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

Our media product, CD cover, uses many different forms and conventions of real media products. For example, it has a picture of the artist on the front so that the audience will be able to see who the CD and music is by. As well as this it has the name of the artist and album on the front cover so that people know who the album is by and what it is called. It also allows audiences to memorise the artists face, so that in the future they will recognise her and hopefully recognise her music establishing her as a brand. We used a close up of our artist on the CD cover as it draws the attention of the audience and makes her the main focus of the CD cover. We edited the image using photo editing software to change the colour of her eyes from black and white to blue. We changed the colour of her eyes so that it attracts the audience. We also distorted the image in the background so that the image of her stands out more and is clearer. I feel that our CD cover hasn't really developed or challenged the forms and conventions of existing media products. We felt that we should just use existing conventions as they are working well in the real world at the moment, with products that relate to ours.

Our media product includes a tour poster for advertising which could be used in magazines, clubs, billboards and more and it uses many different forms and conventions of real media products. The tour poster shows the artists name and the name of the tour so that people know who is featured in the tour and what tour it is. The tour poster and CD cover were created to run alongside each other as they are both a first for our artist. For this reason we used the same colours, font styles etc. to show continuity throughout. As well as this the tour poster shows the different dates and locations of where the tour will be and when, which is the most common thing on a tour poster. The tour poster has a picture on it, but unlike traditional tour posters it does not show a picture of the artist. The picture is of an empty chair with a microphone, with a spotlight shining on them both from head on. This develops and challenges most common codes and conventions of real tour posters by making the audience think about the meaning of the tour poster. We did this because creates a sense of mystery, which engages the audience.

Our music video follows many codes and conventions that are set out in real media products similar to ours. Firstly, our video uses a simple story line to get the message of the song across to the audience. Our storyline is about a girl who falls in love with a boy but does not feel able to tell him, and when she starts to feel she can, she finds out that he has already found someone else. This gives our video a strong theme of love which is commonly found in real music videos of the acoustic genre. As well as a narrative, we also included a performance element in our video. This lets the audience know who the song is by and gives the artist more recognition. Another way that we made sure our artist got as much recognition as possible is by having her as the main character in the narrative part of the video as well as the performance part. This means the audience will start to recognise her and her music and will start to link the two together. This is important as she is new to the music industry and so needs as much recognition as possible to help create a wide fan base/audience. Throughout the whole of the video we used fades to go from shot to shot and slow editing so that it would fit in with the genre of music we chose, acoustic.

To conclude, I fell that our products fall within the codes and conventions set out by real life products. We aimed to keep within the common codes and conventions so that they worked well in the real world and were as successful as possible. Conversely, we did go outside these common codes and conventions on a few cases, but this helps to make our products different to those that are already out there.