Question 1: In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productions?

Because my artist, Daniel Cope, is a bricolage of genres, I chose to use the forms and conventions instead of challenging them because I could not focus on one genre but I could merge them together to make a stronger all round piece. Daniel Cope is considered as acoustic, folk, alternative and pop. Using the theories of Goodwin I established a range of different conventions that could converge in the music video and the digipak.
Close Ups and Focus on the Artist
Daniel Cope's genre was a difficult puzzle and was difficult on deciding on what aspects/conventions of the genres to use in the music video and digipak. But one convention that was prominent through all of his genres was close-ups, the focus always being on the artist. This is one of Goodwin's theories, to sell the artist using close ups.
In the music video the focus is on the artist throughout, creating a relationship between the audience and the artist is crucial and this is the most effective way. The music video uses the close ups to catch the audiences attention and create emotional links. It creates a powerful effect whilst marketing the artist at the same time.

Ed Sheeran, "Drunk" Music Video (Left)


(Right) Screenshot of Artist singing from the Music Video and of the artist staring over the hill.
The Location
The locations of the music video was very important to the genre, using different locations was also important. I think I utilised the locations to fit the genre. The beach set the genre, creating a peaceful and moody atmosphere, that represented the artist and the song. Another example of a similar location is the field in "When September Ends" by Green Day, this connotes a peaceful and romantic situation in which the girl and boy are in love, much to the same as my video on the beach. This scene and later sections of the video acted as my inspiration, creating a romantic situation in which they must separate.                         Narrative
This then leads onto narrative, the narrative of my music video is linear with flashbacks involved. This is common among the genre and examples of this would be "When September Ends" by Green Day and "A-Team" by Ed Sheeran. Both these examples show a narrative which has a storyline which incorporates flashbacks which connote regret. The narrative is really a signifier of the genre because acoustic/pop a songs  use relationships as a key aspect like in "When September Ends". This is used because of how the audience can rekate to it, Gunther Kress' thoery about how the audience is more comfortable when sitting at home and recognises a text, when the audience can compare it to another text or experience it can enhance how they see it and will enjoy it more
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Katie Wales says that "genre is an inter-textual concept", so reference to other texts will increase the audience's relatability to the text.

Costume

The costumes used in the music video are clothes warn by High Street shoppers, Post-Modernist clothes like the cheque shirt, ripped jeans and converse are all considered to be High Street fashion and this another way I have incorporated the audience with the genre. The audience associate themselves with the artists within the music industry because of the clothes that they wear and what they look like. The audience wear similar clothes and do similar things to become what Michel Maffesoli would call is a "tribe" and this is how Michel Maffesoli's "Time of tribes" came from.
This is an advert from Republic ( High Street Fashion) and the one to the right is the clothes worn by my character in the music video. The use of Post-modernist fashion in my video goes back to the use of bricolage, the genre of Daniel Cope is a mix and would be considered bricolage, similarly the post-modernist fashion is bricolage, taking different types of clothing from the past and reinventing them. The cheque shirt is an example, formerly worn my farmers and "Yokels" the cheque shirt is now one of the biggest parts of high street fashion.

How my Digipak and Magazine Advert use conventional genre characteristics and post-modern techniques... on Prezi