Blog task 1, In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Throughout our product it is clear from these images that were taken directly from our piece that in making our pop video we challenged and confronted some of the conventions of music videos.

This image above is taken from the opening to our music video which shows a continuous show of light bulbs in the woods location, the lights set the audience up for narrative and follow the music convention of sharp and fast cutting with the music until we see our lead singer.

Our lead singer who is shown above here is an important part of the band in terms of star image and portraying a message, trying to keep him positioned central but always slightly to the left of the shot. The message that is being put over by the singer is humble and a state of vulnerability and wisdom. By all the band wearing the same clothing they link together as a unit apposed to individuals , this is common in the vast majority of group music videos, in this image we find the singer placed firmly on the left of the shot to connect with the audience in a positive way, we also see the bass guitarist over his shoulder and a light bulb in the top left of the shot , this was so that we could link the narrative and performance together subtlety before we physically link them with the wandering girl entering their world.

In this image we have applied the rule of thirds, a common convention of music videos that we felt was vital for our production. We placed our musicians within the XY axis in positions that we felt portrayed their individual input of representation in the band , for example , the bass player we felt was the rebellious and more ominous member of the band so we placed him on the right hand side of every shot. The lead singer we felt portrayed knowledge of life and the wisdom of the band and so we placed him central and applied strong light to him throughout. Our drummer represented the foundation of the band, placing him central left with the guitarist who we thought charmed the audience.

For our character who features in the narrative we chose a girl who we thought fitted our needs perfect we wanted someone not only highly photogenic but also represents confusion, desperation, curiosity, desire to rebel and vulnerability, as to connect her with our audiences and portray her as the protagonist we always placed her entering from the left of the frame or lingering on the left of the frame, we light our protagonist throughout with warm colours oranges apposed to blues and greens as we did with the lead singer, this not only subliminally connects them but also relates a feel of love and compassion to the viewer , this we felt would create the right bond with the audience and thus boost the popularity.

The image shown above is a still taken from the moment when the narrative message becomes apparent. We have the female character enter from the left as she has done throughout the production, in almost all shots the female character enters from the left. this portrays her as the protagonist and in this particular moment the band members become a dream and the girl is left on her own, this follows many common generic conventions of pop music videos such as a possible narrative structure, the flexibility to disregard realism, the use of special effects, carefully constructed mis en scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track ect.

This image shows our wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement, this shot gives the audience a good understanding of what is going on and we used special effects to portray the band to be inside the box once opened, once again following a main generic convention of pop music videos by being flexible to disregard realism.

This is the layout and imagry used for our magazine advert, the advert clearly shows the bands faces allowing the band to be recognised and create a relationship with the reader, this is also the same image used for the album front cover meaning that again a connection will be made between the advert and the product. The lighting and setting creates the same atmosphere and mystery that is present in the video.

This image was used as the back cover of our digipak back cover for our album, the image strongly creates an atmosphere with the use of lighting and placement we were able to show the band facing away from the audience creating a sense of rebellion or interest.