In what way does your Media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real Media products?

Our media product comes under the indie genre. We researched this genre in depth to then help us discover the main conventions. We found out from our research that the common conventions of the genre were bright colours and quite simple storylines and generally don’t contain big expensive productions.  This led us on to think of what the narrative could be and we came up with many suggestions to conform to the stereotypes of this genre. Our song is by a band that are not widely known so we wanted it to appear realistic and look like something they would produce which is why we went for the low budget feel that we would be able to succeed in. Also the lyrics of the song gave us a strong base for a narrative as it talks of ‘hauntings’ and ‘clean white sheets’ which straight away made us want to link the lyrics to the story which we also found to be a common convention of this genre. After hearing the song we also thought that it was quite upbeat and fun which made us have a story that had a lightheaded feel about it and not be too serious which again we looked in t and found that a lot of artist in this genre had.

One convention of real media products of this genre is performance scenes, and we conformed to this convention in our own media product. We had a performance scene as we found out that most indie bands have one in their videos, bearing this in mind we considered our band and that as they were small and unknown  a more intimate and low budget setting for the performance would be better so we therefore used a garage. I think the garage work well as it shows off the band and avoids any other distractions as you are only looking at them. Performance elements are very important in the indie genre as most artists of this type of music want to promote themselves as a band and as musician not as celebrities so to incorporate the instruments was very important to us. Also it makes the audience appear closer to the band as they are seen in a garage which is very accessible and no out of reach. This led us to think about our other settings as we decided to not have it all performance based. We used the other settings of a kitchen, the woods, the park and the supermarket. All of these places were easily accessible which fit in with the homemade low budget feel we wanted to achieve.

 Another common convention we found out about the indie genre was the attraction of being different and ‘quirky’ we there for tried to incorporate this into our own video. We decorated the garage with fairy lights to give it the low budget look we wanted and also add the quirky feel to make it conform.  Another use of mise en scene that we used was the masks, these fit well for the lyrics of the song and the light hearted feel we wanted to achieve. Also the use of the masks fit again with the homemade low budget feel as they were easily accessible. We researched a number of different bands of the same genre and saw many parallels between our product and real media products as many used masks in their videos.

Another thing we learnt from researching other videos was that many had simple narratives and usually used the band to tell them. We therefore went on to construct a simple yet effective storyline that we as the band could act out. We listened to the song and it became easy to storyboards as we made strong links between the lyrics and story which we also found out was a common convention of other media products. Our narrative is performed by the band as it keeps the focus on the band rather than on others also as it is a simple narrative that links so strongly with the lyrics it doesn’t take the focus off of the song. We wanted to create the simple narrative as artists of this genre are trying to promote themselves as credible musicians and promote their music so we didn’t want to take that focus away.

Furthermore, whilst researching other artists’ videos of the indie genre we found that they use editing to fit to the beat, we therefore conformed to this convention. As we had a fast paced songs we had more than enough to use and we tried to make each cut on a beat and made sure that the pace of the song was never lost and that we kept it throughout.

However there were some conventions of the indie genre that we did not conform to. Firstly bright colours are a favourite of this genre and although we did use some in places we did not use in excess as many others may do but we felt that it didn’t tie in with our concept and song. Also, during the planning stage we were set on using green screen for our ‘head in fridge scene’ however we decided against it as if we were unable to pull it off it would not look as good, also that green screens are very complicated and that would not fit in with our simple concept and homemade feel as green screens are not widely accessible.

Ultimately, our group decided to conform to most of the common conventions of this genre and we feel it was right to do so as I think it make our video very effective.

Here are the two main examples of common conventions that are in our music video that are also used in other media products:

masks

performance

We took inspiration from both videos and many more once we had further researched this genre.