Evaluation 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop, andchallenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Digipak:

Our ancillary task both challenges and develops conventions within real media products, which was the aim of both our CD cover and our advertisement for our new artist 'The Ka$h Mob'. In terms of developing conventions within real media products, we ensured we included all of the vital things within to make it look as proffessional as possible, which included; the title of the album, name of the artist, images of the artists, a list of songs, positive things said about the artist/album, ways to purchase the album and also contact details to ensure the viewer has all the vital information they need.

Therefore following these conventions were a vital aspect needed to ensure our product looks professional and fits the quality of real life media products. However we did challenge some conventions of real life digipaks. Our artist is a duet, but the lead is female and through the ancillary we ensured she was seen as the dominant and important figure within the artist. For example we made the woman look extremely independent putting her in surroundings in which would make most females look quite vulnerable and helpless, but we ensured our female looked independent and strong minded which was the main aim of the portrayal of our artist. Similar to the album art of Ellie Goulding whom is a prime example of our genre synth pop/electro pop, as within her album cover you can see her in external, spacious locations as shown below, which I felt was a vital convention to follow within our digipak for our genre.

However this idea of having a strong, independent female lead, is something which is not seen widely within the media world, for example in films you see women as being vulnerable and needing to be saved, however within our chosen genre of synth-pop it is seen quite often having the woman being the lead, for example the ting tings. within their album art again, you see the placement of the members make it clear that the woman member of the duet is the key focus, and also the most important member of the band.
 Therefore we felt as they so successfully made this clear, merely by having the male member looking at the female, within our own album cover, we placed the female slightly in front of the male to make it clear that she is the main focus of the duo.

Music Video:

Within our music video, we also felt it was important to both strengthen, and also challenge some already established conventions of not only just our chosen genre of music, but also the general conventions of this type of media text. We chose to be quite illistrative of the lyrics within our video, by using shots which make clear relations with the lyrics, as within artists whom we researched, their videos we found had this quality.

This shows our lead singer of the duet crying, linking with the emotive lyrics and title of song "I need your love" and we felt making these clear comparisions were important. We also developed the convention of having the main focus on the female artist within the duet, alike crystal castles videos, again an example of our chosen genre of music. For example here you see the female singer of the band on her own, being the main focus of the shot, and again alike used within our digipak using outdoor type, foresty, empty locations was a clear conventions that we used within our music video and also the entirety of our digipak promoting our artist The Ka$h Mob. However as well as using and developing conventions of real media texts of our chosen genre, we also challenged conventions, for example within our music video we used narrative, whereas most music videos of this genre, are quite abstract and surreal. For example within Jeffree Stars video for Get Away With Murder, you can see extremely abstract costume and hair, and the video itself does not have a real narrative to it whereas my own does, following the heartbreak love can cause.

This all shows how the combination of my music video and digipak for my synth-pop artist, both strengthens and challenges conventions of real life media texts.