{Evaluation} Question 1

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





The .gif above illustrates something really interesting that i'm keen to talk about in relation to ways in which we drew inspiration from existing media. When considering ways to make our film pop out from the crowd we wanted to do something a little different that reflected the attitude of our artist and the genre of the song. I thought a lovely way to do this would be to mix in the computer illustrated and animated with our own footage, much like Disney did in many of their classic films. After experimenting with the software available i came to the conclusion that this would have to be done with individual drawings (with transparent backgrounds) placed on top of footage, meaning each different frame would have to be drawn by hand. This is much like how Disney approached their films so it suited us fine. However it did mean due to time and manpower constraints (that is, I was the only group member able to do this) that we couldn't push this concept as far as i would've liked. However i think it's a fine example of looking to other sources for concepts to develop your own media product, and i was sure to use it throughout the video and the ancillary products. I think by working this tv/film technique into our music video we made the overall product much more interesting to the viewer.


When looking at music videos that might influence our own production we wanted to start with artists that we knew were genre and character relevant, so we looked at a few videos from the likes of Lilly Allen and Kate Nash. Lilly Allen had two videos for her song LDN,  The one compared on the left I believe is the original but lesser known one. From this we really got the idea that we could take advantage of our london location and make the most of it by having a video in which the artists explores the city. I think we were pretty successful in this as if you look at some of the interesting streets within Allen's professionally produced video they are very similar to the ones we chose ourself.

The image on the left here is a shot comparison between our music video and Kate Nash's Pumpkin Soup. This just confirmed from us that we could combine small sections of basic animation with our footage together to get the quirky appeal we wanted. Here you see thought bubbles pop out from Kates head and turn into a heart with a cheeky chappy imposed on top the the video. In our own music video we used speech bubbles to communicate yelling without disrupting the song! We also saw Kate Nashs many outfits as very retro and considered her apparel for our own artist before settling on that 50's look.

Finally here's Lily Allens other video for LDN. It's a video in which the artist is moving about the streets which of course was what we were looking to do. I decided the various shot types shown here, the mix between the close-ups of her singing and the long shots of her wondering worked well to communicate her mood fully with body language as well as showcase her singing. So these are the sort of shots we went for in our own video, it's conventional and we don't really do anything exciting here but there's nothing wrong with our approach since it's appropriate to the genre, gives it a professional feel and allows us to utilise the artist to her best to produce the overall feel we want from her.

When it comes to pushing boundaries I don't think we really challenged many music video conventions, which i think is fine for a light hearted pop tune. We have a short story being told, some interaction and in the end she get's the guy and i think that's all how it should be to go with this song! However when i compare our artist to other pop divas (Pictured above, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga) around at the moment i realise we certainly presented our audience with a new, fresh kind of artist who seems fun and down to earth in our urban multicultural society. I think Coco was a huge success in terms of balancing what the audience want to see whilst challenging their views on what a pop artist should be.

Now as to following digipak and magazine advert conventions, lets take a look at what i consider to be a good example of ancillary texts:

It's clear why this is a successful campaign, for all the reasons i've briefly mentioned in the image. However at first glance it would seem that my own products don't seem to have much in common with this example. Obviously the first thing to consider is the colour palette, i'm quite happy with my choice of colours. Colours are a great way to convey emotion and "feel", above the colours look moody and mysterious whereas for our own album their bright and playful, definitely a good choice as so i feel we followed an industry standard there. You'll notice, in the image above, that the font for the album name and their artist name, are both different but kept the same regardless of which product they're used on, this is also something you'll see i've done on my own products, It helps maintain an artist identity and an album identity. Finally you'll see both my products and those in the image above have branding in the form a logos and industry names, sponsors and record companies and so on. The point i'm trying to make is that two successful campaigns can seem entirely different, as a designer you're encouraged to explore many looks to promote the artist and be creative (I don't think any other posters/albums really influenced my own design), but to make a successful product there will always be conventions that you must follow, and i think i have done so pretty well.