In AS for the preliminary magazine and my final product I had to research into existing media conventions of magazines and implement them in my work. For example, magazines will always have a target audience that they have to appeal to the make the magazine sell. I had to consider who my target audience was, and realised the type of music and style I was going for would target teenagers and young adults both male and female who liked alternative music. From this I had to think how I would use representation to appeal to them. I used typical magazine conventions throughout the products to make it look like a real music magazine. For example I used a continuing colour scheme and font style throughout the pages of the magazine. The rule of thirds on the front cover with a clear masthead at the top of the page, coverlines, and made it clear to the reader what was more important information by using bigger font that stood out. On the double page spread I used a typical convention of a band interview with a Question and Answer format, including photographs of the band with photo captions. Although I mostly used typical conventions of real media texts in my music magazine I used a more unusual, art style for the magazine which more conventional popular magazines like NME and Q try to avoid and go for a clear, simple style to have a more universal appeal.
For A2 I researched into the different types of music video, illustration, amplified and disjuncture. As my partner and I were using OneRepublic’s song “Good Life” we decided to create an illustration style music video because it is the one most used by pop bands because it has a wide appeal. As our target audience were male and female teenagers we decided to use a girl of our own age so that the audience could identify with it. According to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of typical conventions of music videos is to mix narrative and performance to create a link with the visuals and music, although initial we were not going to include a performance aspect our draft highlighted that performance was needed to make it more effective.
The only two characters in the story were Bank and Katie. The convention of Mulvey’s male gaze theory applied to our music video; although it was unintentional it could be argued that Katie is passive because she does not connect to the audience by creating eye contact with camera whereas Bank as the lead singer does look into the camera. This makes him an active character which links to the traditional male and female roles within narratives. Also within the narrative we use Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary opposites with the city as representing sadness for Katie and the country, freedom and happiness. Todorov’s theory of restored equilibrium at the end of narratives also applies to our music video as Katie is show in the country where she belongs. We used typical conventions from Barthes’ theory of connotation and denotation to give the audience clues about what was going on in the narrative because as it was a music video there was no dialogue to explain. For example we used post-production effects to give the impression of dark busy streets in London which denotes to the audience a hectic lifestyle which contrasts well with the sunny landscape shots which denotes nature, freedom and a simpler life.
In terms of filming and post-production we used typical conventions of real media texts to create a music video that looked like it could be real. For example we used Premiere Elements to enhance the shots. We cut and made edits in the video to fit in time with changes in the music which links to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of a relationship between visuals and music. During filming we also tried to shoot with movement to fit to Carol Vernallies’ theory of continuous movement within a music video by creating panning shots, dolly shots and 360˚ to make it more interesting.
Well, done, good use of explanation, examples and terminlogy!
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