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

For our music video, we chose to use the song Fireworks by You Me At Six. This song falls into the pop/rock genre as it has an up beat tempo whilst using dull, disheartened lyrics. Our music video conforms and challenges the typical conventions. In music videos, the audience expect to see the things that appeal to them the most; for our target audience this is things that relate to their life. For our music video, based on our song, we chose to focus this on betrayl and heartbreak. But rather than having the boyfriend cheating on the girl, we chose to challenge the typical convention of this and instead, we had the girlfriend cheating. We chose to do it like this because a male figure is stereotyped to be the same; they are all unfaithful and they cannot hold a relationship with just one person.

In our music video, we chose to have both of the relationships shown, the one with the boyfriend and the relationship with the lover. We conformed to the lyrics of the song as in them, the band sings,'together we'd float, so delicately', using the boyfriend and the girlfriend together in past tense, we were able to reinforce the audience that the relationship has ended.

Throughout the editing of our music video, we found it really frustrating to lip sync the video; whenever we moved one clip, the rest would either move along or get cut. We conformed to typical conventions Goodwin identified by using the image and lyrics in relation to each other.

After viewing several other music videos, we were able to identify that songs of love and heartbreak, used the typical conventions such as somebody cheating, close ups, clips of the past, panning and movement tracking. We chose to conform this because it helps to connote the distraught that has been caused because of what's happened.
The typical conventions from the rock genre were the band identity, what makes them who they are. This includes their clothing, hair and choice of instruments used. We dressed them in dark clothing in order to keep the mood of the video despairing. We chose to use the pop genre as an influence on us by using close ups and quick shots in order to conform Goodwin's theory by trying to promote the band and the lead singer and making the music sell.

We chose to keep a dull effect throughout the video in order to show how distraught that Tommy is because of what's happened; we done this by desaturating the clips of his past relationship and use the clips of me and Mike in colour as it is what's present. Half way through the music video, we started to use clips of Tommy singing in colour, on his own. We done this so the audience can decode that he is trying to get back to the person that he used to be, before he had his heart broken. We chose not to have a dance routine included (which is a typical convention of a pop genre) because the majority of the audience will be able to relate to the song lyrics, in one way or another and the last thing they want to see is dancing.

We also challenged Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze Theory'. This theory states that women are shown as sex objects through camera angles in order to make them seen inferior and men have all of the power. Instead, we chose to have our female character (me), seen as an average person, e.g. fully clothed and not heavily made up. The audience can then decode this and realise that even the 'innocent' looking people have a hidden past or hidden secrets.

But on the other hand, our music video conforms to Mulvey's theory as it's the female character shown to be cheating, not the male; making her look like a whore. This is usually used in a pop genre, where they use women as a voyeuristic images creating an interest for men.

Digi-Pak's are made in order to make an album more appealing toward their target audience as there are bonus features that can only be seen if you purchase the specific Digi-Pak. Most of the Digi-Paks that we researched featured the artist on the cover or on the advert, we chose to challenge this convention and instead, use things that can allow the target audience to identify the band just from the signifiers that we've included. Rather than using the band on the Digi-Pak front cover, we chose to include them in on the inside of the Digi-Pak. We decided to do it this way in order to make the audience feel as though they have a huge significance for the band and the reason why the Digi-Pak was made in the first place. We chose to use the same colours throughout as they represent the bands music genre and the band as individuals, the 'indie' stereotype. On our Digi-Pak we included a bar code on the back cover so that the shop staff will be able to sell the product to the audience.

The conventions that we have used throughout the music video, Digi-pak and advert will make the band seem more appealing toward the audience. The dark colours represents depression and hurt whereas the contrasting brighter colours connote happiness; the audience will be able to decode what Sinful Agenda's music is, if they haven't already heard it. They will look to Sinful Agenda's music as a form of escapism, reinforcing Blumler and Katz's Uses and Gratifications theory. By choosing to have a heartbreak based storyline it allows the audience to relate to it as they're between 15-25 and they can find themselves easily infatuated with another person. Some clips in our music video were shot in Leigh's garage; the audience may feel as though they want to aspire to be in a band, although most of them will probably already be in that stage as our target audience will have social or musical orientated hobbies.

We used montage and continuity editing rather than just having the one; we used the montage editing in order to show the different locations of Tommy singing various parts of the lyrics. This would make the audience realise that he is moving on from what has happened to him, this would also reinforce the self-seeking part of the uses and gratifications theory; if the audience were going through a similar situation, they would realise that it's okay to move on. We also used continuity editing with the relationships and the affair, so that the audience is able to keep up with the story. The animation was used in order to challenge the conventions as neither the pop or rock genre use animations in their music videos. But we used it in order to tell the story of our music video in short form.