Evaluation Task One : In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions or real media products?

For the Course work, we had to conceptualise three pieces of Media, a music video, a website and a digital / CD pack. All of the media texts had to have consistent material, i.e. fonts, image styles, colours, and appropriately refer to conventions of the Artists Genre.

This is because each text has to promote each other, the music video usually promotes the most, as it introduces a potential audience member to the artist, there style and genera of music, and of course the new single or album the music video accompanies.

Conventions have to be familiar to an audience in order to be taken in, new conventions have to be really good, in order to be taken on, and this can be very difficult to do, so to make things simple we followed the conventions of existing music videos and artists.


The Music video

The main theme of the video was the Elements, Earth, Fire wind and Water. We hadn't seen a music video that followed this topic, but we had seen music videos that used similar themes, or other art forms that did follow the topic...

We wanted to make the images for our music video quite visually striking, so filming on a location was ruled out, we wanted effects, so that the scene would have more of a surreal image, otherwise we would just be filming the artist and then the elements in the backdrop for example...

This is a shot from the music video for 'Sailor and I', this artist like
ours, belongs to the 'indi-pop' genere.... 

She has a similar star image, so we could take inspiration 
the conventions that we are trying to represent.

Its important to note, that our inspirations didn't just come

from pop videos, or videos of a similar genere. This screen shot is taken

from the song 'Famous Last Words', by My Chemical Romance, a Rock 

Band. Though the genere isn't the same, the imagery can be translated

 to match our genere and the conventions of an artist...

We new that we wanted to use fire as a image, the trick was to
convert its purpose, to match the conventions of our artist.

Close-up shots are always an important part of any music

 video, no matter the genere, as it establishes the main image of 

the campaign, the Artist....

 This is used many times in our music video, as she is
up and coming, this music video is a good opportunity for
the target audience to get familiar with her.

The Website

For the website, I believed that having to much going on in the home page would distract a potential audience member, and dissuade them from wanting to find out more about the artist. We found that websites that were poorly made or hard to navigate, were uninviting and seen a s a hassle to use, so we stayed clear.

This is the original website for the real artist, it only has the essentials, such as links to social media and music streaming sites. The minimalist design is something we aimed for, as it would show that we didn't need to have an extravagant and loud home page in order to get someone visiting the website interested.




CD Digi-Pack

The CD digi-pack, wether or not the artist it is promoting is well known, or up and coming. Involves the same amount of information and imagery. This is what sets it apart form websites and music videos as a promotion tool. Unlike this example form Rhianna, who is mainstream and well known, are artist, who is up and coming and synthetic, has more text, and even a personal message to the potential audience.  However, the use of imagery, is being used to portray the conventions in the same way, across both examples, the same would happen with most well thought out CD digi-pack's, no matter what the genere / sub-genere...

However, when it comes to comparing similar campaigns, Lana Del Ray's 'ULTRA-VIOLENCE' has a very similar feel. This is unconventional in terms of her campaign, considering this was her first album. The imagery is simple,  and it lacks the use of her name on the cover, just the album name.







What I have learned from my audience feedback, is that I was able to establish for my audience, the ideal star image.  Feedback from questionnaires, surveys and the focus group have suggested that all of the connotations of the artist were translated very well, through her imagery across all of the main pieces of media text, the Music video, website and CD digipack. Her young alternative image on thew website and Digipack, as well as her message to the audience in the music video. The feedback also indicated areas that required development.  If I was to make any future changes to the campaign I would edit Website, to include for links for the audience to explore. This would be important as the Website is an ongoing advertisement for our Artist's campaign now and if there were any, those in the future.


Audience feedback is the most important part of the distribution of any media text, as it can be used to indicate what areas of the campaign need to be revised and adjusted, in order to make the products fit for their purpose. Henry Jenkins theorizes, that we live in a ‘participatory culture’,  the audiences play an important part in circulating meaning and the strength of media messages. The audience has the opinions, and the means by which to express them, through social media or by other means, word of mouth, blogging reviews etc...
The feedback indicates that my audience has engaged with the meanings in my music video in different ways, bringing their own contexts to the reading of the star image – what Hall argues is reception theory.  I can understand how my audience can either reinforce or challenge intended meanings in the text.