Gaaron Clarke- A2 Media Project: February 2013

THE MUSIC VIDEO
We had been given various comments about the music video differing from positive and negative aspects, this allows us to understand what needed to be improved and what has been effective to audiences.
Justin had complimented the storyline and showed that he understood it with ease which also makes it understandable, however this is contrasted with the disadvantage of Justin mentioning that there was 'some unnecessary scenes'. This is an example of Ffion cooking cookies which is shown before the pinnacle scene starts, this may confuse the viewers but it also makes them intrigued of what is going to happen next. Both Justin and Chanel agree that the lip syncing was brilliant which creates verisimilitude for the viewers to believe the actors are singing the lyrics, this is important within our music video as there is only limited amount of singers presented. Jason had commented on the generic conventions positively since he understood that most hip-hop songs have the same typical generic conventions such as girls and cars. Our genre (Pop-Punk) allows more of a creative storyline and humourous aspects which was commented by Chanel also, humour is a convention within this genre but this is too broad to include therefore it needs diverse aspects. Our examples were cat food pranks and laxative in cookies which is very unique to think of. However, some more disadvantages were presented regarding the music video such as Jason mentioning that the quality should be improved, we had filmed with 2 cameras due to difficulty so the quality had changed, we had to artificially manipulate the scenes to be sharpened on Final Cut Express but some elements could still be seen.

The Digipak
Feedback was given regarding the Digipak and most comments had been positive which allowed our group to believe this was our strongest media platform to appeal to the audience. All people viewed within our feedback video had agreed that the Rubiks cube was a great theme to be applied as Jason had stated he was a big Rubiks fan and Justin understood the connotation of the band being complete together (similar to a Rubiks cube being complete). Chanel had however evaluated that the digipak contained a lot of information but we was not sure if we agreed with this since it only included the tracklist and small print; the typical standard seen on a digipak. But we took this into consideration since we are not the eyes of the audience.
Justin had commented that he loved the Rubiks cube idea but the background concept could be improved since he felt it was too plain, it needed more aspects such as colours to appeal to the audience but this was contradicted by Jason who did not have no comments to say of improving the digipak; he thought very hard to consider any elements at all but finalised with no comment.

The Website
This ancillary task had contained several web pages ranging from the Home, Music, Videos, Photos, Band and much more. We wanted several pages to include a lot of information and exciting layouts without presenting information in big clusters. Feedback was received regarding the website and again positive comments were made such as Justin stating the website looked professional from the web pages and attractiveness, he evaluated that the website needed more colours. This was a confusing assumption he had said due to the website containing the Rubiks Cube theme colours and we were worried about the website looking tacky due to so many colours. This point had been made by Jason as there are too much colours but Justin disagreed further by stating there should be MORE colours. Chanel did not have negative comments to give but she commented on the website being informative and loved the aspect of the prize draw being issued.

Taking into account of the feedback we had received, I believe that the music video, website and digipak had been positively viewed with the few exceptions of improvement.

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

For our main tasks in A2 Media, I along with my group that I had worked with had to construct a music video alongside a website to promote it and a digipak to contain the CD. We had delegated tasks to each other in order to save time consuming matters but each individual had contributed to each task. We had many drafts of the ancillary tasks differing from different colour schemes to an entire change of the layout due to the conformity of generic conventions, our primarily focus that we had selected was Pop Punk. Research had been conducted from the group to explore similar conventions Pop Punk music videos had such as fast cuts and shaky camera actions, this is due to adrenaline rushing atmosphere created for the viewers as this genre is a rebellious and dark style. Paramore was our main reference and we had observed nearly every music video they had did, each one had many similar conventions such as the same black and white colour schemes and close ups being presented on live instruments; typical instruments include electric guitars, bass, drum kit and microphones. We had also used these with our music video along with a comedic narrative consisting of a love triangle between two girls and a dream boy; this was in reference with Paramore’s song ‘Misery business’ which was about a dream girl using her flirtatious behaviour in her typical college based environment. We had associated this reference by contrasting the idea of a dream girl to a dream boy and having two girls after him, we had used comedic aspects with pranks that were being used in the music video to make the audience laugh while simultaneously appreciating the music.

The genre Pop Punk has a widespread of conventions that had branched off from the style of heavy rock and rebellious governmental issues; these had been evolved down through the music chain but kept aspects to categorise the genre in the branch of rock. These include the costume of the characters to have long wild hair and disobedient behaviour, this of course can be their star image and have entire different character in reality, but artists want to keep that same social culture alive with the viewers. The music itself contains political lyrics that rebel against society but the modern era has concluded narratives to be mainly about relationships and teen revenge, the song that we had chosen to use for our music video was ‘Deathwish’ by Mimi Soya. The lyrics in this song revolve around a certain girl who can’t be with a boy since she will bring ‘death’ upon him, these grim lyrics allowed us to contrast with this storyline and replace the lyrics with associating it with 2 girls pranking each other in order to win the dream boy. We differentiated from the original scheme since we felt that the music video would not appeal to an audience as much but we had kept generic conventions such as technical conventions like dark lighting in some scenes as well as symbolic conventions as the band is present with their live instruments; for a verisimilitude storyline we had used a college for our music video to be set in some scenes since colleges and universities are predominant in Pop Punk music videos. Some people disagreed that this was not a great idea since they felt we were opposing with the lyrics to create a music video for our benefit but individuals perceive certain stimuli such as the lyrics in different ways, these verses and choruses were quite challenging to understand but to make it more clearer to the viewer’s we assigned them with a simpler yet more effective storyline. Several people engaged with watching our video and giving their views thus editing our video respectively in order for it to be entertaining and realistic, I had given a lot of contribution with this task since a lot of ideas were brought up and incorporated with the rest of the group for a final verdict to place in the music video, an example of this is that a scene needed to be cut in order for the next scene to be in congruence with the music. The group acknowledged this fact and had exchanged ideas such as shifting the whole scene or even modifying the next but we had all agreed on a slight time lapse. Time lapse is most commonly used for comedic effects which tied in beautifully with our music video since the main idea is for it to be humorous and entertaining. However, the use of personal identity can also be incorporated but this is an exaggerated concept of what reality expresses in college, young love is nearly prevalent in schools thus explaining the audience social events that take place with young teens; myself along with my group are all teenagers so we can relate to this.

A website had to also be created for our task and this involved a large proportion if research to be conducted from not just punk rock artists, but nearly every genre so we could get an idea of how generic conventions are diversified between styles. Jay Z (hip-hop rapper) website had shown multiple news events of tours and music with a black and white colour scheme…this has been contrasted majorly from Paramore’s website which focused more on social feeds, photos and even news that is happening with the band which has nothing to do with their music. However, this can create a sense of closeness with the viewers since they are aware of what is happening with the band’s lives and they themselves feel part of their lifestyle. We had also used this with our website that we had created since it has multiple Twitter and Facebook feeds and buttons to reach the audience more, this had led us to create more of a ‘closeness’ with the band and captured many photos in different locations such as in the studio and with our live instruments. We had chosen the name ‘The Format’ for our band since we had a numerous amount but public had decided ‘The Format’ since they thought this was a Pop Punk name and was very original. Several Pop Punk websites had been viewed by myself and had realised that most websites had a dark background or funky colour scheme (contrast from metal rock as this is a fun childish genre). The group decided that it was a mixture of all of these ideas and we had conformed to it creating the colour scheme to be multi coloured yet create a sensible look; the reason for this is due to the connection of a Rubiks cube from the front of our digipak. The colours black and white are the two dominant contrasting colours which attract the viewers but too much of this can be mistaken to be part of the wrong genre such as Hip-Hop. A mysterious concept we had added was the name ‘Enigma’ for our digipak to display the music being puzzling and many views can be taken upon it. We had added many pages on our website including the home page, photos, bios, videos and even a prize draw page since these types of bands are popular with the public thus having merchandise from the band to be won or bought. Playback buttons were also exposed on these generic websites so I had incorporated this use with our website by using a playback button on each of the albums we had created. However, if a website conforms to every piece of convention from a punk band, will it look unoriginal and have a duplicated layout? We certainly did not want to achieve this so we had used some generic conventions and challenged others such as a landing page being shown. Websites such as Fall Out Boy had shown a landing page promoting their tour dates and new album, we decided not to do this but highlight the new album on the home page instead.

The last part of the task was to create the format that the CD needs to be contained in…the digipak. Our group had an extensive amount of ideas with the digipak ranging from what would be held inside to the overall layout, but we needed to have generic conventions to be present as well as the digipak having an exciting look. Rubiks cube colours were presented in all of the 4 panels with a colours scheme to link with the website for a synergetic effect; this was used on some of the panels since we did not want them all to have the exact same scheme. In the stage of creating the actual design of the digipak, our group had become a little weary of designing a layout that links with Pop Punk, our website, our band and to be effective for the audience. We had therefore used an extensive amount of research on Pop Punk digipaks and found they all had very weird and diverse designs, patterns and distorted pictures were used on nearly all of them. Some had the band present but we felt this would be too common to create, this led to the diverse pattern concept and we had created a digipak along the funky Rubik’s cube. We had noticed that parental advisory were on the digipaks stating that the lyrics may have swear words or profanity language, our actual song didn’t and the milder Pop Pun songs does rarely have profanity language so we did not input the sign. We also added minor details on the back of the CD for verisimilitude such as producers of the songs and even the legal print, challenged of these forms were also brought up from the group such as lyric books and photos. Pop Punk albums and digipaks normally contain lyric books so the listeners can follow along and learn but we wanted our digipak to just contain the CD since we felt a 4 panel would not need a lyric book, band photos are normally in the digipaks too but again photos are found on the website.

To conclude, generic conventions of Pop Punk was used in various ways across the different types of media platforms we focused on. This is to keep the historic use of conventions being expressed to the viewer’s such as symbolic uses like dark clothing and technical uses like time lapse effects. In contrast to this, I along with my group had realised that having a high proportion of generic conventions make the media product and platform look unoriginal since there is no unique purpose. Therefore we had to challenge numerous amounts of conventions along with conforming to some that we felt were necessary.