Question 4 powerpoint - CONVENTIONS
- 2. From starting this project we knew that we could use conventions of real media products to compare to our own. Typical conventions of the indie music genre help audiences recognise what they like and categorise each genre of music. We chose to follow conventions of existing products because we can tell what the current audience in the genre like and make our entire package appeal to them. It is important to subvert some conventions as well as follow key ones so that our promotional package is unique following the 'independent' music genre. Our Target audience are between the ages of 16-30 and are the most active searchers for new music out of any other music audience. It is important that our artist follows conventions as we can tell from existing products on the market what works and becomes successful and what hasn't. However, we also want to try and subvert conventions and not follow the typical ones because in the indie genre, unique music can become popular, as it is 'indie'. Over the construction of our coursework, we have followed many conventions but subverted others. Conventions like costume, narrative and artist background need to be kept consistent so that our promotional package still appeals to our audience but also it still has its recognition that genre reinforces. We also needed to subvert some conventions so that our product wasn't too generic and didn't follow the basis of another that already has its own audience fan base, we needed to create our own.
- 3. Narrative Our music video follows main themes consistently that our audience link to and can relate to through the lyrics. The theme of relationships and love and lost is very consistent in the indie genre as their target audience can relate. Our video starts following a drunk male holding a half empty bottle of alcohol. We see him smash the glass quite early on in the video in frustration and rage over his emotions in his relationship over a girl called Liz, who comes into the video later on. The idea follows the couple texting and calling each other, as they are both in this confused state in the relationship, both scared to make the first move to fix there relationship. The narrative entails before the both of them end up in the same location, with the protagonist following her to try and make up for his actions previously, which the audience assume to be related to his alcohol. The story ends as the protagonist accidentally 'bumps’ into Liz as she sits on a ledge inside the park.
- 4. Narrative theme To become inspired for our music video we had a huge range of ideas and research behind existing ones. As well as audience research we found that the main theme that was consistently portrayed was love and loss with the male being the more likely protagonist following conventions. It seemed in popular videos by 'The 1975' and 'Arctic Monkeys' contained the artist in the music video and had the male chasing a girl, which I thought was very contradicting there star role in society over there audience but allowed the audience to view the artist in the video as a realistic character in the same situation as a lot of males in the target audience. We thought that by reflecting this we could also relate this then back to Andrew Goodwin's theory where the lyrics should match the video and the tempo of the editing would match the cutting of each shot. We tried to follow Goodwin's theory very consistently throughout the music video showing consistent shot lengths to match the rhythm and a narrative that would allow our audience to link this back to the lyrics and perhaps view the storyline in a completely different way , which I would say is the case with a lot of modern day indie music videos.
- 5. Narrative conventions of products I would say that the idea from the narrative took the most inspiration from the video that I analysed myself, 'Why do you only call me when you're high' By the Arctic Monkeys. I would say so, simply because the narrative revolved around a male chasing a girl, although the micro elements of the video made the relationship between the two seem very inconsistent and confusing to the audience which we tried to mirror, reflecting real life scenarios for the audience and allowing them to relate to the protagonist and artist in the video, Ollie Logan. Which again is a convention in itself used by Arctic Monkeys in 'Why do you only call be when you're high' and also 'Robbers' by 'The 1975 where Matt Healy (the vocalist) was shown in a similar Love and loss relationship with the focus around Matt Healy as a 'Robber in love' hence the title.
- 6. Microelements There was a lot to change in the first draft for our music video in terms of microelements. Our intention was successful and from media experts and feedback from our target audience, the video seemed popular as it followed conventions well and had a good narrative and performance mixture the audiences could follow. Personally I really liked the chop and changing between scenes, especially towards the start where each scene and change between characters would only last for a maximum for 20 seconds which wasn't so long in comparison to the length of the video. In some scenes as well that I helped out with the editing in particular was when Liz was exiting her bedroom. This was a scene that we filmed from multiple angles so that we had so many angles to choose from when it came to the editing. One of the main issues that we picked up on was the continuity didn't seem effective and it didn't really fit together well which was unconventional but also it meant that the narrative became hard for the audience to follow. I worked with Beth to try and improve the continuity between this sequence, which also meant with the fast cutting and switching between angles we could reinforce Andrew Goodwin's theory. I really liked some of these continuity shots of the characters walking especially in Liz's' bedroom scene because it flows so well.
- 7. Microelements In terms of performance we thought it was a good idea to make our artist appeal to our audience in the complete opposite way our music video does and use shots of him singing significant lyrics looking like a professional artist would do in a music studio and giving the contrast of reality that the audience experience from the narrative, before turning to look at Ollie as a music artist in the performance of the video. This would give two ways of looking at our artist but also provide and sense of reality in the narrative which had the dominant focus. I really liked the scene and camera angles that we got from our performance shots in the video, especially with very studio-like and professional appearance that our artist had with the all black costume and black background with a very bold sense of lighting around the artist, which added a nice shadow to some of the shots. Following Goodwin's theory again and also conventions of bands performance shots, we made sure that dominantly the performance shots where close-ups of him singing and playing the guitar, this way we could also exploit the colour scheme sticker that we placed over the guitar body. The lighting put a really dramatic but effective look to the video when capturing just the artists face in a close up. We wanted to get some of Taylor playing the guitar as well because we had some good ideas to link this back to the conventional 'singer/songwriter' and 'indie' artist.
- 8. Brand identity following artists conventions We did some research into similar artists that we could link conventionally for Ollie's image as a solo guitar player and focused upon 'Ed Sheeran' who is a similar sort of artist we wanted to portray conventionally. One thing we noticed when he plays live is that his guitars seem very personal and sentimental with stickers and sharpie writing on the body of it which is one thing our target audience said they want to see in a music artist, is having a 'personal connection' with their favourite artists. This is quite typically conventional of the indie genre as well which can be supported through social media, fan mail and back stage competitions etc. We wanted to embed the colour scheme of our promotional package onto the guitar so that it seemed more custom to Ollie instead of an instrument but it also meant we could tie this in with our brand identity across the ancillary products as well. We did this by printing off the logo onto a piece of paper and sticking it onto his guitar making it appear as close as possible to a sticker.
- 9. Narrative and performance Another link between the performance and narrative in our video is that we wanted to link the two quite closely. Conventionally the focus of our video is going to be around the narrative following what our target audience wanted but the performance within our video I think played an important tale in expressing Ollie's emotions as an artist. To me, the feeling I get watching the video over is that It seems the performance shots are Ollie telling the story over as if he was performing it live with the narrative cutting in and out similar to a flashback. This is partly because the performance shots are so frequent and used as a time-bound crossover between Liz and Ollie's scenes, For example when Liz walks into Woking Park, a performance shot is used between these to illustrate the change it time. I also like the way that we have used cuts from the performance of the video where Ollie doesn't speak and sits there feeling melancholy, which again reflects his emotions in the music video linking the two from the audiences point of view and exaggerating the overall emotion that the audience feel.
- 10. Costume This contrast was reflected dominantly through the use of costume which played an important focus when trying to appeal to a target audience as we could set trends and make our artist appeal to our audience outside of just the music, which is why modern indie artists are trending across the globe. We did a lot of research into costume's but we were quite restricted with what we had and could get hold of easily, also with it being the first real music appearance Ollie made on the 'indie music' scene we didn't want to set an impression that would put off new listeners, so his image and representation couldn't be so unconventional. For the narrative we got him to wear quite light colours including a white tee, light blue jeans, sand boots and a burgundy cardigan with a black, formal coat on. We also wanted to make sure our outfit was practical to our artist for the video in the time of year that we were filming. The majority of it was filmed in November and a bit in January, and the majority of this was outside. So we didn't want to make Taylor wear a summer outfit of just a T-shit and open shirt because it would be impractical when filming. It would also be unrealistic for our audience.
- 11. Costume We wanted to have this contrast between Taylor in reality and then at the other end of the scale as a popular indie artist, we wanted to make sure that his costume in the music video suggested this, but still made him look appealing. We asked media experts and opinions of our actors on their outfit choice but I think that for both artists, what we chose was practical and appealing, still reflecting our target audience and what trends with modern day indie music and fashion. For our photographs we planned to use for our digipak and webpage we didn't really want to get Ollie to wear the same outfit as although it would show brand identity between the music video, we want to get our artist to wear a variety of outfits for the images he was featured to show realism but also a diversity in costumes would give him as an artist a sense of style and create his own image compared to other artists, especially now as the modern day indie genre expands outside just music and fashion.