided to create was one of a the new album that the band would be about to release. We decided to do this as we felt an album poster would be one of the best type of posters we could make to conform with the genre of indie rock. We did this by researching other indie rock bands album posters to try and get a good idea of what is usually featured on an indie rock album poster. One of the posters that we gained inspiration from was Oasis heathen chemistry poster which clearly labels out the bands name and also has all the band members in the picture. Furthermore it is similar to ours as the lead singer Liam Gallagher is in the centre of the shot much like how our lead singer is focused in the middle of the picture as well. We felt that is was essential for our lead singer to be at the forefront of the picture to make sure that his star image is conveyed to the fans. Furthermore we felt that the bold writing of the band name and the use of reviews in our poster would attract old fans of the band as well as new fans as it would be clear that good things have been said about the band which we felt would help the band form a positive reputation. We also included the bands record company logo of Triple J media which was used to represent the initial of each of ours first name as well as a picture of the digipack to give the fans more of a feeling of what the album would be like.The bands name and album name we also felt was of particular importance as we felt that although a lot of indie rock band names and album names dont have anything important to say we felt that ours should and challenge other conventions of media products by having a band name called defiant republic the word defiant seems to say that the band is standing against something and isnt trying to appeal towards the mainstream which ties in with the indie genre with the idea of being original. Furthermore the album name political sink suggests the mood that the band and their fans have with politics as the word sink suggests miserable and could show how the band and their fans feel detached from politics.Album Poster

With our digipack we took a lot of inspiration from Supergrasses I should coco album cover and we tried to convey some of the conventions used in that album cover into our digipack. We did this by putting the three members on the front of the cover with the lead singer in the middle and the other two members of the band being more featured in the background so that they dont detract from the star image of the lead singer. With our secondary research we saw that it was a common feature for indie rock band album covers to feature all the members so we decided to also do this and we felt that by tieing in with that feature of indie rock it would help the band become more prominent in the genre. The I should coco album was also a very successful album of when indie rock was arguably at its peak during the Britpop era so we felt that this would be a very appropriate album cover to take inspiration from.Digipack