1. In what ways do you media products use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The Music Video, Artist Website and Digipak which I contributed to on this project use develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products in a large number of ways, particularly those of the Electronic Alternate genre in which NTLS falls into. Much like the professional products I will reference, the three products each use conventional ways of communicating the information necessary for their platform whilst developing and even sometimes going against these conventions yet still remaining synergistic, for a variety of necessary reasons which I will also analyse.

One of the first things we did was identify conventions of the genre as from previously looking at theory by Andrew Goodwin, we knew that music videos usually have certain specific genre signifiers. We thought this was a piece of theory which was very useful for our project because we wanted to build up our main fan base among those who already enjoy Electronic/Alternative music and so by using genre conventions which they are used to, they can relate to the video better


THE MUSIC VIDEO
Performance and Narrative
The Electronic Alternative genre is commonly known for incorporating artist performance with some sort of narrative within the music video. With more established artists, there will be cuts between the artist singing the song in a performance scenario but then the same artist will be the lead role in the narrative, as seen below:

 

We liked the convention of having performance and narrative, however we felt using the duo for the narrative section would confuse the audience as they would think the duo were a couple. So we used this convention of the genre but developed it by deciding to have the duet singing the main parts of the song and use external actors to create narrative sections in the instrumental section and over some of the lyrics. However we made sure the performance to narrative ratio was greater for the studio sections in order to showcase the artist.

For the performance, we drew inspiration from the AlunaGeorge, particularly their monochrome Just A Touch video, in terms of how the members of the duo interacted and were placed in relation to each other and how they reacted to each other.

Close connection, similar to Aluna George but mainly trying to engage with the audience
and the intensity behind song lyrics

We then looked at how AlunaGeorge behaved when one of them was singing and the other wasn't in a dual shot:

AlunaGeorge - You Know You Like it Video

NTLS - Heart Skipped a Beat

We decided we were going to go against the way that AlunaGeorge were acting and make our movements and attitudes more synchronised. This is to emphasise the fact we are a duo and we are equal, as Aluna stands out more because of her energetic dancing and movements.

For the narrative within our music video we roughly followed Todorov's narrative structure.

However, we only used the basis of this theory because although the narrative pattern is very important, under time constraints of a 3 minute music video, and trying to showcase a new artist - we were unable to give to much time to showing the full story. However, we thought these were the three most important aspects and so we used them the most.

Strauss' theory of binary opposites heavily influenced a lot of our music video, making it more interesting and engaging to watch:

Static sombre studio shots contrasting fast fun narrative

"Juce - Call You Out" Reference

The lack of movement in the studio juxtaposes the initial parts of the narrative where the couple are still in love and everything is quite fluid and fast paced. For this we referenced the "Call You Out- Juce video" where the studio shot is quite still but the narrative section is upbeat and fast. This is effective as the pace change keeps the audience interested by stopping the video from becoming predictable.

We also contrasted emotions, most easily categorised as happy and sad. During the narrative the audience are happy when they see the couple in love and enjoying themselves, and sad when they the relationship start to break down and when they see the actual break up. We thought it was important to show many different clips from the relationship so that the audience could familiarise themselves with the couple and so feel upset when they broke up, similar to the following videos

Out of the two videos, we drew most inspiration from the Two Door Cinema Club video and so tried to create a more realistic relationship. Although members of our audience who are aged 17-21 would be able to identify with the more rebellious and dramatic aspects of the relationship shown in the We Found Love video, our target audience is those who enjoy the Electronic/Alternative genre which includes people of all ages. We thought the Eat That Up, Its Good For You video showed simple aspects of relationships which anyone could identify with and so could reach more audience members, which is what we wanted to do.

Camera/Framing/Movement

Rihanna - Pour It Up Video High angle shots used to make her look like a sexual object and low angle shots used to sexualise parts of her body

Various male performers Low angle shots used to make them look more powerful Women placed as decoration next to them

We tried to avoid framing seen in the Screen-grabs from videos like the ones above as they either overly sexualised the artist or made them seem powerful using high and lower angle shots. To add to our artists relate-ability and take away any opportunity of sexualisation we made them as neutral as possible, and so placed the camera at eye level.

We thought this was going against the conventions of other music videos who position male and female in dominant and submissive positions.

Collection of our main shots 

Vernalis states that establishing shots and close-ups are very important in music videos so we used this quite a lot. She also makes a point that it is really important for a music video to have a distinct look, even with the framing and blocking within each shot. Our main shot type was therefore the ELS of the duo.

We were also inspired by how in the "Islands" video by the XX, they ensured all members of the trio were viewed as equally important by rearranging their positioning on the sofa each shot.

The XX - Islands video: repositioning the band to ensure they are all viewed
as having the same amount of importance.

We thought this was really important and relevant to our duo and so made sure both Nathan and Lulu had equal screentime.

Editing

Vernalis also states that music videos typically break the conventions of continuity editing and that it was more important for the editing to reflect the music; bringing a unique editing style to each track. Our track has a lot of distinct beats and musical patterns which provide a lot of different places to cut to. In POP videos, the cuts are quite predictable but because the songs are more upbeat, it carries the song as seen in the video below

In songs from the Alternative genre, there is a slight cutting pattern but it includes lots of suprises and unexpected cuts like the following two songs:

We decided we would have a less distinct cutting pattern like the "All About that Bass" video as our song is quite dull and needs to be brought to life by the shots and the editing. We therefore included a lot of surprises and unexpected cuts which are more typical of our genre, to appeal to the "die-hard" audience members of our genre who will recognise this and enjoy it, and new fans who wanted to see something different.

Our video frequently breaks the 30 degree rule has deliberate graphic mismatches and changes to the editing pace which serve to entertain the audience in quite a plain and simple studio set up.

Strauss' theory of binary opposites also came into play with editing. The use of HD juxtaposed with VHS footage helped show the difference between studio and narrative and also gives the overall video a more striking and stylised look, we thought this was very effective in the video below and thats why we applied the technique our own.

Lyrics/Music/Visuals

A lot of the videos for the Electronic/Alternative genre are quite abstract and at face-value its hard to link the lyrics to the visuals but the videos are made to make the audience think about the lyrics that link themselves.

From learning about Andrew Goodwin's theory of the link between the lyrics and visuals of a music video, we were able to use subtle parts of the performance to illustrate the meaning behind the lyrics:

Initially we thought it may be confusing for the duo to do anything which relates to the lyrics, but then we saw it was typical for artists of our genre to reflect the emotion of the lyrics and its actually quite helpful as it ties the video together, as seen below:

Telana sings "When we hung you wouldn't even kiss me" whilst closing her eyes reflecting and gently rubbing her lip with her finger, as though shes reflecting on the kiss that she never received.

We were also inspired by Vernalis' ideas of the beat and rhythm of the song in relation to the visuals. Blinks to the beat and heard turns in time with the music were incorporated into our performance choreography because of this:

This inspiration was further inspired by the Hot Chip - Ready for the floor video, where the choreography matches up with song timings

Representation

When men and women are presented in music videos together, the woman is usually submissive and heavily sexualised whilst the male appears more dominant and powerful.

Also, even in a duo there can sometimes by one artist who is propelled to the fore front. 

Aluna from AlunaGeorge gets a lot more screentime than George and looks more important

However we actively decided to challenge this convention by

1. Having each artist in cool yet non-sexual outfits to focus in on them as artists and avoid the objectification of either of the artists
2. Equally represent the artists, so one doesn't look more powerful or like the more important artists
3. Giving them equal amounts of time on the screen so one gender or even race isn't considered more important than the other..

In the narrative section of our music video we conformed to gender stereotypes a bit more

however this was because we needed to clearly tell the story in a short period of time and if we started challenging stereotypes it would have become slightly more difficult to follow. Also the female members of our target audience will find a stereotypical relationship cute and the outfits they wear show the couple are alternative (like the audience members) which prevents the possibility of the video being cliché.

Iconography and visual hooks

We learnt a lot about Richard Dyer's "star" theory and from this decided to create very strong styles that left a long lasting effect on those who watched. Similar to what the artists below achieved

Since our studio set up was quite simple, we felt it was very important that the look of our artists was engaging during the video, to keep the audience interested. Music videos from the alternative genre range from having very heavily styled videos (Fka twigs - Two Weeks) to being solely graphic (Jamie XX - All Under One Roof Raving)

This made it difficult to pinpoint a style for our genre, we worked with the one thing they all had in common which was being different and so influenced by Fka Twigs futuristic style choices, we used monochrome, dots and jewellery to create a distinct look

In one theory, Goodwin discusses the demands on the record label and how ones of these demands will include "the need for lots of close-ups of the artist" So, taking this into account, we used close ups to create striking iconic images and really highlight parts of the hair and makeup.

Series of Close-Ups from the video

Strauss theory of binary opposites was also used here with black and white contrasting imagery

Two of the same shot repeated in black or white

By clearly showing iconic London scenery, like Alexandra Palace, Brick Lane and Tower Bridge, plus showing typically English traditions like eating fish and chips we made it clear to audiences that the artists were from London. and so the audience could relate more to the video and the artists as a whole.

Inter-textual References 

Our intertextual reference was using VHS footage within for the narrative sections of the video It played with the audiences expectations confusing reality and the past and instantly evokes feelings of nostalgia as most audiences can relate to watching old home movies which were on VHS, it works quite effectively in the Chase & Status - Blind Faith video. The narrative shows British young adults preparing and attending an old-school warehouse rave, but the VHS strengthens the setting and allows you to really believe the narrative.

Electronic/Alternative music videos always each have their own unique selling point, we thought ours could be therefore be the breaking of conventions using the professional camera and adopting the analogue camera for the narrative for a more artistic and interesting aesthetic.

THE WEBSITE
Content and Design

A lot of Electronic/Alternative artist websites all ensure they contain the following pages or similar:

Collage of websites pages of Electro-Alt artists 

So we thought it was necessary for us to have these pages as it was what our target audience would be used to, however we noticed that a lot of these pages have just a block colour background. Although this matched our slightly more minimalistic style, we wanted to create quite a memorable website image as we are debut artists so we made the background forest themed

SYNERGISTIC ARTIST AND BRAND IMAGE

SOCIAL INTERACTIVITY

With every website we noticed that links to social media linked to the artist or the record label was always available through clickable links, again taking inspiration from THE 1975 and also Lewis Watson, we thought we would include all the social media links the main banner because it was easy to find to gain instant access to the social media pages.

We ensured we had links to the main social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The good thing about these platforms is that we had excellent cross media convergence. Twitter posts can be linked to Facebook and Instagram uploads will instantaneously be linked on the Facebook and Twitter page. This meant that as well of creating symbiosis between the products, audiences would constantly see content from all socials platforms, despite only being on one of them. Another thing we recognised to be on a lot of pages was the chance to sign up to a mailing list. Although e-mail is not used as much amongst the younger members of our target audience we still thought it was worth offering 

Website banner with the social media links at the top which redirect to our social media pages

NAVIGATION

We thought our simplistic video style should also be reflected in our website so we aimed to make navigating around the website very easy and minimalist. We decided on a straight forward banner which we were inspired to do by the Dog is Dead website and by Lewis Watson.

The straight forward banners were easier to navigate around

Although artists from our genre like SBTRKT have a scrolling blog format on their website we decided to challenge this as we thought it suited us more.

We found the scrolling websites too complex and preferred 

the traditional layout.

INSTITUTIONAL INFORMATION

We thought it wasn't necessary to bombard the user with institutional information because it can be slightly boring and we wanted to emphasises how NTLS were really about the music and nothing else. We found with bigger artists institutional information was very big and bold however with more alternative artists it was more concealed

The XX (Alternative Artist) industry information

Beyonce (International Pop Artist) scrolling indstry information

So we simply decided to include a footer which appears on each page of the website and some simple contact information with a map showing where Red Pigeon were based. This was more for the purpose of reminding audiences that we were British.

Artist information from our website

THE ALBUM COVER

The album cover is what most of the other artefacts revolve around. The front covers are synergistic with what we see on the website. Much like FKA Twigs and SBTRKT,

whilst the internal covers are what influenced the monochrome effect in the video. The back cover of the album has a link to the website as a readable URL but with the popularity of smart phones amongst our target audience we also thought we would include a scannable QR code so that fans can easily access information about the artist that is on the website.