For my year 12 production I had to create a thriller opening lasting for about 3-4 minutes in our chosen groups. In year 13, my task was to create a music video for a chosen song followed by ancillary texts which consisted of a website and digi-pak, once again in a group. To begin creating these products we had to research and investigate on existing products to give us an insight of what we wanted to achieve at the end of it.
My understanding of conventions of existing media was quite poor at the start of year 12. I was new to understanding what conforming to the conventions of certain products meant and was challenged as to why they would want to subvert too. The very first steps to getting my answer and begin my research was using the Internet. By using both Google and YouTube, they allowed me to research existing products already on the market. In year 12, I used YouTube more to find film trailers in order to get inspiration from. Some of the stereotypical conventions that were of a Thriller consisted of: non-diagetic music, a villain, and a male character as the protagonist. Films in which we found these trends for were Devil and Prom Night. Throughout the course of our planning and research stages, the ideas that we began to develop seemed to combine into a hybrid genre; a thriller-drama. This led us to concentrate on two main films; Obsessed and Prom Night. They both contained eerie music and created an enigmatic atmosphere. Other ideas which influenced our product were the use of slow paced edits from Prom Night as it created intensity between the audience and the protagonist from a point of view shot. By already have watched Obsessed, we took the idea of a female character to be infatuated with another character, thus being influenced by existing products.
In year 13, during the creation of our music video and ancillary texts, we not only had to find similar music videos but had to find websites and album covers of the artists too. Popular artists that came across were Snow Patrol, Coldplay, James Morrison and James Blunt.
My music video narrative is about a young man’s mind trapped between moving on or not from a girl whom he has strong feelings for. The music video does not give away if this girl is still alive or not or even if it was his girlfriend or wife. The artist visualises the girl during many encounters but is never really there, and therefore only in his mind. When looking at other Alternative styled music video, we found that they had slow edits, close-ups of people expressions and the video went back and forth evenly between the artist/band playing their instruments and the narrative. Some of these videos had the artist look directly into the camera creating a relationship with the audience, which we found important. We took these themes and ideas and used them in our music video to conform to an Alternative styled music video.
In addition, an interesting aspect we found from one of ColdPlay’s music videos was the fact that the footage was in reverse from start to finish. This effect was favoured by our group and wanted to intertwine that with our storyline in which we were able to do towards the end of the video. By taking notice of conventions like this, I believe, expressed my creativity by exploring further into Final Cut and using more transitions than the basics that were used in AS. Tutorials came into play for the more complex effects whereas in AS tutorials were used to figure out simple things for example how to render.
For the website, the same artists were researched as part of the existing products. The ways in which they influenced our media product was by the similarities between the various websites. For example, there was always a figure of the artist/band on the welcome page, a clear bold name of the artist and links to other social networking websites to keep an integrated fan base. The navigation on the website was quick and easy, influencing us to follow this aswell, keeping the website current and fresh.
The digi-pak was made up of the album cover, the back cover, an insert and a poster. To begin creating these elements that make up our digi pak we had to research existing products on the market. The album artwork of Alternative genres had a simple concept but still made to look effective. For example, simple pictures and natural poses to suggest emotion of the artist. We were influenced by this idea as we too wanted to show great emotion in our Album Cover. We did this by capturing our artist as his natural self, without asking to specify a pose. The colours used were mostly black, whites and neutral colours. For this reason we decided to make our Album Cover black and white all over, as part of sticking to the conventions of existing media and also as a part of our branding consistency, sticking to the black and white theme throughout our main product and ancillary texts.
In conclusion the understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced greatly upon the making of our product. Already having past experience from year 12, I was able to further understand the importance of certain codes and conventions of an Alternative genre and implement them to increase my products effectiveness.
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