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

Our current project was based on the development and making of a music promo and two other additional related promotional materials, as a means of advertising the song and the artist. We had to choose an unsigned band – so we chose ‘4Kicks’ this is an indie pop genre band. We chose to base our project on this particular band. We had to choose one of the bands songs, and create a music promo for it, along with a digipak and a magazine advertisement. This was to advertise the band and their new single.

The purpose of these three promotional materials is to advertise and promote the new band and their single. The music promo, digipak and magazine advertisement will give the band an amount of exposure that would otherwise not be achieved without these elements of promotional materials. They aim to create a hype about the band, giving the target market an idea of what the band is about and what their music will consist of.

A music promo video will help to show the audience the personality of the band, as some of their own thoughts and ideas will be included. It will also give the audience the ability to create their own opinions of the song and band. A music promo will also – help out the record company giving them a chance to show off new bands, giving the record company a name, giving the audience a chance to put a name to a face.

The above music video 'Gangnam Style - PSY' is the worlds most popular music promo, this is because of a number of reasons. Its very unique in the fact that it has a very strange narrative - this video would be classed as disjuncture as the video has nothing to do with the actual lyrics, they cant be related in anyway. The visuals are very eye catching and its some what humorous in the way PSY acts, and how he is portrayed in the music promo.

The music video above 'Little Talks - Of Monsters Of Men' is a very popular indie song, the video is unique and has a very strange plot. The video would be classed as disjuncture once again, as the video has nothing to do with the lyrics and is very different. A lot of computer skills are used in it - giving it the feel of that you're going on an adventure whilst watching the music promo.

The purpose of a music promo is to give the audience something to picture when listening to the song, helping create more of a story – sex can be quite a big seller at this point, as if someone was to watch a music promo and it was very erotic, then the person may want to buy the song just because of the sexual image they may get in their head every time they listen to the song, or buy the music promo. It will be seen by a large number of people, so it will help promote the band giving them the exposure they need to get their feet off the ground.

The above video is 'Call My Name - Cheryl Cole' its very provocative in the fact that she is seen to be very sexy and her female body is shown off a lot. Everything in the music promo is seen to be very erotic this is a big seller and is an example of how sex is used to sell.

A wide range of shots are expected to be used in a music promo, shots of instruments are shown to try and convince the viewer that the band are skilled in what they do, whether it be playing the drums or guitar as well as giving an idea of the genre being performed, giving a better idea of what style the band is trying to get across. As well as shots of instruments, music promos tend to get a range of close ups, long shots, pans, mid shots, and establishing shots of the band and the location, whether it be performance or narrative, there is no one style of shot that is often seen as any can be used to make an effective promo.

Music promos are expected to show a lot of energy through editing and mise-en-scene. The shots have to keep in time with the beat of the song and the structure, this is to ensure that the narrative and performance works well. A lot of shots and cut types are used depending on the genre and how fast the song is, however most are just straight cuts as these are simple, but effective to keep with the beat of the track. Normally the only sound heard would be the sound of the song being played, but in some more unconventional music promos some of the sounds from the narrative can be heard to help set the scene, this tends to be just at the beginning of the promo, but they sometimes can be heard throughout the music promo. Close up shots are seen more than others to try to keep the main point of focus on the band, be it the singer, drummer or guitarist. A music promo gives the viewer a means of being close to the band, which they may not get the same experience from going to see the band live. The mise-en-scene in most music promos can vary depending on the type of the genre that they are made from, they vary in the locations and the props used to create different effects.

The narrative of music promos varies a lot depending on the genre of the track, most tend to be straight forward narrative to help show the ideas of the music and how creative it is, along with the emotions the band want to portray with that particular song, but some music promos focus purely on performance rather than a mixture of performance and narrative. The narrative of music promos tend to be based around a few different types of narrative: illustration, this is when the narrative is soley from the lyrics in the song, amplification this is when one key idea or theme is taken from the lyrics and then used to create the narrative and disjuncture is when the narrative is completely separate from the lyrics to the song.  An example of disjuncture is ‘RadioHead – No Surprises’  this music promo is completely narrative and has nothing to do with the lyrics of the song.  The expectations for a music promo differ from genre to genre, and artist to artist etc – depending on the type of music, ideas and emotions they are portraying will effect the type of promo produced, and so a number of different mise-en-scene, shot types and editing techniques may be used and varied for each genre, to create the overall effect that the artist wants.

‘Coldplay – The Scientist’ breaks some of the usual conventions seen in music promos due to the entire video being in reverse. This adds a very unconventional element taking away from the idea that the artist is easily lip syncing the words where as this challenges the artist. It also creates a more interesting and powerful video; the concept is amplified from a single message in the song, creating a confusing appearance for the viewer. The way the artist had to learn the lyrics to the song backwards is really defying the laws of a typical music promo – creating something completely different and expiring.

The song ‘Hall of Fame – The Script Feat. Will.i.am’  is the music promo which gave influence towards our music promo, both being the same genre of indie pop. The band is located in a warehouse, which gave us the idea to also do the same in our music promo. The narrative is based on the lyrics of the song, and works with a theme making the promo more exciting and eye catching to watch, amplification is used here giving the promo a sense of triumph. This band is quite well known and has produced numerous popular music promos, so following this band will help/influence us, giving us ideas to put towards our music promo

Illustration: 

This has been used by showing the breaking up of love. Illustration is the simplest type of video to create, due to the only challenge being demonstrating the literal meaning of the lyrics within the song. The song describes a male character feeling lost in the world, we show this male character looking very similar to a ghost in order to clearly show his "lost soul". We also show the anger inside the character which is demonstrated to the audience by the aggressive manner which the vocalist sings. Lots of passion and anger is shown through his voice, making the audience feel the emotion by seeing this frustration on our actors face.

Amplification: 

This usually means some more information being added in order to promote the illustration. Although the break up of love is clearly shown, it is unclear why. We as a group, decided to allow the audience members to decide why this has occurred within the video and form their own opinions and views on the promo.

Disjuncture:

This is when the visual has no meaning with the lyrics or the song. Showing the male character to be dead, had no mention throughout the song, however we decided it could make our video be viewed by the audience in a completely different way that it would be originally viewed. The shock of seeing the male character in this way, will make the audience even more intrigued in the visual aspect of our narrative side to our promo.

The Digipak and magazine advertisement are part of campaign to promote the artist. These are things a campaign will typically include:

• A regonisable font used across the campaign E.g. Album, Digipak or magazine advertisement.
• The colour theme would stereotypically be simple and used throughout the campaign with little or no change.
• Usually they're will also be symbolic objects, pictures etc that will refer to the band or artist. This will give the audience a little hint and arouse interest.

Here are some examples of the same genre we have chosen; Indie Pop:

These Digipaks are very symbolic to the band, they have the same look as the band. They arent completely different to the look of the band. The top one is a 4 side digipak where as the bottom one is a 2 sided digipak, this can differ from how many songs the band has in the album, to how the band likes to represent themselves.

Below are the conventions of a music promo:

We kept our music promo quite conventional, with the location and what shots we did, be it long shots of the band or close up of instruments.  We got close ups of the lead singer, concentrating on his emotions, showing all his expressions. Our narrative had bits of performance in it, it both told a story and had singing in it, this mixture was just an idea we thought of whilst filming. We kept most of our editing fast during the chorus of the song, as its quite up beat and quirky. As the song approaches a slow part, we slow the editing right down, inserting long clips of instruments and singing. We used a variety of different shots during our day out filming, ranging from close up, to pans, and long shots as a way of showing the performance off from all angles, even during our narrative we incorporated handheld parts into the promo. We used two different locations for our promo, the first being quite rural and dark, used in the performance to create an eerie feel to the song, we had to use a set of flood lights to give us lighting in our video, so that the lighting would be even.