Evaluation question 1

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


Music videos tend to have specific conventions relating to camera angles, editing and general structuring. A common convention includes having singers look directly into the camera as a method of creating a relationship with the audience. These tend to be close ups and this is vital for the artist, as this links the image of the artist with their music, creating an identity of the artist that the audience can easily identify. The theory of Andrew Goodwin finds music videos to link with their song in three ways, these, as i mentioned in a previous blog, include illustration where the video shows what the lyrics of the song are, amplification which does not go against the meaning of the song, but adds another layer of meaning to it. The last is disjuncture where the video does not relate to the lyrics and meaning of the song at all. Relating this theory with our video, I believe our video is most related to the method of illustration. Examples of illustration in our video include:

This was shown at the lyrics "I'll put my hands over your eyes, but you'll peep through".

This was shown at the lyrics "laughing about how we used to smoke".

This was shown at the lyrics "drink stupid wine". 

Editing is an integral aspect of music videos, the theory of Vernalis finds music videos to use edits more frequently than films. These edits mostly include jump cuts and effects, which with the use of, sync music videos well with their music.  Specifically relating this theory with our video, there are instances where we have used jump cut edits. These jump cuts were influenced by general music video conventions but also more specifically, by the music video "Evening/Morning". We took the concept of having jump cuts on the beat, where band member's positioning would be changed. (Bombay Bicycle Club change their clothes rather than position, but it is a similar idea).

Bombay Bicycle Club

Our video

Looking into other British folk/indie artists, we can see how we were specifically influenced by them for different aspects of our video. Stornoway's "Zorbing" video was influential for location, their Zorbing video is shot entirely on a roundabout, we took this idea and used it in part of our video.



We also took inspiration for clothing, the members of this band are seen to be wearing brightly coloured checked shirts. Seeing as they are the same genre of folk/indie as our band, having our main singer
outfitted in similar checked shirts, seems fitting and follows conventions.

Generally, album covers/digipaks tend to have conventions that they follow. These include having the same colour scheme throughout, a centre image and similar fonts. As i mentioned before, the artist's image is important for the audience to identify them with. Due to this, it is important that the image portrayed in the music video, is similar in other avenues, such as in the album cover/digipak. The image in our video is of the main singer, whilst there are other members in the video at times, the main staple identity of the band is of the lead singer. Hence, my album cover features the lead singer as the main image. However this does follow conventions, an example would be Florence + the machine's album covers, even though Florence + the machine are a band, the main image is of the lead singer Florence. This is also similar to the band "Jack's Mannequin", who use their lead singer as their main identity.

The colour scheme I used throughout was yellow and white. My digipak and advert have the same colour scheme and this is a convention amongst most albums and adverts. In terms of colour scheme, I was specifically inspired by the album "Torches" by Foster the People.  

The video below shows how my album cover is similar to the album "Torches".

My front cover also followed conventions the main image I used sticks to the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is used in all genre of albums, examples of other albums that have this include:

My advert also followed conventions of other adverts, the GIFs below show how:

Tour dates

Debut album + image of CD cover