2.  The first step I took when creating all of my items
was to look at existing material to the find the
conventions of each form of media.
 By doing this, it allowed me to refer to the
conventions while creating my own work. This
means that I was more likely to stick to these
conventions and therefore making my work look
a lot more professional and realistic.

3. Digipack

4. Digipack Front Cover
Before I started to create my digipack, I focused a lot of my attention on just the
front cover, creating a huge mind map comparing album front covers from a range
of different bands. I found that different bands had different conventions apparent
in all of their album artwork. For example, Muse use very abstract album covers
that don’t often have clear links to the band or the album, whereas the Foo Fighters
have a clear layout that is apparent in all of their front covers. When choosing what
style I would like my album cover to be I looked at previous Enter Shikari albums
and found that they used a similar style as the Foo Fighters and decided to follow
this . This layout is a simple logo in the centre that relates to either the band or the
album and then simply the album and band name at the top and bottom of the
cover. Enter Shikari often use a patterned background opposed to the Foo Fighters
bold single colour backgrounds. By sticking to the conventions specific of Enter
Shikari I felt that it would give my product more realism and make my product seem
like an Enter Shikari product opposed to an imitation. However, when it came to
actually creating the front cover I came to some difficulty with creating the
patterned background as I could not make it look professional and therefore in the
end I took a different approach, taking a picture that I had taken and distorting it so
that it was not completely recognisable. I feel that this challenges the conventions I
discovered however I still feel that it creates a suitable effect for the target
audience.

5. Digipack
 When I started work on my digipack I looked around the house to find any digipacks that I owned
so that I could compare them and find similarities. I found a few digipacks ranging across different
genres of music and one of them was even from the band that I was creating my digipack for. By
having a range of music genres it allowed me to spot the obvious conventions but also the genre
specific ones.
 One convention that was obvious throughout every digipack was to have a theme that runs
throughout the digipack and I felt that it was vital that I did this when creating my product. I
chose the theme of the train station from our video making sure that every image related to this .
I also found that digipacks use the same colour scheme throughout the digipack, which obviously
contributes to the theme of the digipack. It was very easy to make sure I stuck to the colour
scheme as all of the images I used were from the same night and therefore the lighting and
colour palette are identical throughout the images. I also made sure that I used the same colours
for all of the writing and titles throughout the digipack, using red and white as the two main
colours.
 When looking at digipacks I came across the idea of having one main image across the three
middle panels and I felt that this was very effective and wanted to try and use it effectively in my
digipack. This is not a common convention but it is one that I felt was very effective so I decided
to try it out and I really liked the outcome.
 I also made sure to look at the little details when conducting my research as this is what would
make my digipack seem a lot more professional. This included the use idea of information about
the record label, the production and distribution of the product and also the barcode. I made
sure that I included all of these when creating my digipack and also included the website at the
bottom.
 I wanted to keep my digipack as simple and professional as possible and therefore I stuck to the
conventions pretty tightly and generally didn’t really develop or challenge them.

6. Album Advert

7.  I looked at a variety of rock album adverts
when starting my work on my poster. Similar to
the digipack, I looked at a range of genres,
ranging from You Me At Six to the Basement
Jaxx to find both general and genre specific
conventions.

8.  The first major convention that I discovered was that the poster always contained the album
artwork and therefore found it vital that I should stick to this. Therefore, when creating my poster I
included the cartoon earth logo that I created for the digipack making it the focus of the poster and
therefore linking both the poster and the digipack together.
 I could not spot a certain convention or trend when looking at the backgrounds of other adverts
and therefore I decided that I wanted to relate it to my logo, creating a starry space themed
background to match the earth logo and felt that it was very effective.
 I also found that the band title is often identical to as it is on the digipack and I wanted to
replicates this effect to ensure that all of my products could be linked together well.
 All of the posters I looked at contained the album title in a big bold font at the bottom of the page
followed by the release date. I decided to follow this trend also making sure to stick to the colour
scheme. A few of the posters contained the words “includes the singles.” I decided that I wanted
to use this on my poster as it adds a sense of realism to the poster and would mean that people
are more likely to buy the album if they know and like the singles.
 Not a lot of album adverts include information regarding the record label, however I chose to
include the record labels names as I felt that it was worth mentioning and it adds more to the
poster without taking up any valuable space. This is an example of me challenging the
conventions.
 Another example of me challenging conventions is my use of reviews on my poster. From what I
could see a lot of posters didn’t include visible reviews however I decided that I would because it
instantly says something about the album without even reading the poster. Also, I have not come
across another advert that chose to place the reviews in the same place as myself. I felt by
placing them right at the top of the page in a large font that it would make the advert standout as
the well known logos are instantly recognised and stand out.
 Like most album adverts I included the link to the band’s website, however I made it a fair bit
larger and more visible than other adverts I came across as I feel that it is a very important piece
of information.

9. Video

10.  Before starting this section of the coursework,
I already had a generally good idea about the
general conventions and what to expect from
as music video as I spend a lot of my time
watching music videos at home.
 However, I began to analyse some music
videos in more detail to gain a greater insight.

11.  One major decision that we made while in the editing process of
our video goes against most common conventions. This was
the use of slow fades to transition shots, we decided to do this
as our song is a very slow song and we feel that it helped to
build and create emotion that would not be possible with the
use of normal cuts. Most music videos just use cuts between
shots and this is therefore an example of challenging
conventions.
 We decided to use a linear storyline that helps you to follow the
video which is a fairly common convention of standard music
videos. We decided to do this as it allowed the viewer to create
a connection with the main character and therefore increases
the emotion that is created.
 When looking at videos, I found that there are two types of
music videos; serious videos that relate to the song or a
funny/abstract video that doesn’t relate to the song totally. I
thought that if we were to try an abstract/funny video it would be
a lot harder to pull off well and therefore went for the serious
style of music video.
 Like many music videos we wanted to include a lead singer that
sings various lyrics throughout the video, however we felt that
not too much of the video should be singing. This also allowed
us to demonstrate our ability to lip synch.