A2 Media Studies: April 2013

As part of the pre-production process, I have carried out a research for which I have recorded all of relevant on to my blog. It was crucial to seek the conventions of real texts before actually producing my own video or other two products.

To start of with, I have made a mind map with all the possible genres, which brought me to evaluating three tracks in order to see which genre would suit the most with the ideas that I already had in mind. As the result, two detailed music videos analysis for the tracks ‘ Seek Bromance’ by Tim Berg and ‘Paradise’ by Coldplay had been carried out. Furthermore, one more analysis for song ‘As long as you love me’ had been done during class time. This task was important to get a feeling how would want to pass on the message to the audience, as different aspects have different visual variations- including plot, colour scheme and dance moves. Looking at Justin Biebers new track, I have realized it would not work my idea of shooting from point of view for several reasons. Firstly, boy and girl relationship is not what I am interested in and secondly, I would not want to create the video that I, as an audience as well as the producer, would not enjoy! It had been a useful exercise, as I certainly would not include performance based video either a lot of close ups, which usually being done in Pop videos. Next move, was that I looked in detail at the work of one of the most well-known directors- Spike Jonze. Some of the tracks that Spike Jonze directed include Weezer- Buddy Holy, Fatboy Slim- Praise You and Daft Punk- Da Funt. Similar, to the track ‘Seek Bromance’, the videos are story based, without the artist having to appear in the video, this was something that I had admired a lot. There are no common elements amongst the video that do not include the artists, which enabled me with a lot of opportunities and I was not limited how to pass the message to the audience.

The situation with the advert, is different. No matter in which genre the artist operate in there are set of boundaries and limitations for the adverts. I have looked at Lady Gaga’s ‘ The Fame Monster’, ‘4’ by Beyonce and Jay Z’s ‘Blueprint 3’ . The conventions of the majority of the adverts, include a mid- close up of the artist, new album in bold and the release date. The colour scheme is similar to the personality of the artists, brand image and sense of synergy is being present. At the bottom left or right hand corner, extra information would be added including contact details and the record label logo.

Having been decided, which track I would use, I have analysed websites of the artists that operate in the same genre, as the track ‘Live Your Life’ by Erick Morillo. The layout of the websites are different, especially the proportion of text to image. Comparing Bob Sinclair’s main page to Timati’s, there could be seen that one website is more informative than the other. All of home pages include basic links, including photo’s , video’s, contact and news. However, some concentrate on the visual aspect that certainly creates a unique selling point. The homepage which I was mostly attracted was Bob Sinclairs, as the image is in the centre of attention and there is little text included. Some other aspects considered to be included were the Release Date of the new album and the Tour Dates.

As already mentioned previously, I have used the track ‘Live your Life’ by Erick Morillo. There is are some expectations within the House genre, however, I was more than confident that original and unique idea would be more than appreciated by the target audience. The most important aspect, is the use of bright colors, fast editing and ‘positive’ ending to the video, for which I have used Todorovs five- stage theory. I have decided, that my main color and orange through out the three products, which used for parallel promotion. By comparing the conventions of video for the track ‘Seek Bromance’- not much difference is present. As for different reasons, main character ends up with nothing, and it would finish in the positive way, as the story would be told in 3 minutes. I did not want to follow common conventions of most of House music video, as everything so similar- type of shots, lyrics and locations. Instead, I have decided shooting the video from point of view, increasing audience interactivity and certainly challenged forms and conventions of real media texts. The inspiration was by video by Doug Smith- My Day, using similar plot, I was able to express the message by POV effect.

I have followed the main conventions of advert and the advert, by including basic layout to the page. In the advert, key concentration to the eye was the name of the new album and the release date. Where as, on the website, same image was used but in color. For the coursework, one page was required to be made, however, I constantly updated music, comments and photos online. Same fonts had been used on the Advert and the Website, and similar layout was used.