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

A convention is a arrangement codes and traditional rules which dictate the way that something is usually done. These norms are often widely acknowledged within regular culture, and help audiences instantly recognise the genre of certain products. All forms of media conform to conventions when creating products in order to comply with what an audience expects to see. In relation to music videos, conventions are often based around elements such as camera work, editing, set design and cast. The genre of our band was Indie/Rock, therefore meaning that we were searching for conventions within this bracket of the music industry.

Set design was a key element in being able to convey the accurate ‘star image’ for our group. In the first set-up we wanted to project a scenario that felt ruthlessly manufactured. In many ways this challenges the conventions of Indie/Rock. However, we aimed to execute this section in a completely ironic way therefore subverting the regular connotations of the set. We drew inspiration from The 1975 and their music video ‘Girls’, where they aim for a similar thematic message. Their video presents a band of young men who clearly are not endorsing the corporate image that has been designed for them. They are passionate about the music, but are completely disenfranchised by the industry and what it expects them to be. This message is communicated clearly through their satirical video and it is something we desperately wanted to emulate in the first half of ours. We adopted the same minimalistic set design, using a well light infinity background to make it look sterile and fake. This was furnished only with instruments and amps much like in Girls, and clearly didn’t tie in with the visual image of the band, as was our intention.

The 1975 proved a great source of inspiration for our band in terms of star image, using both types of our two contrasting sets in two different videos, showing their full stylistic variety whilst also confirming to us that these ideas are realistic in the music industry for bands like ours. For the last section of our video, we wanted to create a set that was enigmatic, cool and much more in-keeping with the style and genre of our band. We did this almost entirely through exploitation of lighting, as the studio space we filmed in was bare aside from lighting and simply had a black curtain draped around the outside that was hung from the rigging. Much of our creative ideas were derivative of The 1975 music video ‘Heart Out’. Parallels were created with the way we chose to backlight the band using five rows of high intensity ‘blinders’, that were operated spontaneously during each take from the control deck. To add mood and a sense of enigma we placed a ice-blue neon triangle in the middle of the band, which the drummer was able to play within. Almost entirely on its own, the lighting created an environment that felt suited and appropriate for a band of this genre.

Once established within our third and final set of the video, we wanted to be more experimental and expressive with our camera work to create visuals that were more dynamic and that corresponded with the lighting and musical climax of the song. A key facet of achieving was through our use of the camera track which we laid out in a crescent moon shape surrounding the band. This is something we had seen in The Kooks music video ‘Forgive & Forget’, which is shot predominantly on a track that fully circles the Indie/Rock group. It makes the video quite dramatic visually and makes it infinitely more watchable. Unlike them we weren’t able to go around the entire circumference of the band as we didn’t have the studio space required. However, this did mean I was able to move back and forth at relative pace during their performance. This helped to give the video added tempo and a more energetic feel at this crucial part of the song. Furthermore, it gave us a better way to express the relationship between the musicians and their instruments.

A crucial section of our video was based in the recording studio, where we aimed to present the band as an unfiltered, commercialised and charming group of lads who are simply doing what they love – actually making music. This is a really well established convention amongst Indie/Rock bands as it is seen to make them more endearing, respected and likeable. It was arguably first posed by The Beatles in their video ‘Hard Days Night’, where they are seen to be behaving mischievously while on tour. It can also be seen readily today with more modern artists such as Kings of Leon in their video for ‘Red Morning Light’ and George Ezra with ‘Leaving it Up to You’, where in both the artists are shown actually recording the song within a casual looking studio environment. However, something that all three of these videos and any of this style have in common is that they are always shot using handheld camera techniques. Our recording studio section features the band playing pranks on one another, laughing and joking and legitimately recording the music. The entirety of this was shot handheld, which offers an unmistakable ‘home video’ aesthetic. This helps to show the group in their natural surroundings and look as though it could have been filmed by them alone. Despite being reasonably choreographed in reality, it becomes difficult not the warm to these boys within the context of the video and this illusion is created largely through the ramshackle way in which it was captured.

Another advantage of shooting in this way is the affect that it has on the bands fans. It gives them the impression that they are viewing ‘behind the scenes’ footage and have been granted privilege access to the group and the process of making their album. This creates an inclusive, intimate relationship with the fans which in turn makes the band more respectable from a publicity perspective.

Editing is crucial to any music video as it is the act of piecing otherwise meaningless footage together and making it coherent. It was important for us to cut clips to the beat of the music. This is conventional with any genre of music video as subconsciously it is more aesthetically pleasing to an audience, and makes the general cut more seamless. Furthermore, we also gradually built the pace and regularity of the cuts to coincide with the crescendo and high points of the track. As means of challenging the conventions of the genre we also featured a wealth of discontinuity editing, where we jump-cut between shots to show a passing of time. This too referenced The 1975 ‘Girls’ video and was very effective in the first section of our video in showing the extended period of time that the band spent in the studio making the video. Furthermore, this jump-cut style of editing is relatively modern due to it not being conventional. It was popularised by teen ‘vloggers’ on YouTube, and has only began to become filmically acceptable in the last decade. Therefore, this suits the young target audience that our band are marketed towards.

Given the fact that our video is largely performance based and featured the band heavily, it is important that they were cast appropriately and looked as one would expect. We chose boys that already had a certain look that would comply with the star image of the band, and based this decision on popular bands within the same genre such as Bastille. We then individually crafted each member to bring out specific personality and style in each of them. Some of this didn’t take much on our part, like with Ben (drummer) for example. He has a very strong look with dark features and alternative hair cut, which helped us to create an 'edgy' persona for him, as is common with drummers. However, with members such as Chris we went into considerable more detail in creating a character. We thought we would explore the idea of him being the smartest of the group in terms of his clothing. In Indie/Rock bands there is normally one member who has a slightly more alternative clothing style compared to the others. We aimed for a bold look derivative from ‘Punk’ fashion that was based entirely on Artic Monkeys lead singer Alex Turner. Chris also looks similar to the frontman facially meaning some audience members may even make this link. We used the trend of an established artist to inspire our own group and give Chris more of an identity and therefore charisma. We also wanted Callum (singer) to wear quite casual, indie clothes. This is quite similar to what Callum wears in real life which meant he felt comfortable during the shoot. It is most important that Callum felt comfortable during the shoot as he is the frontman and will have the most audience attention. Also, this style is reminiscent of George Ezra's fashion, who is the original artist, meaning there is a subtle link between them so that the video didn't seem too distanced from reality. This acts as a further example of real life, conventional artists informing our creative choices.

PERFORMANCE

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We also complied to various Indie/Rock conventions in terms of the performance style within our video. We had extensive rehearsal sessions prior to our shoot day so were therefore responsible for the performance of our band. We were keen to include some direct address, where our lead singer (Callum) looks directly into the camera lens whilst lip-syncing. This is a rather common convention and can be seen with many artists such as Tom Odell. Odell looks into the camera for the entire 4:07 minutes of his music video for ‘Another Love’. Despite not going to this extreme, the performance technique undeniably strengthens the bond between artist and audience, and also strengthens the meaning of the lyrics. Another extremely regular convention we adhered to in performance was employing the diamond formation for the band to stand in, with the lead singer standing in front of the drummer and being flanked by the guitarist and bassist. Due to our lengthly rehearsal period, we were able to hone in on specific performances within our band - such as Joe (bassist). Joe was without doubt the most tentative of the group, being the only band member that doesn’t take Drama A level. We decided that instead of simply cutting Joe, we could work on bringing out slightly more of a performance in order to convey him as the ‘moody bassist’. This is a well established stereotype in the music industry and doesn’t take and overly zealous, charismatic performance to achieve. Joe was perfect aesthetically for the role as he looks mature despite his boyish features. With some individual work Joe managed to achieve this and I believe he looks entirely believable within the video. Part of Joe’s individual work included us showing him some conventional bassist performances from videos we were taking inspiration from such as The 1975 ‘Girls’ and The Kooks ‘Forgive & Forget’.

Bands of a similar vein to ours such as Kings of Leon and Blur have utilised a similar concept in terms of condensing different band members faces onto one album. The Kings of Leon Digipak for 'Only By The Night' is very similar in style with very clear-cut editing points between the different images. This makes it obvious what has been done as opposed to blending the faces more subtly. However, I prefer this as I feel it adds something aesthetically and makes it harshly striking visually. Blur have experimented with a more 'pop-art' styled design. However, in a similar way to our idea it still includes all members of the band and has distinct recognisability. It is clear that to some extent there is a convention with this style of Digipak that includes the band members. However, one could also argue that our Digipak challenges modern conventions as lots of popular Indie/Rock bands such as Alt-J stray away from having their own faces on the Digipak and instead opt for a seemingly miscellaneous image.

For our Digipak we had the simplistic yet bold idea of taking individual portraits of the four members of our band before then chopping them into clear pieces based on their facial features, before amalgamating them to make one image and thus one face. This was done using high quality editing software's Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom, in which we cropped the images and also edited them into a ‘hyper-real’ style making the contrast and shadows more intense.

The website is very important as alongside the Digipak it sets the tone for the visual styling of the band. We took great inspiration from Alt-J’s current website layout, especially their homepage. Both of these homepages have a distinct aura of simplicity. We adopted a minimalist and abstract brush stroke across the centre which harbours the band name and the name of the latest album. We continued the London tube element and did so throughout the whole website as we felt this was hugely important, given that it was so prominent in our Digipak. Websites of real life bands will often adapt and evolve based on the style of their most recent output. The homepage also has a reference to social networking, which is a mainstay of the marketing of any artist in the music industry today. Furthermore, like some other websites within our genre the latest song release also plays automatically once entering the site.

Before completing the website, we decided that we wanted to include a merchandise page on our website. We confirmed through our research that the most common item available on sites of a similar genre was a t-shirt. Our hand-drawn logo is individual to our band so we decided to make this the mainstay of our t-shirt design, coupled with the very simplistic 'tee's' which are very in-trend at the moment with the type of demographic we are aiming for with our band.

I then came up with the idea of the band also distributing vinyl records as merchandise. The recent influx of vinyl sales in the music industry is something I am well aware of, after holding an interview with my local music shop owner. Furthermore, similar Indie/Rock bands to ours such as Arctic Monkeys and The XX do a similar thing to reinforce their image, or simply out of admiration for the more traditional format. We selected what we might imagine to be the bands three biggest hits and then created vinyl records for them which we displayed on the same page, selling for £2.50 each - the regular price for such an item. This would give the fans a physical object relating to the band which they can own and cherish. In many ways it is an extension of the Digipak and allows then to legitimise their support for the band in another way.

After researching the modern music industry on the whole, we were very aware that touring is a hugely prominent aspect of the business as it acts as the primary way of acts making large sums of money, especially with the fading of physical CD’s and record shops such as HMV. Therefore, we were keen to include a ‘Live’ page on our website as this is conventional for any reasonably successful music act. This includes a list of upcoming tour dates, detailing which specific ones are sold out. The tour information was taken from George Ezra's website as we felt this would be more realistic and accurate than us making up our own. We are pitching our band at around the same national success as Ezra, with an identical fan-base given that the song we chose for our video is his.

Font and typography may appear to be a minute details, but can actually be hugely influential as once a font is chosen they usually become synergistic with all of their output of the band, both commercial and creative. We wonted a font that was stylishly simple yet bold and trialed various different fonts using web font catalogue Dafont. We ended up using Bebas Neue, which was heavily inspired by the band Bastille. Bastille have always used this font and cleverly paired it with their iconography of a triangle. We wanted to emulate this but with our elephant symbol, which appears in various different places throughout our products. The font is legible, clear and in-keeping with our genre.

Branding is a hugely important component within the music industry as it becomes synonymous with the band and helps them to be recognisable. One could easily argue that our strong London tube branding challenges the status quo by including such heavy branding based on the origins of the band - instead of going for more stylised, miscellaneous imagery. Our Digipak features instantly recognisable imagery as well as the name deriving from a real tube station, something referenced on the website biography. However, citing a bands roots in this way isn't actually very unconventional. Bands such as The Arctic Monkeys and Oasis reference their homecomings (Sheffield and Manchester) heavily in all of their output, seeing it as a key influence in their music. They even include it in some of the architectural visuals from their Digipak’s (‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ / ‘What’s the Story Morning Glory’) This is a trend that of course dates back to The Beatles and their famous affinity with Liverpool. It is something that reassured us in our creative decision to brand the group in this way.