Final Digipak
Final Magazine Advert
Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Forms and Conventions
The brief was to create a promotional campaign for our chosen artist, Rudimental; which consisted of a music video, a digipak and a magazine advertisement for the album.
Goodwin (Dancing in the distraction factory 1994)
- Goodwin came up with a set of characteristics which he believed was conventional in music videos. Goodwin's theory of relationship between the lyrics and visuals in a music videos in our piece is amplified as there is a strong link between the narrative and the lyrics of the track. However, our video does not fit in with the wider characteristics of dance music as there is no dancing, bright lights and happiness, in fact it is the opposite.
- Our track is called 'Home' and the lyrics say about the long journey home. From this we came up with idea for a narrative in which there is a homeless teenager who has been sleeping rough and drinking lots of alcohol who eventually returns home at the end of the track.
- However, the reason for him being homeless is not revealed to the audience. The video ends with the homeless person returning home, but you do not see his parents, nor do you see him actually enter his house. Rudimental's music falls into two different genres, dance and drum and bass.
Conventions of the form of a music video
- One significant way the form of a music video is apparent in our piece is the constant intercutting between the narrative of the song with the performance part which has lip syncing.
- Another way is the strong link between the lyrics and the visuals.
- The female singer for this song, Sinead Harnett has a distinctive grain of voice which is powerful which we have tried to incorporate in our narrative by giving the homeless person prevalence and showing how although he is homeless, he is still human.
- The emotional colouring of our video plays a significant part as our video is in black and white and the lack of colour creates a sense of depression which makes the audience feel sorry for the homeless person as like everyone else, he is human. The normal verbal communication also helps create this sense of depression.
Conventions of the genre - Dance
- Rudimental's music fits into various different genres including drum and bass and dance. Their music is very uplifting and powerful, where as this song, 'Home' is completely different compared to their other songs.
- Our video conforms to the conventions of the dance genre as it has both performance and narrative which is iconic of this genre of music.
- Our video does follow conventions of other music videos which have been released by Rudimental as like other videos, there is a narrative arc with a clear beginning, middle and end. In our video this is the homeless person sleeping rough, then his journey home and ends with him returning home.
- Other Rudimental videos have included narratives about disability (Waiting all night) and poverty (Not giving in) so we decided to do our video on homeless people.
- Home itself, fits into the soul genre which is different to the other songs released by Rudimental. Therefore, our video is conventional of the soul genre with the image of the powerful singer intercutting with the powerful narrative.
Challenging Conventions of a music video
- In many ways our video challenges conventions of the dance and drum and bass genre. For a start, in the dance genre music videos, there is generally people dancing and it is bright and colourful where as ours has no dancing and is in black and white.
- It challenges Rudimental's metanarrative as in their music videos, there is no performance, just narrative. But we incorporated the metanarrative of Sinead Harnett who sings 'Home' and in her videos there is performance as well as narrative.
- If you watch our video, I would say that it is closed as it is clear to see that the protagonist is sleeping rough as he is shown sleeping on a park bench and then later on he is shown sat it town begging. From this, you can come to the conclusion that he is homeless.
- However, in some ways, it may be seen as Polysemic as people may interpret a different meaning such as he has been out somewhere drinking and didn't make it home. Or he has run away from home and has been staying with friends as there are missing person posters which suggests that he does have a home to go to, therefore he is not homeless.
- Our narrative follows a homeless person on his journey home whilst there is some intercutting with performance. Within the narrative, there is only one line of action and it is filmed in a continuous way.
- Our narrative was influenced by the music video for the song 'A Team' which was sung by Ed Sheeran. This video, like ours is in black and white. But this follows a different group within society, a drug dealer who has to become a prostitute so she can pay for her drugs.
- Binary Opposition
- The binary oppositions present in our music video is between the rich and the poor. The homeless person is clearly the poor. This is shown in a progressive way in the video as he is given prevalence which you would not expect for a lower class person.
- The opposite is shown during the time lapse shot in which the homeless person is sat in town and the camera is filming at his eye level. During this shot, people walk past him and do not pay him any attention because they feel they are better than him. But one woman at the end of the video, does try and give him money connoting that not all rich people are the same, and some people do feel sorry for the homeless.
- The style of our piece is post modern as this is seen with the editing features we have used such as the time lapse shots and the reverse shot of the train which shows the train leaving when the original footage was of the train arriving at the station and stopping. Making our video fits in with the metanarrative of the group Rudimental as the majority of their songs are dance/drum and bass which means there is lots of modern technology involved such as lasers for events like raves and festivals.
- Normally in the media, the homeless people are shown in a regressive way and are not given any prevalence. They are shown to be drug abusers who sit there drinking and taking drugs, taking part in anti social behaviour. However, our video gives the homeless prevalence and does not show the bad sides of the homeless, it does not include the drug abuse, as people already know this is what they generally do. But rather than showing everyone that, it shows the fact he is vulnerable and is drinking alcohol because he feels isolated as he is alone. The non verbal language shows him looking depressed which connotes that he is not homeless by choice.
- The rear pane of the digipak which we created also challenges the dominant ideology of homeless people in our society. The homeless people can be seen sat on the bench with the sea, sky and cliffs which can create. This pane creates peace as the sea looks calm and the beautiful sky shows that sleeping rough does not always have its disadvantages. For many people in society, this is a view which people would enjoy seeing. The rest of the digipak is in black and white. However, this lack of colour is used to connote both sides of the story of being homeless. It makes it feel depressing and therefore the audience have sympathy. Where as the front and back panes which are in colour help to show that you can make life good out of a bad situation.
- Like the front pane and rear pane of the digipak, the magazine advert is in colour as well to create the same effect. We also edited the sky in the advert so it wasn't boring and grey where it was overcast, we tried to brighten it up. However, this advert connotes modern day youth dressed in an urban way and you can see that one of the homeless people is handing the other one a lighter.
Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
