Evaluation Question 4

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

When going through the process of making my music video, I realized I would have to make my product different to other videos from the same genre because if it was the same as all of the other options available, there would be no reason for people to choose my product over other bands. So in the creation of my music video I was sure to challenge typical conventions found in music videos so that mine would feel fresh to the public.

I soon realized after researching into folk rock music videos, that the majority of them lack a lot of narrative and instead focus around the performance element either in a studio or a live based performance. So I knew immediately that I could break that convention and put some focus into the narrative of my music video, which would make fans of the genre surprised when they started to watch my video. I also feel by choosing the story line I did for the narrative, I made sure that the video would stick with the audience after they had stopped watching my video. However, I did stick to the convention by including a performance from my band, so i feel like I got the best of both worlds by having both of these things in my video.

Whilst creating my bands digipack, I included some shots of my band members using their instruments mid song, I did this because I realized that a lot of Folk Rock bands have their artists on the cover for their albums, so I thought I would use this convention because I wanted my audience to recognize the album as something they might like. However, I realized that a lot of albums from folk rock bands had a lot of colour on them, so I decided to go with a black and white colour scheme to make my digipack stick out from the others, this also helped to go along with my theme of a classy/cool feel to the whole thing.

A big convention I challenged in my media product is the use of fake instruments instead of real instruments in my music video. As folk rock bands usually focus around the performance element to their music videos, they always use real instruments as the videos are often serious and grounded in reality. However, I felt like I wanted my band to be quirky and different from the rest so that they would stick out more. Using fake instruments helped with this, because other than that, the video is quite serious. This creates an interesting contradiction which I believe makes my band seem different from the rest.