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

Our media product uses and develops many conventions of the rock genre however, we also found ways to challenge some of these conventions using our narrative. To illustrate this I will use real examples such as Paramore, Flyleaf and We Are The In Crowd amongst others.


↳Genre

Our band is called "The Defiance" and their debut song/music video is "Unbreakable". Their genre is rock and they are specifically a female fronted rock band. These were the leading examples of female fronted rock bands that helped us form our idea:

Paramore

Flyleaf

We Are The In Crowd

↳Band Image/Identity

For our band's image/identity we mostly stuck to the conventions already formed in rock music. I have created a Prezi explaining how we do so.

↳Music Video

This storify document I have created explains how we gained some muse for the narrative of our music video.

Our music video uses Todorov's Narrative Theory throughout which is demonstrated by this flow chart:

Click to enlarge

Breaking Narrative Conventions:

In our research, we found that commonly in rock music videos if there is a narrative it is focal on the lead singer or there are other actors portraying the narrative. For example in Paramore's "Brick by Boring Brick" it is focused around the story of a little girl's tragic story:

The music video to "But It's Better If You Do" by Panic! At The Disco revolves around a character of the lead singer's life:

Performance Conventions:

Focusing on female fronted rock music videos, we used conventional movements/performance techniques and camera shots that were common in them.

Hair-flipping is a common movement used by the female lead if they have long hair to highlight the energy of their performance as shown in the first .gif by Brie Larson in her performance of Black Sheep. In the second gif you can see how our lead singer used a similar move.

Another convention is beauty/money shots of the lead singer that should be used frequently in the music video to attract the viewers. In first .gif of the two below, you can see a close up of Brie Larson singer. This also gives the viewers a close up of their emotions and they can connect the emotions to the meaning of the song. In the second .gif of the ones below, is one example of how we used beauty/money shots in our music video.

For the drummer when there is a speedy drumming beat we often saw this type of move performed:

So we replicated this in our music video:

Director's Commentary

Here we made a director's commentary of our music video explaining how we used conventions and how we broke some conventions.

↳Using Vernallis' Music Video Theory

• For the basis of our music video we looked at the three different types of music videos: Narrative, Performance and Conceptual music videos. After looking at many rock music videos, we observed that many were a mix of narrative and performance. Almost all rock music videos had performance as the instruments used are a key factor of the rock genre and audiences want to have the visuals of those. We decided to use this as the form of our music video.

Example: Misery Business by Paramore Contains both narrative and performance. Also the band members are characters in the narrative which is a convention we adopted in our video too.

• Our narrative is linear but a fragmented narrative as not all of it is shown in the music video but it is implied. For example, we do not see the characters travelling to the audition after seeing the posters but after seeing them all at the audition in the end you can assume that they are.

• Vernallis stated that the narrative may not always have a clear resolution at the end which applies to our video, although they all end up at the audition it is unclear as to what exactly will happen after that. It is left up to the audience to assume/imagine.

↳Using Goodwin's Music Video Theory

• We make direct links between the music and visuals and links between the lyrics and visuals. The video below demonstrates the examples of this in our music video

• Intertexual references

For the drummer's character's set up in the bedroom, we designed the set with many posters across the wall and magazines sprawled all over the room. The posters were of rock bands and movies which connotes boyhood and dedication to music. The magazines on the floor were music magazines (specialising in rock) and we thrown across the floor amongst clothes messily to add to the mise en scene.

↳Extras

• Our band is a three piece band and the band's friendship is one of the driving forces behind the band and one of the appeals of it to our target audience. Three is quite a symbolic number as in television, a close friendship of three people is very common. Especially of one female and two males.

Famous trios from Film/Television

Having a trio of band members is almost a pop cultural reference as audience can draw links between them and popular trios they have seen on television and film.

↳Website

For our website, we mostly stuck to the conventions of rock artists' websites we found in our research.

The video below explains how we drew inspiration from Flyleaf's website. When designing our website, we wanted to stick to the conventions. (The volume may need to be turned up quite loud to hear the audio)

Examples of how we stuck to conventions with our website:

Homepage:

The homepage also included a "News/Updates" events calender to keep the fans up to date. It also features a link to the "Tour Dates" section of the website.

Other pages:

We had a Gallery that had a collection of promotional photos and behind the scenes photos for fans.

↳Album Digipak

For the creation of our album digipak, we used and developed established conventions but we also tried to break some conventions to provide something fresh for the audience

I have created a Prezi explaining how real albums inspired our albums and how we adapted them to be unique to our band.

↳Conclusion

In conclusion, our media product mainly used and developed existing conventions and forms. We decided to do this as our audience will already be familiar to this and be more likely to want to invest themselves in this band if they easily know what they are getting. However, we did break some conventions as to not bore audiences and to provide some new ground for the music industry.