Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

To answer this question we decided to create a video response in which we talk about how we feel we 'used, developed and challenged' forms and conventions of real media products to achieve our final pieces of work, including our final edit (the main product), website and album cover(anchillary products).

LINKING THESE IDEAS TO GENRE  aAND RELEVANT VIDEOS OF INSPIRATION

I drew particular inspiration from this video 'Coffee shop soundtrack by All Time Low' which is a completely different genre of music to ours, being punk rock rather than indie, therefore making our band stand out from their own genre and potentially catching the audiences eye. The video above is quite casual and has fairly uninteresting sets but they use them in funny, quirky and entertaining ways to make the video pleasurable to watch. As well as this the grading almost makes it seem quite home made which i feel ours has as well. 

As you can see the grades are fairly similar and quite yellow giving them a home made feel.

Again we made the decision for our own music video to focus more on the fun and entertainment compared to the actual preffsionalism of the instrument playing which is similar to this video as we never actually see the band playing their instruments in a serious set. The camerawork is often still and front on and has the actors directly addressing the camera almost like 'webcam' or a bit tongue and cheek. We decided to use similar shots within our video to create a professional yet amateur feel to the video to create an approachable band image and make the audience feel it is easier to relate to them which i feel is important for a debut video (as shown below).

Here you can see the similar direct adress.

The video focuses alot on comedy, creating a clear fun band image, which ours also does such as the spooning shot etc.

These photos show the same fun jokey theme both videos capture.

The video also draws on the knowledge of the audience to emphasise the comedy, that gymnastics is a very hard and girly sport. We decided to develop this drawing of knowledge and change it to the knowledge of popular culture using famous movie villains (Darth Vader, The Joker and Dr Evil) doing silly, unimaginable things, to give the video more comedy value.

Here you can see the popular culture of knowing about the villains and gymnastics to emphasise the hilarity of the video.

This video 'Teddy Picker by the Arctic Monkeys' is the same indie genre as our band but as you can see from watching the video has a vastly different feel to the video, which alot of videos from this genre have and so we feel we have broken many conventions of the genre. This video is alot more serious, with no elements of comdey, as well as this, compared to our video, this one is alot more focused on the proffessionalism of the band, playing their instruments well etc. shown by the majority of the video being them actually recording the song in a studio and with ours there is a clear lack of this serious performance.

As you can see in our video the lead singer messes around with his microphone compared to the formality of the recording studio.

Again with this video, the band is very easily identifyable with many shots of them all together just walking casually down the road, however ours completely breaks this convention of making the band identifyable by putting three of its members in costume, however this gives our video an enigmatic feel which could make the audience more inclined to go to our website to find out more- encouraging use of the ancillary products.

The Arctic Monkeys get clear shots of the full band whereas we mask some of our characters faces.

Overall the main difference is the portrayaly of image, with ours being alot more fun and quirky rather than serious and professional.


Analysing our video according to Vernallis:
Our video follows mainly follows Vernallis's conventions breaking all rules of continuity editing which we used when editing our video to make it visually entertaining to the audience. We did things such as using jump cuts,breaking the 30 degree rule and , and we also didn't follow a linear pattern as to shot types, jumping from closeups to longshots etc. 

Our editing matched musical phrases and was most of the time to the beat, and editing was the focal point sometimes as well, for instance in the shots we made slow or fast motion.

This sequence we made fast motion in our piece to add extra comical effect

We also support Vernallis's narrative conventions, he states that the narrative doesn't normally have a clear resolution or ending and in our video the ending is unclear as to wether the whole thing was a dream as he wakes up again alone after falling asleep with the villains questioning the whole narrative that the villains had come in to help him sleep.

Our Album Cover
The album cover we created for 'Small Town America- Route 66' follows most conventions of real album covers. For example the road trip americanised theme of the cover runs the whole way through each page of the album cover. As well as this the back follows rules and conventions having all the essential information for instance, the barcode, track listing and institutional information. For a debut album it is essential for the band name to be large and easy to spot, which ours is and the album name is also easy to spot. However, going against conventions we again, like our music video, almost mask our bands faces by making them cartoonised but we feel this gives it an enigma which makes the audience buy the album to find out more about the band, also the bands faces are shown INSIDE the album which would also encourage them to buy it to find out the identities, or even just check out our website.

Our Website
Our website follows greatly the conventions of a website, by allowing the audience to recognise the band image again by sticking with the road trip background/theme. There are clear links to buy the album and single and also to check out the youtube page and production company. We have many ways as well for the audience to engage with the band and feel more in touch with them such as competitions winning personalised merchandise, a comments box on the videos page, a place to send messages to the group ad also a merchandise shop full of fun Small Town America clothing. The website is easy yet fun to navigate through, and everything links into one another. We have lots of albums of photos to also give the audience insight into the members of the band, behind the scenes of the music video and standard photoshoots.