1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?
It is always a necessary process to study the codes and conventions of
a media type or specific genre when creating your own media product. These
codes and conventions are what the target audience will associate with, and
they are essential to allowing for said audience to make identification with the
product. Codes and conventions essentially create a set of project
specifications, which should ideally be followed when creating a media
product in order for it to conform to existing examples and the way that they
too were designed and produced. In most cases, producers will follow the
codes and conventions of their media product in order to create something
familiar for the target audience, in order to ensure that they react well.
However in some cases, producers may decide to develop or challenge the
conventions in order to build on their creativity and to put a personal spin on
the work they are creating; this allows for audiences to recognize specific
elements and associate them with a particular producer or director “that’s a
LAUREN BARRETT music video!”
MUSIC VIDEO:
With my music video, I mostly wanted to follow conventions as I
didn’t feel it was a media platform suitable for endless experimenting,
especially with filming techniques and the editing, whereas something on a
much bigger scale, such as a film/film trailer has the ability to hold dramatic
editing techniques and experimental camera angles and movements. My
music video was an indie/acoustic genre, and was a hybrid of both
narrative and performance-based plot. Not only was it essential for me to
understand the codes and conventions of a music video, but also to look at
those associated with the specific music genre, and also the two different

2. types of music video.
In general, music videos conform to the following conventions:
Close-Ups and Extreme Close-Ups for performance elements
Panning and tracking shots if there is more than one performer
Edited footage to match the lyrics of the song
Edited footage and cuts to match the pace of the song
Split-screens and CGI
Specific props associated with the performance
Mise-en-scene elements to work in accordance with the specific music
genre
The performer/actor will usually directly communicate with the
audience by looking straight down the camera
Most of these conventions come from Andrew Goodwin‟s theory on the
production of music videos. He also stated that music videos demonstrate
genre characteristics such as dance routines for a boy/girl group or strobe
lighting effects for dance/club music. These were all important elements for
me to take into consideration, as I wanted to create product that was
realistic and would be easy for my target audience to connect with.
Essentially, I started to look at the location for my music video. In a
lot of indie/acoustic music videos that I analysed during the research and
planning stage, I discovered that the locations were all very natural, with a
rustic/healthy feel about them; such as forests, cottage houses, traditional
pubs and also locations which made the artist feel at home. For example, I
analysed Ellie Goulding‟s „Your Song‟ music video, which included a lot of
forest scenes as well as the train station and buildings from her hometown.
The same rule applied to Ed Sheeran‟s „Lego House‟ and Emeli Sandé‟s „My
Kind Of Love‟ music videos. I thought this was a really nice convention to
follow as it projected a homely, warm feeling for the target audience to
react to, despite the use of lyrics often connoting a sadder, negative
emotion. I therefore decided to use nearby woodland areas for a lot of my
exterior filming, as it also reflected on the theme of the song, „Autumn
Leaves.‟ Whilst I wouldn‟t have been able to travel to the artist (Ed
Sheeran)‟s hometown of Suffolk, I know that he has spent a lot of his
musical career living in London, hence why I also did some location shooting
in the Capital to add a more realistic touch to my music video. I also thought
that filming in this location would also add something more modern and
exciting to my music video, as it is an easily identifiable location for any
target audience and is a highly conventional location for British artists to use
in any of their music videos.
To also use real conventions of music videos, I thought it was
important to match some of the cuts to the pace of the music, as this often

3. helps an audience to understand the product better. Not only that, but
having a slower-paced song like I have chosen, the video would have looked
unprofessional and out-of-place if I had used clips which cut to one another
at a fast, rhythmic pace which didn‟t match the beat of the song. I
particularly used this technique in parts of the video such as when the
camera cuts to the character‟s feet walking along the path and when the
image flashbacks fade in and out so that they matched each strum on the
guitar as it played. This allowed for the beat of the song to be more
identifiable for the audience as the visuals help to get the pacing right and
also allows for the video to be more memorable, which is essential in
helping to sell the song.
With my music video, I felt it was really important to sell the emotion
in the song to the audience, and I felt like one of the best ways to do this
was to edit the entire product to black and white. I felt like making a black
and white product emphasized on how serious the tone of the song was and
minimized any other emotions that could potentially be present within the
footage. Black and white is often associated with documentary work, and as
the narrative of the video was essentially telling the characters‟ story, I felt
like it fit in well. However, editing the colours in a music video to such an
extreme is highly unusual for a music video, especially one that is mostly
narrative-based as colours are often applied to express the genre of the
music, such as red, black and silver/grey for Metal music videos and bright
pinks and purples for Pop videos. Nevertheless, the idea of a black and
white music video is not an entirely new concept, as the idea has been
utilized by more serious artists of our era such as Amy Winehouse, Adele,
Michael Bubléand The Script. As the technique of black and white editing is
not the most conventional element for a music video, I decided I wanted to
develop this idea as I feel it should be utilized more often in this media
platform as an effective way of expressing the art of emotion found within
music.
Alternatively, I did initially experiment with mixing footage in full
colour with clips of black and white footage to completely challenge the
conventions of modern music videos, but this idea looked untidy and
unprofessional, but I merely wanted to see how I could possibly define my
name as a producer and director within my music video. Instead, I decided
to challenge the conventional storyline of music videos, especially those
associated with my chosen genre of indie/acoustic music. During my
research, I found that the majority of music videos of this genre followed
two distinct characters essentially looking for love, and the ultimate
conclusion is them both falling in love with each other. In this case the artist
or band normally makes a cameo appearance as either a performers in the
background or assisting characters. As my song was essentially about losing
someone, not about love, I wanted to play with the ambiguity of the lyrics.
It is never defined in the lyrics how the person is „lost‟. Whether they have

4. died or fallen in love with someone else, we as the audience don‟t really
know. The specific lyrics “my song carried you out” would suggest that the
song was played in the background as someone‟s coffin was carried away; so
I kept this idea as the main key-point for the plot, but I still decided to
make the entire production very ambiguous to keep my audience guessing as
to what has happened - acting as an enigma code to hook in the audience
and keep them watching. In order to do this, I purposely used very little
actors within my music video as I didn‟t want any identifiable characters as
this would have given the plot away; that‟s why I used plenty of point-of-
view shots and close-ups to hide most evidence of any characters being
involved, apart from minor mid and long shots where the faces of the
characters aren‟t clearly visible and shots of the photos throughout the
footage, which only contains the „characters‟ at a much younger age.
Although a complete challenge of conventions, I still think it worked in the
sense that even at the end you don‟t know who the song is aimed at, but at
the same time the footage does make sense, and I am really proud of what I
have produced and the messages that have been put across to my audience,
and I hope that this creativity can be associated with something that I am
capable of producing.
ANCILLARY TASKS:
With my ancillary tasks, I decided to create a website and a Digipak as I
felt they both worked well together alongside the music video itself in order to
promote the singer, the song and the album from which it came from. The
conventions of both ancillary products were much simpler to understand and
use as there are far less applicable types and genres to also comprehend; it is
simply just a website and a Digipak.
Looking at exemplar websites before I started production, I took
inspiration from the same three artists I analysed when researching for my
website; Ellie Goulding, Emeli Sandé and Ed Sheeran. I did this in order to
understand brand identity better and the conventions associated with this also.
It is quite conventional for artists to sell their image as a brand, using similar
colour schemes and imagery in their music videos as they do on their website,
and also on their Digipaks and other merchandise. The websites I analysed all
used images as the main backgrounds in comparison to perhaps having a
plain, solid-colour background. This made the pages look more full and
grabbed the audience’s attention – a method used quite conventionally across
all types of websites; not just artist promotional websites. I decided to conform
to this as I wanted something which would really catch the audience’s eye, as
well as creating a link between the image and what I was essentially trying to
sell, the ‘new single’ and the music video; Autumn Leaves, hence why the
background image was of a field of leaves. However, additionally to this I
noticed that websites would include bright, contrasting colours for the different

5. types of text to allow certain elements to jump out to the target audience, such
as merchandise sales and titles of news articles. I wanted to challenge this
convention more than to conform to it, as I felt it was more applicable for the
low-key genre of indie/acoustic music to have complimentary colours rather
than contrasting, whereas that typically works better for dance or pop artists.
On the other hand, I did decide to stick to conventions in terms of the types of
pages available on a musician’s website, as I wanted my audiences to find
navigating quite easy and familiar; including pages such as Merchandise, Live
Dates, News, Gallery, Videos etc.
The idea of a conventional Digipak was much harder to deconstruct, as
I wasn’t sure what was required from the spec. Whilst a Digipak may refer to
the album cover, the casing, the lyric booklet and everything else included
within the purchase of a CD, technically, the term Digipak is a trademark for a
CD encased in a paper/cardboard folded cover, conventionally with 2 or 3
main panels, but they can typically have as many as they want. The more
conventional method currently for storing CDs is in a clear jewel case, but
Digipaks™ are increasingly becoming more popular as they are more eco-
friendly and less prone to damage, hence why I decided to go along with this
kind of a template for my own product. I also decided to design a template
with three panels wide as this was the most conventional design for a ‘deluxe
edition’ Digipak as it allows room for up to 2 CDs to be packaged. When I
looked at my existing examples, I noticed that images printed on the exterior
of the Digipak were also included on the corresponding website, so I included
the background image for my website as part of the background design for my
Digipak cover to create conventional brand identity for my artist.