Evaluation question 1

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

From research and planning myself and my group member decided to follow Todorov's narrative theory. 

There are five stages the narrative can progress through:

1. A state of equilibrium (All is as it should be.)  - The female protagonist and her boyfriend are in a happy relationship

2. A disruption of that order by an event. - Her boyfriend begins to ignore her, not show up to dates which makes her feel worthless.

3. A recognition that the disorder has occurred. - The female becomes aware that the relationship is not going to work.

4. An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption. - The protagonist tries to contact her boyfriend to meet up, he fails to answer her texts. She finds the strength to end the relationship and move on.

5. A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium -  She is happy walking away from her failed relationship and decides to be single and start a new chapter of her life.

In researching narrative videos such as 7 years by Lukas Graham and ...... I identified this, in order to stick to our indie pop genre, I did follow Todorov's narrative theory, however I had to tweak some elements in order for our narrative to fit with the song and allow our audience to understand what was being portrayed.

When researching real media texts, I found the music video ' If you let me ' by Sinead Harnett. I liked the idea of broken glass, ripped paper and feathers on the floor. Although this music video is of a different genre myself and my group member decided to do something similar to illustrate to our audience that the female protagonist is over her past relationship. In this particular part of the video we used conventions of real media texts however developed them in order for it to fit with our genre.

In Indie music videos I found that female artists or female protagonist wear very little makeup, we decided to conform to this convention as we didn't want the makeup to hide the females emotions or mask her feelings when showing her strength or in particular when she is heartbroken removing the photos off the wall.

After receiving audience feedback, most of our audience didn't quite understand the narrative. I decided to include the female protagonist using the a prop ( scrapbook ) to tell the story, I found that this helped give my audience a clearer understanding. Most importantly, when the book and pictures were burning at the end of the video it allowed my audience to identify that the relationship had ended. The idea of the fire came from watching  ' Lana Del Reys - Born to die ' , although our video was on a much smaller scale I took the idea of the fire and decided to burn the book instead of a car.

What did I learn about the real media conventions for the Indie Pop genre?

In my research I found that, within the indie genre as a whole things are kept quite minimalist and simple. To be more specific, in music videos, things are kept simple so that the audience can focus on what story is being told/shown and what meaning is trying to be put across within the lyrics. Most videos tend to not include performances as it draws the audiences attention away from the lyrics. 

What did you learn about digipak conventions what have you included and why?

In my research I found that artists are more likely to use the same picture for their digipak cover and magazine advert. Digipak conventions included a bold image of the artists on the cover and same font used across the digipak. All digipaks include:

- Artist name

- Album name

- Song list

- Record Label

In order to conform to this I included all these elements and added a thank you message from our artist which I didn't find in my research. I included all these elements as I found that every artist included them as it gave their audience information.

What did you learn about real magazine advert conventions, what ones did you include and why?

I learnt that most magazine adverts were simple, they included all the relevant information about the album release such as; the album date and where the album can be purchased. I included all the main elements of what digipaks consist of, the album date, the main songs and the sites and app that can be used to listened to the album. However, I decided to change the image used on the front cover of my digipak to show different sides/ emotions of the protagonist.