For our coursework, we were set the task of creating a music video, a magazine ad and a digipak. We had to look at the common codes and conventions for each product and create our own. Below I will explain the common codes and conventions for each of my texts.
Common conventions
Music Video
- They tend to include both a mixture of performance and narrative, a study done by Goodwin looks more into this concept idea. Sometimes artist use what is called a 'cameo' where one of the band members play a lead role in the narrative.
- They use a range of shots. Tracking shots are commonly used to create a moving flow for the song. Pop videos mainly use longs shots of the female on screen for the male gaze. Whereas indie bands tend to use close ups of the band members playing their instruments. An example of a video where the camera angles used are to hide the artist 'weight' is Sean Kingstons video. A lot of close-up shots of the male singer are used with constant camera movement.
- Lip syncing is commonly used to portray the sense of a performance going on. Most artist use this nowadays, mainly incorporating it in with the video. Unless the video does not contain a performance aspect.
- Music videos usually feature jump cutting and the footage is usually used to match what is going on on screen. They tend to edit the video to the beat of the soundtrack.
- The mise-en-scene is usually selected to match the genre of the band e.g. a metal band would use some sort of warehouse to create an isolated feeling, whereas a pop singer would use a colourful and happy place.
Magazine Ads
- They always show the band name in bold lettering to make it stand out in the magazine, the smaller the artist the bigger this tends to be.
- They provide realise dates whether its for tickets or a cd sale.
- Star reviews help promote the band and make people want to buy what is being advertised.
- Band information and band websites, so people know where they can find out more information on the band. These are usually shown through the use of Twitter or Facebook icons.
- Record label information and a copyright statement.
- Band image or cd image.
Digipak
- They tend to be made from cardboard, this is because it is seen as more environmentally friendly.
- The band name is usually clear on the front.
- Band image or print on the front, usually recognisable and have a close link to the band.
- Website information and band website for people to find out more information.
- Band and album name on the side, including category number and company logo.
- A brief description of the band or a lyrics sheet in usually found on the inside booklet. This provide you with information.
- Barcode.
- Copyright statement and record label information.
A link to more on digipaks
Here is a podcast taking you through the first stages of our digipak plans:
Here is a podcast taking you through the first stages of our digipak plans:
We then moved onto looking at the common codes and conventions for each product for our chosen genre, indie/alternative. This was to help us when making our final products. A band that inspired a lot of our idea was the Arctic Monkeys.
Firstly we looked at some of their videos. We found the video for 'Teddy Picker' very helpful for filming our performance shots. They used a lot of close-ups of the band and a lot of shaky camera work. We decided to go for the same sort of look when filming ours. Although the narrative was not very prominent in this video, we were mainly looking at how they filmed their performance footage. We also looked at the fast pace of editing used in this video, it matched well with what was going on on screen. However, this video incorporated a diegetic opening which we chose not to do, we believed that it wouldn't have worked very well.
Below is a vodcast demonstrating how we went about filming our performance work using ideas from this video. We mainly used the concept of one band member in shot per time and a shaky camera look.
We then looked at one of their digipaks. We noticed they went for a very simple design. Apart from the common codes and conventions we mainly liked the black and white image. We then decided that for our digipak we also possibly wanted a black and white image on the front to signify the indie/alternative genre. There was also a lack of textual information on the front. So we only included; the band name, album name and the information about the bonus video. We found that the majority of the information was included on the inside were their was often a booklet. We chose to do this as well.
Finally, we looked at a magazine ad's. We noticed again they took a very simplistic design. The image colour chosen was black and white with limited text used. It used some of the main codes and conventions of a normal magazine ad but lacked any real editing or imagination. In order for us to gain full marks we had to include more textual information, also because they band are unknown we needed to provide more text. We included Facebook and Twitter links in order to help promote the band and get all the information across.
We knew in order to get a higher mark we needed to include more signs of editing and more information for the magazine ad and the digipak. We did further research into our genre and the links below will take you to them:
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