In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge

forms and conventions of real media products?

Alexandra Werner

The first example of a music video that inspired our own, Kiss the Future, is a music video by fellow country artist Kacey Musgraves. Mentioned before in my genre Prezi, Kacey is a young country artists (who's songs entail elements of a pop culture). Because we liked her image as an artist, we were inspired to use similar elements of her music videos for ours. It is very typical to see country music, especially the music videos all have roughly the same undertone if not imagery due to its very narrow genre line. Here, even within the first few seconds of our country music video, we are conforming to the conventions of a country music video by setting our narrative on a long nature filled path. Country music videos often have to do with ‘ finding ones path’ or ‘ following ones dreams’ and so therefore it was effective to right away illustrate to our audience that our video is country.

In order to shoot this we place our camera on a low tripod to keep the camera sturdy yet have it at a low level. Next we gave the camera a slight upward tilt in order to give the entire shot an elongated element, conforming to the conventions of a typical country music video. Unlike Kacey Musgraves however, we gave our entire music video a slightly lower saturation ( meaning in editing we made the entire video a little darker). While this isn't typical of many happy country songs, it does fit in the criteria of an unhappy country song because the weather and the saturation of a video always exemplifies the mood the artist is trying to display in his or her music. Furthermore,

Another example of how we conformed to the conventions of a music video is through the usage of a band. Rarely does one see country artists singing without a band and thus, just like Kacey Musgraves, we included a band in our music video. A band is useful as it allows an audience to feel a sense of family and friendship within an artist image or specifically a country music video. Country music is always linked to dealing with relationships, love, hate, family or friends. Thus is was highly essential for us to contrast a band of member we knew would fit the criteria. As demonstrated in Kacey Musgraves music video, her band surround her in the background while she standing in the centre and a bit further up front. This tells an audience who to look at while securing this sense of family life. Moreover it was very important to us that we make sure that, costume wise, there is a general consistency as to what everyone is wearing. While Kacey took it to the extremes dressing her band all the same outfits, we decided we wanted a more natural looks for our band and therefore simple dressed them in typical ‘country folk’ clothing. We had Bella in a flower shirt (consistent with our theme of flowers throughout) which, along with the set, gave the audience a feel that they were out in the country, in nature or close to a farm. While Kacey was wearing a typical country hat, we didn’ t want to hide fen’s face in her ‘band/close up’ sequences and thus chose to use the hat in a later sequence when she is on her own. In order to shoot this sequence we places the camera on a track and moved it back and forth to give variation as well as make sure we include all angles of the beautifully constructed set in the shot. All these elements of our music video conform to the conventions of a country music video and an artists image.

Music Video

As it is highly important to establish a connection between the artist and his or her audience we knew it was essential to include a close-up of Fen Xanadu within the first few seconds of the music video. This establishes who to watch in the music video as well as helps set the tone of what the music video will be. Like for instance an artist can look sad and then we know without having to listen to the music that the tone of the song will be sinister and upset. As shown in one of Miranda Lambert's earliest videos (image displayed below) it is typical of country artists to insert a close up of the artist within the first few instance of the given music video to create a relationship between the artist and his or her audience.

In order to make this quick connection fit, we inserted the shot early in our video yet made sure it fit with the beat. Unlike Miranda Lambert's video, wherein a connection is established before she has even begun singing, we decided to go against this convention and waiting until the song had already begun before putting in a close up, thus setting the atmosphere of our other narrative strand. However, it is crucial one does not take too long before introducing the main talent because otherwise an audience may loose focus or cannot establish the family, friendship relationship with the artists essential and typical in a music video.

My group and I continued to conform to a typical country music videos rural and natural atmosphere by creating a theme of flowers throughout our piece. Inspired by Miranda Lambert’s ‘Dead Flower’s music video, we also contiguously used flowers in our various shots. For example, Darcy (the female character playing the girl in the red dress in our video) carried a suitcase filled with roses and pictures of her long lost love Ned. Furthermore we made sure that our studio shots with the band were covered in flowers ranging from roses to lilies to lilacs because we liked the aspect of naturalism is gave to our video.

Unlike in Miranda Lamberts video where her flowers are all dying, we decided we wanted our flowers to be alive, well and filled will lots of colour because our music video was about the future being bright and leaving behind a past. This past, dark or not, was supposed to be erased by all the goodness of the flowers and so when Darcy through the flowers over the bridge it is a symbol of how she is ‘ leaving the past behind’ (an actual quote from her music video).

Like Lucy Rose’s and an early Taylor Swift Album, my group and I made sure to conform to the country artist image of always having an instrument with ones artist (shown by Taylor Swift in her cover photo and by Fen Xanadu in hers). This is highly typical of a country artist and conforms to the conventions. Moreover, we wanted to make sure the theme of stated consistent throughout so we used the same font on the front and back cover, done likewise by my two example artist. We also continued on we the theme of flowers likewise displayed in our music video. It is important that a country music artist has elements of naturalism within it. In all three covers, these female singers have included images of the outdoors, flowers and used (like Fen) a similar font/exposure on their album covers.

Digi-Pack

An example of an artist who inspired our website was Taylor Swift. We really loved how she addressed her fans with a personalized message with an image of her in a rural environment. Including ones personality as well as elements of nature into a website is again typical of a country artist and how he or she would address his or her fans. Like Taylor who stayed to a natural pallet of colours on her website, we wanted our colours to represent the country side so we used greens and blues and beige as well as black and whites. Within her message was knew we wanted to target a typical country audience by being very laid back and organic.

Website

Website

Another artist we looked at and took inspiration from for our music video was Lori McKenna, Lori is an organic country singer/song writer who like Taylor and Fen uses a natural, subtle colours to attract her target audience. While McKenna is roughly 30 year older than Fen, her star image still obtains to our general county artist schema. For example, Lori’s front website cover displays a natural image of her and her guitar insinuating that she is a talent based, rural artist and this is the same image we wanted for our star image.

Furthermore, Lori McKenna’s website immediately displays her information and songs on her front page, perfect in luring an audience in through talent and self made music rather than ‘bling’ and any given ‘shock-factor’. Her layout encouraged us to likewise create an easily accessible website where Fen’s details and music was presented on the front cover. Moreover, we displayed direct links to Fen’s meet up points and fan talking groups so that other fans could discuss her and they would feel more in touch with our artist.