Q1

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

MUSIC VIDEO 

Following the codes and conventions of an indie/ alternative genre, as a group, we included, taking into consideration, the artists presentation and being considerate with being conceptual with filming and location ideas. Firstly, we looked at the idea of the artist being solo and unique, as well as being  rooted into their music and creativity 

Looking at artists who have been successful in being creative with their editing and being unique and different from the mainstream, David Guetta's 'Metropilis' music video. Our music video develops the forms and conventions used such as visual lyrics alongside adding text to the video to make it more visually appealing and draw in the audience.

We achieved this idea of our artist being solo and having their own style with the use of having a double of Barde's personality who was younger to represent and be creative with her being a solo artist who takes things to the next level. Looking into more detail the common codes and conventions of indie genre, it was highly important to be quirky and edit our video in an appealing way. We used different locations in the city of London as the mise-en-scene and incorporated them throughout our video which highlighted the raw ethnicity of where Barde is from and her culture which is seen in many indie genre music videos, such as in Lorde's 'Royals' music videos, she introduces the video with a tracking shot of a street which is distinctively somewhere exotic which sets the scene and tone of the slow paced music, which we challenged and developed by creating scenes and fast paced editing to create a more frantic pace and make it less simplistic and 'perfect'. Having our main artist Barde being solo highlights how Lorde is a solo artist which is shown through the use of the plain background to show she is single and isolated, however, as Barde is solo, we as a group decided to challenge this idea and create a 'mini me' of our artist to play with the creativity of the shoot as it was quite simplistic, which we thought would attract our target audience, being bold and brave as an artist. 

As far as lyrics, we decided to be more creative and layer animated words over the video to create more of an appealing visual to our target audience. Looking at Gotye 'Somebody that i used to know' music video, they use time lapse of gotye which creates visual pleasure is what we wanted to achieve as a group, however timing was an issue  so we decided to take our ideas to another level and create a different concept challenging and developing this to make it our own idea.

We used the idea of adding text and inverting colours to create a quirky vibe to the video as our music video doesn't follow a specific narrative other than including a 'mini me' of our main artist (which challenges and rejects the main conventions of most music videos) to texualise it more. 

Narrative being a common convention of indie/alternative genre, we decided to challenge this idea and take it into our own hands and focus on the visual concept, rather than the narrative and meaning behind it to reveal Barde's (as an new artist) personality and style of music. 

In relation to this, looking at FKA twigs who creates visuals to show her style of music, she creates and uses camera work and special effects which match her trip hop music genre which we wanted to achieve in branding Barde as an upcoming artist. 

WEBSITE 

Our media product uses forms and conventions of real media products. Starting with our website to  further brand and sell our artist who represents alternative/indie culture genre, I looked at websites who follow the same aspects within this genre, yet also including more popular, well known artists who don't use the same genre to brand themselves such as Rihanna who is followed by many different types of people.

Starting off with artists such as Bastille, who are an indie band, I looked at their website and how they create this successfully. The generic conventions seen in indie/alternative/ artists websites are the use of neutral colours to reflect on the rawness of the genre, however with hinds of the colours/fonts/style of the artist to create uniqueness, the main homepage which includes an image of the artist, the album name or cover, and links to other social medias, the Merch/store page, About page/ biography, and a BTS/gallery page.

The overall aesthetic of their website was quite dark, yet had pops of colour which we followed in the making of our website. The colours were neutral and were relevant to the band as a whole and how they present themselves, however we also developed on this by including an image of our album cover on our font page instead of what Bastille did and used an image of the artist as the whole main page background screen with the link to our song in a pop up bar that automatically comes up as you enter the home page.

We developed on the idea of using colours to brand the artist and follow through with their brand identity which helps our target audience feel a connection with the artist through the website. Generic features which we included were the artists name/identity, social bars to connect the viewer with their idol on another platform and the common pages seen on any artist website such as the homepage, merch,store and behind the scenes.

The use of the black against the faded green create quite a raw effect which helped us to create more of a sophisticated, yet not too serious vibe which is reflected into barde as an artist. As far as the fnt goes, we chose a font which we thought highlighted Barde as a whole and her work which is similar to what Bastille include however our heading fonts don't change throughout because we thought it looked neater and had more of a flow.

The main features on an artist website include a biography which we included on the 'about' page on our website, however on real artists websites, it is usually seen on, for instance, on Rihanna's page on her homepage, however still include the same information and background history a real website would include. The use of these conventions and ideas followed through in our group work, helps appeal to our target audience as it is sophisticated and conforms to the ideologies of an indie/alternative genre.

Rihanna's website:

our website:

We decided to include this information about Barde as an artist on a separate page so that the information wasn't all on one page and so that our target audience could get a more personal, one to one feeling with Barde and get to know more about her. Overall, we didn't challenge the website aspect because we wanted to use and develop features already used in real artists website to make sure it was appealing to our target audience.

DIGIPAK
For the Digipak, the research of looking into artists who have similar and also artists who aren't based around the same genre, but who have been successful in the music industry has helped us develop, challenge and conform to certain aspects with our finalised Digipak. As a group, we decided that the Digipak, being the main aspect to really selling Barde as an artist, was key and had to be well planned.





Looking at how Lana Del Ray constructed her Digipak, as an indie/alternative artist using generic codes such as her (brand) name to sell and attract to her target audience as well as the overall aesthetics from the simplistic style which is frequent throughout to complete and collectively bring together her album.
We developed these same generic codes in our Digipak to attract the right target audience, with the collective style of our artist alongside her brand identity (what made her as an upcoming artist stand out)

As our final Digipak represents out genre and artist well through the use of the general conventions of a Digipak including Barde's name and images of her, alongside the title of the album which we developed into our own style fitting our artists needs to aim at our target audience. However as we were in the process of creating our Digipak, we challenged some of these typical conventions with including more images that we thought would brand Barde as an indie/alternative artist instead of including lyrics of our song or information about Barde as an artist because this is what we thought the website needed and as we wanted Barde's personality to be more about her style through her artistic, creativeness, we chose to add more images and illustrations following the generic code of staying consistent and having a flow, which is seen in many successful artists Digipak's.

Using 'Foster the people' as a prime example of being a creative indie band, we developed this idea of using illustrations and pops of colour which represented Barde as an artist without just using digital images. The use of Photoshop helped make these images more suited to the style we wanted and to make it more unique.



With Lorde as an example of someone who has a unique artist who has a very unique style to her music and branding, we used the same generic features of using a headshot of Barde, however we made ours close up with more manipulation with the lighting and pose of her. The simplicity of the style of CD's are similar however, Lorde's font has more of a flow and is more stylised, which on the other hand is more prominent and separated from the image, which we thought would stand out more with the use of pink and green which is parallel to Barde as an artist which would attract to our target audience.