Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Video Piece

In order to answer this question I thought it crucial that I compare my video piece with the pieces that inspired me to construct the piece in the first place to address how I have either followed the norms of the genre or if I have deviated somewhat for one reason or another, Firstly, there are some key parts in my piece that I believe are grounded in the Alternative Rock Genre.

The first point where this is visibly prominent is in the overarching theme of the piece, in my initial research I found that the concepts addressed in the Alt/Rock genre more often than not touched on more serious matters, the point that I’m specifically addressing in my piece is the concept of heartbreak as it can be something that a wide audience can understand and comprehend.

I also took to mind the concept of splitting the story approximately 50-50 with a narrative story as a number of music videos in this genre choose to do including one of my personal favourites, Savin’ Me by Nickelback, In this case Nickelback has a slightly more in depth narrative than my piece, the story is much clearer whereas mine is more open to interpretation. Something I did pick out though which I have touched on in the past is the use of filters in music videos of this genre, they are always visible and they are usually used to darker a scene slightly, in some cases the footage is even slightly grained and I personally thought this could be an effective addition to my piece, hence the colours being washed out.

The purpose of the colours being washed out this way was actually to get the theme across better, in my concept the idea was that the main character is supposed to be somewhat removed from reality as a result of his implied depression, the bright colouring is supposed to represent how little he really notices about most of the world and how he drifts from place to place because of it, which I thought was an interesting design choice and complimented the narrative well.

The almost linear narrative, with the exception of the opening with the bridge is yet another prominent feature in this genre, in this way it allowed me to keep a strong focus on the story as it progressed and it made it easier to plan out, but at several points I considered starting and ending the piece with what would be the end of the narrative. I decided to however stick with something akin to Toderov’s theory of narrative structure in that my character goes from a disruption of the equilibrium to it being implied that the equilibrium has been reinstated which is more in line with the style of my chosen genre.

There are a number of slight deviations from the genre of course present in this piece, with the exception of one or two videos like ‘How you remind me’ by Nickelback I found that in the alt rock genre the character in the narrative isn’t also in the band, in Savin Me it’s a complete stranger for example. In my piece my main character and the lead singer in the band is played by the same person, this is due to a difficulty with a limited film crew and in this case I suppose if I had stuck with the genre I might have been able to separate the two sections more effectively, in some ways I feel like my piece would benefit from having more characters to interact with to make it more interesting.

The use of long smooth opening was inspired by Linkin Park’s ‘Castle of Glass’, the slow smooth opening of the song is accompanied well by my long moving shot, this isn’t necessarily a staple of the genre, rather one that I felt for a creative sense would gently lead my audience into the piece without overwhelming them. The moving shots of my performance piece were something that I picked up additionally from pieces in the same genre as they added a strong vibe of energy to the piece.

For the darker parts of my piece it is implied that as an answer to my main characters problems he turns to drinking, this was originally going to be addressed much more closely including a scene where bottles would be smashed although I couldn’t get the desired effect so I simply reverted to having the bottle present without the violence, in my time looking into the conventions of the genre the concept of drugs and alcohol, although occasionally mentioned in the lyrics the music videos for these songs don’t focus closely on the concept and I make just enough focus on the topic to divert from the norm in some way, I do believe I could have done the concept with much more depth a second time round as it could be a really powerful narrative device.

Album

The album piece that I created is one of the pieces that I’m most proud of out of everything I have constructed, after completing it the feedback I got from my peers on it was very positive and it was frequently mentioned to have been of a professional standard. Of course this question is based on where I challenged the convention and where I stuck to it so let’s begin.

Firstly, the idea to have the stylised band logo came as a mixture from 3 key sources, I took a great deal of inspiration from 3 existing bands who use the same logos  across all of their pieces, they also had their logos stylised to reflect the theme of the band. For example, the first of the three was the logo for Linkin Park, which has always shown a sharp and jagged logo which has always indicated to me the bands sharp beats and heavy rock tones quite well, in addition to this the weathered effect found on the logo for the band Nickelback also appealed to me as it indicated that the band touch on sad or depressing tones which a lot of their early work did, finally I brought all of these ideas together with the idea of using completely non–standard font design similar to that of the band good charlotte who’s font is punchy and non-conventional in a way. Together this pushed me to creating the jagged and weather glass font that I’m quite considerably pleased with, the glass itself is also designed to reflect the theme of the song ‘Castle of Glass’ which is used in my music video, therefore promoting synergy in some ways between the two pieces. It is in this way that I suppose I followed the general conventions of the genre because they would advance my own product effectiveness as a result by giving it an aesthetic appeal that would help attract the audience and assist in the likelihood of the purchase.

The customised images inside the album itself was a creative choice that was inspired by the album ‘Living Things’ by Linkin Park, inside the album there was an incredibly beautiful design that ran along the entire of the piece, it was incredibly aesthetically pleasing and it inspired me to include a strong illustration in the lyrics pages of my album. When I sat down to plan out some ideas for the piece I realised that while a lot the bands in the genre generally kept the same style of design throughout the piece, I could potentially do something else that I thought was a clever way of more closely connecting the actual music to the design. The custom logos are designed to be both aesthetically pleasing but to also tell the individual what the theme of the song is which should give a small clue as to how the music sounds, for example, the song ‘Consequences’ on the album has a military style logo, which should indicate that the concepts of war and death should come into play.

The sharp contrast of Black, White and Red was a personal choice that was partially inspired by the frequented style chosen by many bands in me genre, when I was planning my piece I saw that the bands tended to keep the colours from merging, they were always in a sharp contrast to each other to make them stand out on the shelves of a music shop, taking this one step further I centralised the most prominent colour and really made it eye catching.

Advert

My advert is an interesting piece because I changed it entirely at the last moment, after finishing my original advert I wasn’t fond of it at all. I felt that the style of the glass was too uniform in addition to the text looking dull and boring. As a result at the last minute I switched my advert for something that I had been working on in the side-lines of my piece. A poster I was making for my piece simply to test out Photoshop and compositions for my piece actually ended up being used for my advert. In actuality feedback that I got from a number of people suggested that the poster actually both looked professional but also provided much more information than the advert, or at least it seemed too.

The actual design aspect of my piece is something that is almost entirely set apart from the usual conventions of my genre aside from the colour choices. I found that in a lot of magazine adverts from alt-rock bands, it was generally the band members being put together on the page. My advert doesn’t feature this but I decided against this for some key reasons. Since this is my band’s debut album it doesn’t seem necessary to include a picture of the band since it will do little to make the audience remember them since they aren’t an already established staple of the genre. The lack of the band also gives more opportunity to stick to shapes and thin blocks for design which can be great for contrast as it gives a larger surface area of the same colour to be more visible to the viewer.

Conclusion

Essentially my piece doesn't challenge the genre in an exhaustive sense, but what it does do is slightly tweaks some of the more prominent stereotypical aspects, a colour filter as visible as the one I used for example wouldn't neccesarilly commonly appear as its more from another genre. The video maintains most of the conventions of the original genre in general in order to still seem familiar to the target audience who have witnessed the genre in action before but the personal spins are designed to promote synergy or to give the piece a slight artistic sense. As one viewer of the video informed me, the piece is Alt-Rock at its core but a small amount, just a very small styling of an indie video occasionally shines through similar in some ways to a hybrid.