Q1-In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The huge stereotyping of R'n'B/ Hip-Hop videos in my opinion has pushed artists to start to challenge these stereotypes and bring a new dimension into the world of the genre. Chris Brown in the early stages of his career was seen as a typical R'n'B artists and song such as "Forever" and "Kiss Kiss" followed the common conventions of R'n'B songs and music video's such as money, girls, and partying.





A common these in these videos is dancing, mostly by Chris Brown himself, but in some parts he is assisted by a group of people. Dance is a convention of R'n'B/Hip-Hop, but it is one that we have challenged in own own video by not including it. We chose to challenge this convention because we feel that 'Shouldve kissed you' is one of Chris Browns softer songs and it therefore needs more performance to generate feeling and emotion.

As Chris Browns' career developed, his status in the industry allowed him to experiment with his music without much of a risk, and subsequently some of his music has ventured into the genre of rap, and some softer songs, such as 'Shouldve kissed you' could even be classed as more pop than R'n'B. The song is slow in tempo and not really the that you would expect to find on an album by an artist renowned for being a big name in R'n'B.

As you can see in the video for the song, the focus is purely on the performer and there are no other actors involved. This is not the case in our own music video for the song, as we have an extra actor as well as the performer, giving us the chance to include a lot of narrative to get the story of the song across to the audience.

The constant attention on the performer is one of the main conventions of R'n'B music videos, and in my opinion this is linked to the stereotypical view of artists in this genre as being self-centred and naive. As this is the case, we have in fact challenged this convention as well be including a fair chunk of narrative. In fairness, overall our music video is probably about 70:30 in favour of performance over narrative, but this is still more than in most R'n'B videos, such as 'Riding Solo' by Jason Derulo.




There are very few occasions in this video which shots could be classed as anything to do with narrative or the story of the song, but on the other hand it could be argued that the song is about doing things for yourself and living your own dream, or 'ridin solo' as Derulo says.
The lighting in the video for 'ridin solo' is also significant because it highlights the fact the the artist is doing well in terms of his career, and the large board of lighting behind him helps to add superiority and status. Quite frequently in our video we used natural lighting therefore most of it is set in the daytime, but whilst this challenges a convention in itself which is the nightlife, it also means that costs were kept to a minimum when it came to production. High costs of production have become a convention of hip hop and R'n'B music videos as more and more money enters the industry, along with technological advancements that make it possible for videos to have the quality that they do nowadays.

We did use a common convention of R'n'B/ Hip-hop music and this was the sexy female. We chose Fade because of her looks and I think this has a positive effect on our overall video in terms of the look and the pairing of the two characters. We enhanced the sexiness of the girl by having her walking around in a towell, highlighting her shape and figure. However, with the use of the sexy female convention came another challenge. Commonly in R'n'B videos there is a situation in which a rich black man chases a white girl, but in our video we reversed this and had a white man chasing a black girl. This was an important stereotype to challenge from our point of view, because it is something that is almost never seen in todays music videos and because of this it makes our piece more individual.

Ancillary task complete

                                                                           POSTER

                                                            DIGIPAK FRONT COVER

                                                              DIGIPAK BACK COVER

                                                       DIGIPAK INSIDE COVER (RIGHT)
                                                             

                                                      DIGIPAK INSIDE COVER (LEFT)

The design that we have chosen is inspired by Matt Cardle's album 'Letters', in the sense that it demonstrates emptiness felt by the subject. The poster consists of a shot that we were happy with as soon as it was taken, because the mise-en -scene turned out just as we planned. On the ground around the actor are autumn leaves which represent a season associated with sadness and loneliness as the vibrant colours of the summertime darken and the leaves fall leaving distant memories. This relates to the similar surroundings of Matt Cardle on the front cover of 'Letters', where he is isolated in the location with only the hills around him. The white font we have used on top of the black and white colour tone is also inspired by 'Letters'. We chose it because not only does it stand out, but it is in tone with the calm atmosphere and doesn't take the attention away from the actor, who we are trying to promote. 'OUT NOW' is in a big font and this commands the readers attention, encouraging them to purchase the album.

The inside covers of the digipak have similarities to the front cover in the sense that these also follow the overall calm and sensitive tone. The picture focussing on the leaves gives a great effect and this would be on the side where the disc is held, maybe personifying the disc to relate to the actor with regard to the fact that the disc will effectively be surrounded by nothing. Opposite to this is a picture of the actor sat down with his back to the camera. He is in the bottom left hand corner of the frame and therefore is relatively small in comparison to the overall picture, showing his feeling of inferiority to his thoughts about the girl.

The back cover is a shot that was taken in the same location as some of the footage in the video, and this relation provides a key link between the digipak and the music video. We framed the shot so that there would be a clear space in which to list the songs, while at the same time showing the stairway which links to the video.

The front cover is the same shot as the poster, however we changed tot font to black   to make sure there are some differences between the two. We chose the record label 'JIVE' because this is Chris Brown's actual record label and it therefore shows authenticity.

Digipak

A digipak is a style of CD or DVD packaging used to promote a particular artist.

This is the album cover for Matt Cardle's debut album 'Letters'. The colour scheme is just greyscale and i think this is because, even though he won The X Factor, he is not yet an established name in the UK music industry. The lack of colour on the album cover could therefore represent a career that has not yet fully blossomed. But also on the other hand, the fact that it is not completely black and white could represent that this is someone who is going to become something big. Other features of the design also coincide with this thought of representing a career with no substance, such as the location and the text. The location is in the middle of nowhere which could symbolise isolation, and the white colouring of the text prevents it from standing out.

Mike Posner, like Matt Cardle, is an upcoming artist. However, whilst Matt Cardle participated on the X Factor and got the votes of millions of viewers before he signed a contract, Mike Posner was relatively unknown and the fact that this single cover has even less colour than 'Letters' reflects this.Mike's pose is also similar to Matt Cardle's in 'Letters' as they are both looking to the ground. This is yet another similarity between the two and they both give the same feeling of isolation and loneliness in their thoughts.

I think it is obvious now that will use both these album covers as inspiration for our own, as the feeling that they give off and the sympathy that we feel for them links to how want our audience to empathise with our actor in both our music video and our digipak.


We had a shooting session yesterday for our ancillary tasks, where i was the subject of the shots and my partner was in control of the camera. The session went well and we have drawn up a short-list of our four favourites:

This is a favourite of ours because it portrays the songs feelings well, however my partner did not like the fact that there is a bin present in the background so we will choose not to use this one.

Me and my partner both agree that this picture is perfect for an inside cover.

I think this is perfect for the front cover of the digipak as well as the poster. The actors pose is good and the fact that he is looking down makes it seem like he is in thought and this links the songs bottom line of the performer thinking to himself. There is also room on the right for text.

Too central. Although the picture in itself is good, the framing is bad and there isn't  enough space for text.