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

The evaluation for my A2 Media Coursework will be divided into two sections: Music Video and Print Production task.

Music Video:

French Film

For our final music video, we took a lot of inspiration from modern French Film, and consequently utilized and developed many ideas used on French films that we have watched and enjoyed. The French films we took the most inspiration from were Paris, Je t'aime (2006) and Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulin (2001).

This scene from Paris, Je t'aime was our main inspiration for the 'mime' theme in our music video. We wanted to add an extra layer of meaning to the song by corresponding to Goodwin's idea of an 'amplifying' music video, whilst complying to the indie genre by making th

e video entropic. Because of this, the narrative in our music video told a typical love story, where a relationship between two people was going successfully until 'disequilibrium' occurs and one person in the relationship is unfaithful; however we added an entropic twist to the 'love story' convention by making the love story about two 'mimes'. In some sense, this makes our video conform to Todorov's theory, stating that narrative always involves a transformation. However, because the most-part of the narrative in our video is told through flashbacks, the narrative isn't in chronological order therefore it isn't as "linear" as Todorov's theory of "equilibrium and disequilibrium".

Another film we took inspiration from was Jeanet's "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulin'.

Aspects of this film that inspired us were the stereotypically 'French' mise-en-scene, which we tried to replicate in our music video by filming in French style locations such as 'cafe rouge'.

We also tried to create similar colour effects that were used in "Amelie" to give it an old fashioned feel. As a result of this we followed Photoshop tutorials to create a "cross-processed" colour effects by changing the RGB curves on the image. Once we had found the desired effect we incorporated it onto our video in Premier Pro. We also felt that this would help our video comply to the indie genre by looking less airbrushed more home made.

Stop Motion Animation

Another influence for our music video was stop motion animation, as we thought it was an effective technique incorporated into many 'indie' videos, such as Kate Nash's "Foundations" (above). To create our stop motion clips we took a succession of photographs (usually enough for about 8 frames per second) and edited them in Premier Pro to create a moving image out of the photographs. Parts of stop motion used in our music video helped keep the narrative moving, for instance where the tear drop runs down the male mime's face. This demonstrated his sadness and helped put across the "disequilibrium" in our music video.

One of the main aims we had when creating our music video was to utilize and develop ideas from sources that inspired us, whilst developing our own ideas through interpreting meanings to the song and incorporating ideas from our own interests to keep it original. We took a lot of inspiration from film in the hope that gaining ideas from different media would stop our video belonging to mainstream music video conventions, whilst still keeping redundant factors such as the lip sync to keep it recognizable as a music video. We wanted to keep it looking 'unpolished', as 'indie' music often contradicts the mainstream, so we felt we had to convey that in our music video. Steve Neale claims that genre is 'instances of repetition and difference', therefore we incorporated 'unpolished' aspects into our music video to replicate the 'indie' genre (an 'instance of difference'). 'Unpolished' aspects of our video were achieved through the use of fast motion in parts, which gave the clips an uneven 'jumpy' look, much like stop motion animation.

Another convention of the 'indie' genre is large amount of entropy, making sure the audience find the media text original and interesting. We felt our 'mime' characters were very entropic, and the stereotypically French mise-en-scene kept it interesting whilst holding the video together with a French theme throughout. The use of these entropic factors was to purposefully appeal to our target audience, as 'indie' music listeners often aspire to contradict the mainstream, therefore would look for an original and different music video. Creating entropy is potentially dangerous when aiming to produce a media product as there is a certain amount of risk in creating a completely original product, as there is a chance that the audience won't understand or relate to the product. This is why it is important to incorporate some redundant and easily recognizable features to make sure that the audience understand the media text.

Other entropic factors of our music video included:

- The 'old film' style text at the beginning of the video, instead of using the small and discrete text often incorporated into mainstream music videos. We felt this replicated 1950's cinema, and therefore is entropic within the twentieth century. This text was also achieved through the use of stop motion animation, which primarily helps the video to belong the indie genre.

- The French subtitles. We felt this would also help replicate the 'old film' style that we aimed to achieve in our music video. This was a particularly risky part of our music video as we were unsure as to whether the audience would understand that they were intended to add to the French 'ambiance' of our music video, or whether they would find them an unsuccessful aspect of the video as the most part of our audience wouldn't understand the words.

- The 'this is the life' jump-cuts. These jump-cuts were purposefully done to continue to make the music video look 'unpolished' and therefore 'indie'.

However, redundant factors we included to keep the media text recognizable as a music video were:

- Cuts on beat: We felt that a common feature in the majority of music videos were that the cuts between shots were on beat. This was important to include in a music video as it although we wanted it to have an 'unpolished' look, we still wanted to achieve a professional outcome and this was an important aspect of that.

- Fast paced edits: Because music videos are fairly short, the cuts between shots need to be quick and smooth, whilst keeping the narrative moving forward, to ensure the music video is interesting for the viewer.

- Match on action shots: We felt these were particularly important whilst filming, as different angles and shots can capture different events and emotions in a scene. This was particularly prominent in the 'café' shots, were we used a mix of over-the-shoulder shots, close ups and two shots to put across the character's feelings in the scene. This helps keep the narrative moving forward and helps keep the music video interesting for the audience.

Comparisons between my Media text and others:

My Media Text: "This is the Life" by Two Door Cinema Club

A Professional Media Text: "Ooh La" by The Kooks

I have chosen to compare my video with the video for "Ooh La" by The Kooks, as the songs are very similar and belong to the same genre, therefore the target audience would be a group of people belonging to the same demographic. The purpose of this is to analyse in detail whether my media product features the same conventions as another 'indie' video, whilst still having differences to create a diverse media text.

Similarities:

• Towards the beginning of the music video for "Ooh La", colour filters have been utilized by either adding one to the camera lens whilst filming, or editing in post production. For the entirety of our music video, RGB Curves filters have been added to give it an old fashioned look. This was done in post-production as we did not have sufficient tools to create this effect whilst filming, and it would have limited our creativity in the editing stages.
• Lip Sync: This is a convention of not just indie videos, but the vast majority of music videos. It makes both videos more literal, and means that the image on the screen responds to the lyrics in the song.
• A mix of handheld camera motion and steadicam: In both videos, a variety in filming technique was used, which creates diversity within the music video and stops it being too stationary.
• Jump cuts: Throughout my research and planning, I discovered that jump cuts were quite a common convention for indie music videos. This is evident in the video for 'Ooh La', where jump cuts have been used quite heavily. We have a few sections of our music video where jump cuts are used; in particular the "flower shop" scenes and the "stair scene".
• This is not usually a convention of indie videos, however I noticed that my video and the video for 'Ooh La' both contain a 'Parisian' theme, suggesting that perhaps a stereotypically French mise-en-scene is popular within the indie genre.
• Flashbacks: In both music videos, flashback clips are utilized to create a non-linear narrative. This is most likely a convention of indie videos, because the video will still have a storyline, however will portray this in entropic ways to correspond to the genre.

Differences:

• The video for 'Ooh La' is slightly more amplifying than our music video, as it features the band playing instruments, as opposed to actors miming the lyrics. It is very common to have the band featured in indie videos, however entropy is in also an import aspect of the genre, therefore I feel our music video also corresponds.
• The majority of the video for 'Ooh La' is in monochrome, which differs to ours. We felt that if our video was in black and white, the feel for the entropic mise-en-scene would be lost, thus making our video correspond to the indie genre less.
• The entirety of our video was a narrative about the mimes, whereas the video for the Kooks told a love story with clips of the band intertwined.

The conclusion of this analysis is that our music video does correspond to the indie genre, due to it's similarities with a similar media text, however it has enough differences to be original. This means that it corresponds to Steve Neale's theory about genre being "instances of repetition and difference".

Print Production task:

In order to create a successful magazine advert and digipak, it was essential that I did a great deal of research into similar products, in order to grasp the typical conventions usually featured on these products. It was important that I looked into products which belonged to the 'indie' genre, as that was the genre of music that I would be producing for, therefore it was essential that the print production appealed to an audience of typical 'indie' listeners.

Within digipak designs and album art, I found that conventions featured throughout were:

• 9 times out of 10, the name of the band was in a clear and distinctive font, so the digipak would be eye-catching from the point of view of the audience. A lot of the time, the band name printed on the digipak would be the band logo. I couldn't feature the bands real logo on my design, however I created my own which was used throughout both my digipak design and magazine advert. This was to make sure all my print production was coherent, and recognisable as one marketing package. I tested various different microsoft fonts, and downloaded several from 'dafont.com', to see which would look most effective. In the end, I found that 'Rockwell Condensed' looked the most effective on my print production work as it was eye catching without being 'over-the-top'.
• I found that 'indie' album art work could be separated into two different categories: album artwork that looked 'homemade', and album artwork that featured photography.
  
  I did research into both kinds, and began work on two sets of print production to compare which looked the most successful. In the end, I found that my photography work looked more successful than the 'homemade' print production work, therefore developed that in order to create the most successful digipak and advert possible. I used Adobe Photoshop to do the entirety of my print production task, and used a Nikon D60 DSLR to take the photographs.
• I found that digipak products often have leaflets with them, so in order to most successfully replicate a real digipak, I created a leaflet. I looked at other album leaflets, such as Red Hot Chili Pepper's "By The Way" and "Californiacation", and found that they usually feature photographs that correspond with the album cover, lyrics to the songs on the album and 'special thanks'.

For research into magazine adverts, I scrolled through 'indie' magazines such as NME and Q, to understand what typical 'indie' adverts look like. Typical conventions I found were:

• A band logo, which is often used on the album artwork (see above)
  
• An image of the band, or an image which corresponds with the artwork on the album. As a result of this, I used the same image featured on the front cover of my digipak in my advert, to create 'coherency' throughout my print production work and keep it recognisable from the point of view of my target audience. The image I chose featured the model looking directly at the camera; this was done to draw the audience in to the image.
• Short reviews, such as "Effortlessly spectacular' NME 8/10" These are a good marketing technique as it gives the consumer a good idea about what they are buying before they do so, therefore it was an important feature to incorporate onto my advert design. To correspond with the genre of my band, I featured reviews from 'indie' magazines such as NME and Q magazine.
• A logo of the record label that the band are signed to. Not only does this advertise the band, but it also markets the record label, and if their logo is easily recognisable then consumers are likely to look out for other products with that label on it. Therefore I included Two Door Cinema Club's label Kitsuné Records' logo onto my design.

I found that my print production task was more redundant that my music video, as with the print production it is necessary to conform to digipak and advert conventions to keep it recognisable as those media products. Therefore my digipak was designed on a 6 panel layout, much like the ones used for other digipak designs. It also featured title text, copyright information, pictures, track listing, barcodes, lyrics, 'special thanks'; all redundant elements that a consumer would expect to see on a digipak design. Similarly with my advert, it contained title text, photography, critic reviews, and record label logo that the audience would expect to see. For this reason, I think that my advert and digipak are fairly redundant. However, there are elements of entropy, for example the mime character featured throughout is fairly unusual, as normally images of the band are usually featured. Additionally, I think the use of colour on my print production work is fairly entropic, as the majority of the image is in black and white, appart from the red braces. I feel I have complied to Steve Neale's "genre is instances of repetition and difference", as I have kept to standard conventions within digipaks and adverts, however developed my own ideas to create something fairly unique.

Finished Music Video.