OCR Media Studies 2016-2017

What media platforms have you used to present you texts?

We decided that the best platform to exhibit our music video on is YouTube. This is because it is the largest website of its type and will offer us the opportunity to share our product with the largest audience possible. Compared to other sights such as Vimeo and Vevo, which offer very similar services to YouTube, and the genre our product is, we don’t necessarily aim to grow our audience but make it as accessible as possible to its target audience making YouTube the best choice.

The Digipaks main purpose is to act as the physical product for our audience to buy however its cover could be used online on such platforms as iTunes and Spotify as the image that promotes the song.

Our poster was uploaded to Facebook and twitter along with other social media websites as this is the best way to spread awareness for our artist and music video. This is because of how connected the websites make people therefore our audience is more connected making it easier to show them our poster.

What are the conventions of your genre?

The genre our song fits into doesn’t have typically defined conventions. The alternative/indie funk genre is one that tries to exist away from society’s norms, though conventions can be identified such as the use of guitar as a performance element and a focus on star image. For example, the Indie star Darwin Deez keeps a lot of focus on him and the outlandish and un-normal characters he creates for his music videos. His music videos are relatively typical for our genre due to his large use of lip-syncing and guitar imagery.

If our genre is applied to John Cawelti’s genre theory, then we can see that our culture deems it a niche genre due to its relatively small popularity.

How have you conformed to the forms and conventions of your genre?
Our character was designed to be unique. By doing that, we conformed to the convention of our genre that our character needs to stand out compared to the mainstream artists. This is a useful convention that helps to build star image. Our artists costume helped us achieve this by allowing it to tell us much about the charter in one glance.

Furthermore, the guitar imagery we used in throughout the final products but mainly in relation to the song was conventional for the indie/alternative genre however this convention is usually used as a performance element whereas we have manipulated it into a narrative tool that acts like the role of the princess from Vladmir Propp's Dramatis Personae.

Goodwin's genre theory states that a music video that conforms to its genre if there is an apparent link between the lyrics and the visuals. This is typical for our genre should the video be narrative based over performance based similar to ours meaning that we met this convention.

Which conventions did you challenge?

Something which is rarely seen in our genre is the use of intertextuality that references more popular culture, for example we used a hand sign which is very similar to an iconic moment from Star Trek that means essentially to be at peace on our Digipak to show our characters nerdines as well as how our character accepts who he is.

On our Digipak and poster, we also used colour in an unconventional way compared to the rest of the genre. By using solid colours in simple geometric patterns, we gave our ancillary texts a modern feel which made it more striking and unique to the genre.

How successful did this prove?
I believe that we have been successful in challenging the conventions of our genre as well as the mainstream media, as we have been able to create a character that comes across as fun and interesting, whilst also being different and unique to the genre. It is important that an audience understands and relates to the present star image you have created for your artist and i believe that we have proven successful in this aspect. However, it was only achieved by taking the codes and conventions of the genre relating to star image and building upon them.

I believe that our music video and ancillary texts have taken the coeds and conventions of the indie/alternative genre and interpreted them in a unique way because this was identified in our audience feedback.