Q1A - Conventions of Real Media Texts (Unfinished)

1 (a) Describe how your analysis of the conventions of real media texts informed your own creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

For my Foundation Portfolio I created a new music magazine called 'Sound' for the indie/festival genre aimed at a target audience of females aged 17 - 24. Then, for my Advanced Portfolio I created a hybrid narrative/performance music video for the song Autumn Leaves by Ed Sheeran, - an indie/acoustic song - with ancillary tasks of a Digipak for the album from which the song was released from, '+' and a promotional website. Conventions are important in a media product as they help to give what the audience is expecting in terms of the genre, whilst analysing them helped me to understand how each product was constructed.

At the very start of my Foundation portfolio, I had very little knowledge on the importance of conventions, or what conventions existed within the world of media, but as I began to construct my music magazine, specific genre and product conventions began to come up and I learnt why they existed. The more I looked at analysing existing music magazines such as 'Kerrang!' and 'NME' I developed an understanding for magazine conventions, such as how they used inserts to persuade the consumer to purchase the product with terminology such as 'exclusive', 'win' or 'free' and how the Masthead was placed in the top third of the page in a size or colour which stood out to the consumers' eye and often reflected the genre of the magazine, such as Kerrang!'s use of a 'grundgy' typography.

I also analysed 'Clash' and 'Q' magazine to look at genre conventions more specifically, as these were the only two magazines that I could identify which reflected upon my chosen genre of indie/festival music. Whilst Clash was listed as an indie magazine, Q was more of an all-round music magazine, so I specifically looked at indie/festival-specifc articles within it. Through continuous analysis, I began to notice that there was a distinct mise-en-scene convention for my the genre, and this was so that it reflected upon the stereotypical style of the music genre's fans - the people who loved the outdoors, the 'hippies', the 'boho' style etc. A strong colour palette of summery hues were conventional, whilst the models within the photography featured the said 'boho' fashion of loose layers, soft materials, pale colours and floral patterns. I wanted to create a magazine which conformed to the conventions of all music magazines, whilst I tailor-made it to suit the niche genre and consumer base I had targeted, therefore I created my front cover with a circular insert to draw in the attention of the consumers, with my Masthead stretched across the top section of the page so that it could be read from a far distance. Additionally, I used a soft white colour for the font so that it complimented my use of a pink and orange gradient background and the cream coloured clothing my model wore along with her hippie 'flower crown', as I knew this was something that would appeal to my target audience, as it is an identifiable element for my chosen genre.

When it came to conducting my Advanced Portfolio, I felt like I had really developed my understanding into the importance of media conventions, because I also developed an understanding of the importance of audience, as the consumers are the people who allow the media cycle to continue. A consumer buys a media product, the production company make a profit, then the profit goes into constructing a new product to be consumed, and so it continues. By not conforming to media conventions, it increases the likeliness that a consumer won't be able to acknowledge the identity of a product, and are then less likely to consume the product, bringing an end to the media product cycle.

Whilst I had completely followed conventions in my Foundation Portfolio, I wanted to develop or challenge some conventions for my Advanced Portfolio in order to have more fun and creativity with my work. Whilst I felt my understanding of the importance of conventions definitely developed whilst i created my ancillary tasks as the visual format of a Digipak or website is not too different from a magazine, I really did feel limited with my music video as the concept was completely new to me, therefore I had to conduct further convention research in order to understand that platform more. Andrew Goodwin was one of the biggest research elements I had to look into, as he developed his own theory into the conventions that make up a music video, such as how the pace of the music fits in with the actions in the shots, which will also typically narrate a story which reflects upon the lyrics of the song. I looked at existing indie music videos, such as Ed Sheeran's video for 'Drunk' and The Script's 'Millionaires', to identify any recurring conventions here also. As Goodwin stated, these two videos had edited shots which cut to the pace of the music, with imagery which reflected upon the corresponding lyrics. Particularly with these two videos, they had specific shots which matched some of the lyrics, but there wasn't a necessary set storyline throughout, with conceptual, confusing elements which creates enigma codes for the audience. On the other hand, other Ed Sheeran music videos such as 'The A Team', another indie/acoustic song, do follow a strict narrative theory, with the plot basic and clear to the audience, which evidently was a strong convention for my chosen genre.I decided to develop these particular conventions by giving my music video imagery elements to reflect on the lyrics, such as shots of flowers, the sympathy cards etc. but I mixed these with rather ambiguous shots of people's feet, the public transport etc. along with including minimal actors within the shots to add a slight sense of confusion, only to simply persuade audiences to watch the video again and again.