1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of

real media products?

General information• In our media product, our group developed and challenged many

forms and conventions of our music genre. For example, we created a jazzy production that consisted solely of performance and we felt our visuals made the performance look both effective and original.

• The first thing we did was we referred to media theory when brainstorming our ideas together. This was so we could therefore develop and use media theory that allowed us to produce the best production possible. We highly benefited from using various different types of theory within our video because of the fact that it was used as a guideline to how we wanted to utilise these particular theories into our production.

• Throughout this slideshow, you will see how we applied these different theories, in order to make our product genuine and believable.

Synaesthesia The first theory our group implemented into our research and development

was synaesthesia. This consisted of our group listening to the different lyrics and soundtracks that TGFA had produced through his singles. This allowed us to imagine what images we would utilise into this particular video to make it seem effective and original. Overall, this was done in order to help us build knowledge in developing a media product with interesting,but effective visuals.

For example, while our group was producing our pre-production storyboard, we thought that the best way to make our visuals look effective was to close our eyes, listen to the song we were using, and then imagine the visuals we felt would look the most effective for example, one member of our group came up with the idea that we should put a red rose into our pre-production storyboard as it signifies love and would ultimately complement the lyrics of our song – ‘I Feel Love’. We also thought that by including this image we could use it as part of our Digipak because it helped to capture the type of atmosphere we wanted to portray in our production, so we could therefore engage our audience in the most appropriate way.

Moreover, there were various visuals we

separately came up with to highlight different signs. I.e. In one of our shots we had our artist playing the piano in front of all his loving fans to show that he has a crowd of people that love and support his music.

Although, it was very time consuming putting synaesthesia into practice , it was a worthwhile theory in the long term as it gave our group insight in creating ideas from the spot which could be later implemented in our music production.

Ferdinand De Saussure (1980): Types of signs used in productions

Our group had related to the theory by Ferdinand De Saussure on the types of signs we wanted to portray to our audience. These particular signs could have been either singular or plural, which composed of either two or three types. The two signs that our group thought would highlight our music video in the most effective way to our audience were the iconic and symbolic signs. This was because our pre-storyboard highlighted that we wanted to produce a jazzy music video that would draw in the attention of the audience and represent our artist in an interesting and original way. 

We displayed iconic signs throughout the various images that we implemented within our production, i.e. the couple holding hands, while overlooking the river. Symbolic signs were displayed through the imagery of the rose which symbolises romance. Furthermore,

In our media product, we aimed to create messages to the audience about

the concept of love which was focused throughout the lyrics of the song we used in our advanced Portfolio. Our group aimed to produce a performance video which would challenge Ferdinand de Saussure theory on signs, as not all real media products utilise signs within their productions. This was a gap in which are group wanted to form and implement in our media product.

Sergei Eisenstein's Theory on Montage

Sergei Eisenstein’s montage editing technique refers to the use of developing quick cuts between various shots in any video. This is what our group wanted to utilise within our media product in order to create excitement, fluidity and originality. Our group had decided to challenge forms of real media products as the majority of real media products are usually slow paced productions, as opposed to montage related.

From our pre-production questionnaires results, the audience stated that they wanted to see montage editing in the media product we were creating, as they thought it would make it look ‘more unique and effective’. Overall, we felt this technique was utilised in the best way possible. As the results from our post-production questionnaires displayed that our use of montage editing made the video look more genuine and realistic.

However, our groups music production could have been said to contain

some elements of the theory amplification, such as the shot of the rose within our production, which complemented the lyrics within the song. Although, throughout the video, there weren’t that many related conventions towards love, which could ultimately create a sense of disjuncture from Eisenstein’s theory.

Richard Dyer’s Theory

Our group implemented the use of an additional theory from the book called Heavenly Bodies: Film stars and society by Richard Dyer.

In Mr Dyer's book, he describes how the star quality of your performer is created and if there is any element of Utopia.

• From Dyer's theory, our group started to develop and use his concepts by gathering elements of Utopia, which consists of the abundance of enjoyment and heart which our group developed and used throughout our Advanced portfolio. This was displayed through TGFA’s performance and the dancer in our foundation portfolio. Furthermore, other elements of Utopia include the use of energy, and intensity which we also developed and used as a group which is shown through the dancer and TGFA’s characteristics.

• The star quality is also implemented across both portfolios from the use of the star image which is shown through clothing and their performances.

As, TFGA our music artist faces the challenge of being a successful Indie artist overtime, it's vitally key that TGFA reflects upon Dyer's theory in Star quality in order to progress in the music industry through the significance of image and star potential. Artists that are signed up to major labels have an advantage in being heavily promoted in their star image.

• Andrew Goodwin continues to develop Dyer’s theory on the star system by explaining the ways in which star-texts intersect with video clips. The purpose of a music video according to Goodwin, is to promote and sell CD’s and especially maintain the star image of any artist. The audience must now be encouraged to identify with the performer and consider the conventions that have helped to create this ‘Romantic visual’.

• In different ways throughout our production, we have applied Goodwin’s theory, as our audience understood and identified the conventions of our music video, such examples can be shown through the visuals within our music product such as the rose and the picture of the couple looking over the sea. These particular still shots created this ‘romantic visual’ that was needed to enhance meaning on the concept of ‘love’ throughout our product. We wanted to achieve this because we had had negative feedback from our audience, which highlighted that various parts of our video lacked elements of interesting visuals that were needed in order to fully engage the audience’s 100%. By gaining this negative feedback, we were able to make improvements on our video via Adobe Premiere 2.0. Although this was very time consuming in the short run, it would allow us to make changes that would help us to improve our production significant and able us to get the best grade, we feel, is possible for people of our media caliber.

Intertexuality – Julia Kristeva (1980)

• Our group's research and planning for our foundation and advanced portfolios had been constructed through the use of the intertexuality theory constructed by Julia Kristeva. When putting this theory into practice, our group gathered many intertextual references through the use of watching various YouTube videos of classic films and real music videos. These existing references from real media products gave our group ideas that could be developed further in our planning stages for our media products.

• The intertextual references played a key role in helping our group determine shots, angles and visuals our group wanted to implement in our music product. For example, through watching various real media products we were able to gather many ideas about different locations that would be effective during the overall media process.

• On the following page, we have stated how we put tthe intertexuality theoryinto practice, by giving example of music videos we saw, in order to gather knowledge about how we could produce a realistic and engaging product.

Intertextuality references that our group used.

• Madonna ‘s music video “ Frozen” was a good source of an intertextual reference which we applied the synaethesia theory to. Our group heard the soundtrack to Frozen and then we started to visualize the imagery. The synaethesia theory would later be developed more crucially when determining what single to choose out of TGFA’s album and as well as the given imagery that are group came up with.

Through understanding the synaethesia concept, we started to feel rather confident in writing up our pre storyboard for the song “I feel love” after we gained the visuals from the soundtrack. Examples of visuals our group came up with was TGFA performing in concert and TGFA walking in a park while looking at some beautiful women.

• Example ‘s music video of “Changed the way you kissed me” had been viewed for intertexual research into the black and white effect. The majority of real music products are only filmed in colour, so as a group we explored this black and white effect to see if it could be implemented within our music video product. Example’s video is also a performance based video which looks so vibrant and effective due to the black and white effect. This clearly gave our group an important reference that could be implemented further.

• Lastly, our group used the intextuality reference to Katy Perry’s video for California girls when looking at the quality of the lip synching and how effective it is within the music video. During the research and planning stages, Our group had to perform a short video of ourselves lip synching to a given song in our preliminary task. This song we chose was California girls by Katy Perry. We chose to reference to Katy Perry's video as it was well lip synched music video and we all knew the song very well so it made it easier for us to lip synch for our end product.

Advanced Portfolio Challenges• One convention our group gathered from our research and planning for our

advanced portfolio was that we could ultimately challenge real media products by making our lip synching look more realistic, in terms of the words coming out the artist’s mouth being in time with the lyrics being played. This is because in some real music products we have very recently seen, the lip synching looks out of time, which in turn, makes the overall production less effective. Even though it was very time consuming getting the lip synching perfect in the short-term, it would allow us to hopefully achieve the optimal grade possible in the long term as a result of doing this.

• Our groups advanced portfolio consisted of a variety of locations which were unique and different which challenges existing real media products which have minimal locations and are quite dull.

• The choice of our song, we felt was catchy, unique and original within both the soundtrack and the lyrics. In comparison to real media products within the independent label industry, our group felt we had challenged other indie label songs through the promotion of our soundtrack.

• The majority of participates in our post production questionnaire , agreed with our promotion of our soundtrack because of the visuals, the lyrics and the song itself engaged the audience. we were able to create and develop a strong foundation of how to produce a strong and exciting video during our media course. The use of quick montage editing within a space of 10 seconds implements various camera angles such as close ups , side view shots and long shots. This was effective towards our audience as it created a sense of anticipation and vibrancy. In fact, we feel, the success of real media products are a down to the visuals, the editing effects and the song choice in which the audience found enjoyable to listen to.

• As a group we felt we had matched existing real media products and entail had challenged a minority of major label music products in comparison to our music product in which we felt our group achieved and created a very successful music video, even through our group’s lack of funding.

• In addition, our media product could have been said to contain elements that challenged existing real media products, in terms of the effects that were utilised. I.e. the black and white colour effect as the majority of real media products only use colour footage. By our group implementing both forms of effects, we would create a music video that would be intriguing towards the audience as our footage would look more lively and would create a jazzy feeling.

• Our group also implemented a use of variety of camera angles and shots which had been developed over both portfolios. This created more emphasis upon our media products and entail challenges existing real media products to some degree, as some real media products don't implement a variety of camerawork.

• In different ways throughout our production, we have applied Goodwin’s theory, as our audience understood and identified the conventions of our music video, such examples can be shown through the visuals within our music product. For example, the rose and the picture of the couple looking over the sea. These particular still shots created this ‘romantic visual’ that was needed to enhance the meaning on the concept of ‘love’ throughout our product. We wanted to achieve this because we had had negative feedback from our audience, which highlighted that various parts of our video lacked elements of interesting visuals that were needed in order to fully engage the audience’s 100% attention.

• By gaining this negative feedback, we were able to make improvements on our video via Adobe Premiere 2.0. Although this was very time consuming in the short run, it would allow us to make changes that would help us to improve our production significantly and able us to get the best grade, we felt, was possible for people of our media caliber.

Amplification vs disjuncture

The video we created would be in the category of ‘disjuncture’ as the lyrics/music does not really have too much relevance with the video, the video is more of an audacious effort to put the audience into a happy place… or as Richard Dyer would say ‘ a Utopia’. Whereas the video could have amplified the lyrics by re-enforcing what they here with visuals that match them.

It could be said that our video features a high level of incoherence too as the video purely shows a brief round-up of T.G.F.A’s performance/ enjoying life in London.

Hyper Reality

• When producing our storyboard we wanted to make a music promo video that creates a hyper reality / a state of simulacrum. These are post-modern terms that mean creating a ‘special place that’s out of this world’ – one would create hyper reality for a target audience that would enjoy watching videos for escapism, however we feel we have achieved a certain degree of escapism within our video without forming a hyper reality. However we did not decide to create a state of simulacrum as we wanted our video to be more realistic. Plus we did not understand how to apply CGI effects which would have been key for our initial storyboarded ideas, which would have heavily involved creating a hyper reality, we as a group believe that creating a hyper reality would have not made our video look as professional.

We Media

• Our products we felt, had reflected the ‘we media’ theory in various different ways. We conducted everything on a small scale. For example, we did not go out and buy specific clothes for our artist, we just told him what to wear on various production days. Also, we chose locations that we did not have to pay for - This is the same as anyone producing any form of footage with no budget whatsoever. For example, when going to the Proud Venue, we had already received a confirmation letter from the manager of Proud about free entry to that particular location because we were special guests To TGFA.

We Media - Technology

• We media had been utilised through the use of technology within the construction of our music product. Risk assessments had been created through the use of Adobe premiere 2.0 and Prezi presentation. Our group had also created slideshow presentations through the use of the programmes such as Kizoa and Animoto. Furthermore, our final copy of our media product was put onto Youtube, which in a sense reflects upon ‘We media’ as our music product could target audiences worldwide.

Secondary Research

• Secondary research had been conducted by looking at different Digipak CD covers and music websites. For example, we looked at Ed Sheeran’s website, which displayed in depth information about the construction of both his website and digipak. It also highlights that the website homepage displays that Ed Sheeran’s debut album is available on I-Tunes, which ultimately allows the artist to promote his music via the I-Tunes website.

• The website in comparison to the album cover is very similar. In terms of the colour, i.e. the website and album colours are very bright and warm.

• The album cover is displayed on the website, to try and promote the artist’s image. The video on the website reflects upon the type music genre the artist sings.

• In addition, the website includes on the homepage - Live dates and venues - That displays when the artist is performing and where the artist is performing at. The video to his most recent release, lyrics to the all of his songs, an on-line store and any recent news that has happened to him. Also, an advert that promotes his appearance/image.

• These are some of the things we included in our website and digipak to allow us to hopefully get the best grade possible.

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Digipack Examples

• Rhianna’s Digipack is constructed through an image of Rhianna laying across a Red rose bush which covers the inside of the digipack. The album conveys to the audience the conventions of love through the symbolic images of the roses. This displays to the audience that Rhianna’s new album is written about the concept of love.

• The Groove’s Digipack CD cover is constructed through the use of 4 sides which entail have the same background color of Red and there is also the use of yellow bold writing. This creates a Jazzy feeling which reflects upon their music genre of pop/ Jazz. The groove are conveying messages towards their target audience that they are a unique band who are also very simple but funky which is shown through their Digipack design.

Music Websites that we Researched about

Katy Perry Example LMFAO

• Katy Perry Website - Conveys to her target audience that she is living the Californian dream as Perry is displayed laying down on a blanket of clouds in order to represent heaven. Perry creates meaning towards her audience as she is promoting that anyone could lead this Californian dream in their life time.

• Example’s Website – Conveys to his target audience that he is a dominant figure as he is wearing a leather coat and also he is staring right at the audience which creates a message that Example he’s unique and a powerful figure as his representation.

• LMFAO’s Website – Conveys a formal message (sorry for party rocking) which is displayed on the woman’s body. This infers many different forms of messages towards their target audience such as sex, partying and trespassing into any given party.

Website addresses that we researched on

• http://www.lmfaomusic.com/• http://www.trythisforexample.com/• http://www.katyperry.com/ • Above are music website links that we used to help our

group gain various knowledge about how to produce a good and effective music production.