Q1

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

For our music video, we researched many different types of videos, including narrative or performance based. We decided on narrative and chose to tell a story, and in that sense I believe we did not challenge any main conventions of music videos. Our genre was folk pop; typically much more relaxed then others such as rock or dance. Because of this, we chose a simpler approach to our product. Our video was set in an outdoor location with natural lighting and slower shots then you would find in a video such as ‘Applause’ by Lady Gaga. This is because through our research we discovered that many folk songs are set outside and that as they tell a story, slower shot sequences are needed for the audience to be able to follow the storyline. We also found that the singer will physically sing in the video, whether performance based or narrative. We included this in our video to fit with those normal conventions and used it to develop our background behind our idea. We decided to converge a well-known book with our music video and so the Alice in Wonderland theme was created. Her outfit, the set and the words of the song all reinforce this theme. We chose it to appeal to our specific audience, which is 11-17 year old females.

We showed the main artist in our video for two main reasons. One, because often in folk videos the entire product focuses on the artist and their talent and two, because we wanted to introduce her as the main character ‘Alice’.

Our digipak appears quite typical for folk pop. It involves a lot of the scenery, which gives the buyer a hint of where the video is set. The main focus is the artist and so she is shown on the front and on the inside. We also decided to dedicate 10p from each sale to Macmillan, something that you would also find within music companies that value the local community. The back cover provides all the normal information such as length of song, name of artist, record label, and even a working QR code that will take whoever scans it to Gabrielle Aplin’s website; in a bid to create a cross media promotion. CDs are now seen as old fashioned, which is why we have included this code to keep it modern and the audiences interested. The spine contains her name and the name of her song, for when it is displayed on a shelf it is still easy to find. The front cover shows the artist in her Alice in Wonderland themed costume standing over a lake. The lake features in the video a lot, and it reveals the theme to the video that is especially helpful if the buyers have not yet seen it.

The magazine advert was one of our favourite to create. We chose an image that we believed showed the emotion behind the song, as well as continued the theme of the video. The artist appears to be dropping the playing cards in the water, which whilst showcasing the lake as a focus point of the video also reinforces one of the aspects of Alice in Wonderland. The reviews from well-known magazines would influence any potential consumers and the name of the song and the artist is clearly printed. There is also a date of when the music will be released, and the web address of Aplins’ own website. It contains all the elements you would normally find on a poster, something which our research helped to show us.

Overall I would say that we haven’t challenged any conventions and that we have followed the codes of folk pop quite closely. It has seemed to work for the genre so far and we didn’t want to change that.