In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music products?
For our media products; digipak, website, photo shoots and music video we used various bands and artists for inspiration. Whilst making these products we ensured we included as many of these inspirations as possible to make help our band follow the conventions of those similar. However we also wanted to be unique and create our own identity so we also tried to challenge these so we weren't like every other girl band out there that already has a name for themselves.
Our music video conforms to Andrew Goodwin's theory that the events and visuals in a video both amplify and illustrate the lyrics, we also used thought beat to match the beat of the song. It also supports some of Carol Vernallis's theory .
Below are our main inspirations:
Our Music Video:
For our media products; digipak, website, photo shoots and music video we used various bands and artists for inspiration. Whilst making these products we ensured we included as many of these inspirations as possible to make help our band follow the conventions of those similar. However we also wanted to be unique and create our own identity so we also tried to challenge these so we weren't like every other girl band out there that already has a name for themselves.
Our music video conforms to Andrew Goodwin's theory that the events and visuals in a video both amplify and illustrate the lyrics, we also used thought beat to match the beat of the song. It also supports some of Carol Vernallis's theory .
Below are our main inspirations:
Our Music Video:
Through research we found that conventions of the Pop genre include a band or solo performance, the member often dress of a similar or same style with slight changes to make them identifiable, so we decided to include these as some of the conventions of our music video.
We decided our theme would be lights as we found these were a convention of a lot of pop videos. With lights your get silhouettes, so we decided this would be something to make our video unique. We researched into some videos that including them and found one from Neon Jungle, who are a four-piece pop girl band.
We found some more unknown pop videos that included neon paint with UV lights which made them glow. We thought this would fit perfectly with our theme and would also add something special to our video.
One main convention of pop videos is colour. This is especially evident in girl band pop genre. They used bright, bold colours to create prevalence, making sure you were watching their video. However they often use splashes of these bright colours with darker backgrounds, or vice verse; having bright backgrounds and darker clothing. We decided to mainly use bright backgrounds with some splashes of colour in our clothing and make-up, but the main focus is on the background colours.
We watched the first videos released from all our inspirations, through this we found that in the openings they used different ways of revealing each member of the band. This enables the audience to see each member individually and see who makes up the band. We decided to use this within our video as it is to our first music video and our audience are unaware of who we are.
Also through watching many girl bands we found that most of the time if the song was upbeat, a dance routine would accompany the song somewhere in the video. It could be in the chorus of broken up and put it various places within the video and shot in various different places. We chose to use this convention and make it a distinctive feature of our video. We also thought our audience is of an age, that would enjoy learning and copying this danc We shot it in every location we filmed so we could see where looked best during editing, we decided the silhouettes looked best as you could really see the movements in front of the bright lights. I personally as a dancer choreographed the routine you can see in the video.
We watched one video by Zara Larsson called Lush Life. In this video she stood in front a white background whilst colours flashed behind her and her body was cloned to mimic her movements. We really like this idea so we decided to use the green screen and create something similar. We thought this would be a good place to continue expressing the colours that represent each member so during editing we made the clones these colours.
The most obvious convention of our music video is lights, strobe lighting, light walls and background lighting. The majority is bright lights to contrast the dark club and outdoor setting. We used as many different forms of lighting as we could think of. Through research we found that this was a feature some pop videos but not all, if the song had a more club feel then lighting was more likely. We felt 'Light Me Up' had this so we decided to include it. Lighting is often associated with dance music so with this as our main convention we are challenging the generic pop conventions.
1) The Light Wall
1) The Light Wall
We shot the bulk of our music video in Miya nightclub which had a six piece light wall. We could control the colours, speed and amount of lights on show at one time. We used this for dance scenes as it allowed the audience the really see the movement. At points where just one person was shown in front of the light wall we changed the colour to match the band members colour. We found this was another convention of girl-bands, for each member to have a colour.
2) Coloured background
Originally this was a white background however through feedback we decided
this was the weakest point in our video. So we continued the theme previously used and added the colours of each member onto the background whenever they were in front of it. We also used prevelance here as nothing else is going on in within the screen so the audience can only look at the person/ people within the screen.
3) Outdoor Lighting
Taking inspiration from a Selena Gomez, pop video, we shot some scenes outside with people
in the background shining various torches and glow sticks around. The lights were all shining on the member or members of the band so that the audience again had to look at them and not what was happening in the background
4) Spot Light
We used the spotlight in two different ways. At first we made the room completely dark and then turned on one single spotlight behind us. This made all the focus on us and when we moved around create bright bursts of light. The second time we again made the room pitched black and then placed a spotlight behind a white sheet and stood in front of it. This time it created silhouettes, which we had previously seen in a lot of pop and dance videos.
Music Video Conventions:
Andrew Goodwin
Goodwin suggested that there needs to be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, our relationship illustrates and amplify's both the lyrics and the title 'Light me up'. As our main convention is lights, we are are illustrating the lyrics. We also want these light to become our iconography, which is a certain trend or trademark a particular band or artist has to make them identifiable. Using these in all our ancillary product also helped this.
We also illustrate the lyrics through the little narrative we have between the boy and girl.
Here we show the boy chasing the girl, but she isn't interested so she pushes him away.
All of our cuts and transitions are to the beat of the song, supporting Andrew Goodwins theory of thought beats, which enable us the see the sounds.
Carol Vernallis:
Vernallis said that there does not necessarily need to be an equal balance between narrative and performance and the narrative is not always completed, it may be disjointed or fragmented. This is the case in our video. We don't have a narrative running the whole way through however they are moments with both a boy and a girl which suggest a romantic narrative.
Vernallis also stated that mid shots and regular close-ups are common to enable the audience to familiarise themselves with the face and look of the artists.
We used these for the majority of our shots as it is our first video we want our audience to be able to recognise our faces and be familiar with them for future reference.
Website:
Using the same conventions and taking inspiration from other artists we created our ancillary products, in these products we tried to create synergy through the use of colour, images, text and more. Below I explain the conventions of our website and why we used them:
Digipak:
As our website was created before our digipak we used the conventions from our website within our digipak. We looked at various digipaks from both solo artists and girl bands for conventions and inspiration.
Below is our final digipak:
Music Video Conventions:
Andrew Goodwin
Goodwin suggested that there needs to be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, our relationship illustrates and amplify's both the lyrics and the title 'Light me up'. As our main convention is lights, we are are illustrating the lyrics. We also want these light to become our iconography, which is a certain trend or trademark a particular band or artist has to make them identifiable. Using these in all our ancillary product also helped this.
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| Our front cover of the digipak has glimmers of light in the background, again continuing the light theme. |
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| The background of the website looks like blurred lights, creating synergy by continuing the light theme. |
We also illustrate the lyrics through the little narrative we have between the boy and girl.
Here we show the boy chasing the girl, but she isn't interested so she pushes him away.
We also amplify the main lyric in the song 'Light Me Up' through our dance moves
All of our cuts and transitions are to the beat of the song, supporting Andrew Goodwins theory of thought beats, which enable us the see the sounds.
Carol Vernallis:
Vernallis said that there does not necessarily need to be an equal balance between narrative and performance and the narrative is not always completed, it may be disjointed or fragmented. This is the case in our video. We don't have a narrative running the whole way through however they are moments with both a boy and a girl which suggest a romantic narrative.
Vernallis also stated that mid shots and regular close-ups are common to enable the audience to familiarise themselves with the face and look of the artists.
We used these for the majority of our shots as it is our first video we want our audience to be able to recognise our faces and be familiar with them for future reference.
Website:
Using the same conventions and taking inspiration from other artists we created our ancillary products, in these products we tried to create synergy through the use of colour, images, text and more. Below I explain the conventions of our website and why we used them:
Digipak:
As our website was created before our digipak we used the conventions from our website within our digipak. We looked at various digipaks from both solo artists and girl bands for conventions and inspiration.
Below is our final digipak:
From this you can see the that the colour purple was our main theme, the same as in our website. We used purple as it is a stereotypical girl's colour, who are our primary audience, however it could also appeal to boys. We didn't want to limit the appeal of our image to just one audience. It is also a bright, bold stand out colour that people will be able to easily recognise and associate with our band.
For the front cover of our digipak we took inspiration from Neon Jungle's first album cover:
We thought having three separate images showed that we weren't just a band, but we have individual identity's. We continued our convention of our colours and had our individual colours as the background.
We wanted to continue to theme of lights throughout all our ancillary products, so our digipak have to have glimmers of lights. We also took some screenshots from our video to create synergy between the products.
For our back cover we looked at The Saturdays album, at first I tried editing the text exactly they have it; with a black background and a rainbow effect on the text. However after comparing it with the other images we have already on the digipak, we decided as a group that it didn't fit with the conventions we currently had.
However we liked the text we had used but we felt it still needed colour so I played around with some different ways to inject colour. After watching the video I saw a shot of a purple light all and thought it would fit perfectly with the rest of the digipak, so I screenshot the image and placed it in the background.
The image below is the CD within our digipak, the l
ips that appear on the CD also appear on nearly every page of our website. We are using Andrew Goodwins theory of iconography, which is something that is recurring with that particular artist, their audience expect to see it in their products and it helps them be identifiable.For our back cover we looked at The Saturdays album, at first I tried editing the text exactly they have it; with a black background and a rainbow effect on the text. However after comparing it with the other images we have already on the digipak, we decided as a group that it didn't fit with the conventions we currently had.
However we liked the text we had used but we felt it still needed colour so I played around with some different ways to inject colour. After watching the video I saw a shot of a purple light all and thought it would fit perfectly with the rest of the digipak, so I screenshot the image and placed it in the background.
The image below is the CD within our digipak, the l
We decided to name the album Light Me Up after lots of research into Girl-bands first albums. I found that most of them were named after their first or second single release. It helps our audience remember us and easily identify our album to our single. It also created synergy as the lights on the digipak now have a meaning behind them.
