How effective is the combinations of your main product and ancillary texts?

Both our main product and album have a close relation in the fact that they are based around one girl. In our music video, the audience should experience a distant relationship with this character as her role adds a sense of curiosity and mysteriousness to the video. She creates a sense of uncertainty and should make the viewers feel quite uneasy and cautious as to who she is, they should also pick up on the fact that she is up to no good, portraying quite menacing characteristics. Even though this character may not be the most dominant through out the video, she certainly acts as the back bone to our narrative and the foundation from where all of our ideas sprang off from. Another music video from the rock genre that includes a character similar to this is Bring Me The Horizon’s video ‘The Sadness Will Never End’. Here is how she is portrayed in the video:

The presence of this character holds similar principles to the girl in our video. We see her lurking around the trees depicting quiet and innocent personality until this assumption is contradicted and we see more of a dark, evil side to her. 

Our video includes a similar narrative. During the beginning of our video, she is gradually introduced, consuming more screen time as the video goes on to eventually build up the character she plays.    

This theme continues on in our ancillary taks. The whole album art work consits of a female character who extends this this evil, unearthly feel. Much like the video, every part of our album is persistant in creating a sense of curiosity. It invloves a girl covered in blood which raises the question of why she is in this state. Her face is expressionless, giving away little to the audience emphasising their desire to know why she is involved with this. The costume in the front cover is simular to our music video in the fact that both subjects are wearing black dresses and as I have previously studied, black is a very dominant convential colour of the rock genre. It also supports her dark menacing characteristic which is reflected within the music video. Having her associated with blood also reflects this sinful, mischievous personality as well as following the convention of the rock genre involving alot of gore or dark art in a majority of it's art work. Also, by including this blood in our mise en scene it provided a strong contrast against the variation of colours within the frame and in the front cover it also has a strong comparison to the pale skin of which it sits on. Here are some examples of real album covers that use a simular technique and composition as ours, (with the album on the left being of a rap/rave genre and on the right, a rock genre from which the artists videos I have studied into alot):

What I notice about both of these albums is that the female characters seem to be the focal point of each cover, making these women a strong, simplistic, representation of each album which is very similar to the link between my music video and ancillary task, with the character that I played being quite a dominant controlling character in the narrative, as well as the whole of my album cover being focused on one girl. By having this over balancing gender through out my album covers increases the sexual appeal it may have on certain audiences, despite who this may concern, this possible attraction will obtain audiences and help influence the recognizability towards the album. Even if there is only one distinctive appeal towards an album cover, it still strengthens our memory of it and our opinion of that album based on how appealing it may be to the individual. Audiences may not necessarily experience a sexual connection to the subject in my work, but also the feel of envy and admiring the character herself, to be looked upon as an inspiration to the people of which this genre appeals to.

Not including the band in our entire album is what makes our ancillary task conventional to our genre. It is common to find the absence of the band within the actual album art work within the rock genre. We also didn't feel like it was necessary to do so, and that continuing on with the existence of this dominant female character would be what would make this album explicit to it's narrative of which we imagined would faintly continue on through out the whole album, defying the album to the video it'self.

Pictures to gif

What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In order to create a successful music video, our group had to be aware of the conventions of a music video and what was often included in our chosen genre. Each genre has its own style, interpreting a variation of conventions appropriate to the stereotypical view of the genre. I feel that our music video shows a good knowledge to the right conventions.

Here is our music video:

Once we chose our song ‘Breathless’ by Asking Alexandria, we became familiar with the song and researched into the lyrics, we discovered our own interpretation from which we formed a narrative. This narrative was like the base of our music video were our ideas developed from. We included a narrative because we found that this was quite common for the rock genre to either include a narrative with a performance, or just a performance on it’s own throughout the video.  By choosing to include both I think it challenged us more in the way that we had to think of how to intertwine both aspects into our video and also make sure each of their screen time was equaled out to balance out the video. By including a narrative as well as a performance, it helped us avoid viewer fatigue which is important to make sure that doesn’t happen in all genres of music videos. Another way we avoided this was by having a constant flow of shots which synced well into the tempo of our music. Also, as our music is of a fast erratic pace, our shots contained a short view time, therefore the audience is always being bombarded with something different to look at, keeping their interest and continuing to hook them in. This is also reinforced by our group following the conventions of varying our shot distances and exploring camera techniques.

By developing the way in which we controlled our camera, it helped us convey certain moods for example if the camera is still along with the subject it becomes a lot more calmer and mellow where as if the camera is shaky along with the subject, it reflects a lot of energy and excitement to our video. We use this shaky camera technique in our work because we discovered this was quite persistent in the music videos of the rock genre. Also, linking back to our narrative, the song is based on letting go of a past relationship that is messing with his head, therefore causing frustration and anger, the shakiness of the camera helps convey this manic look which links to the emotions in the narrative, however this is only successful when used at the right times and in the right way. I feel that our performance shots really reflect this and show the advantages of this technique, it also helped create the atmosphere and illusion of a live performance making the scene seem more realistic which is also what music videos are about.



It is crucial that the performance looks believable; this can be done by perfect lip syncing. I feel that we were lucky to have a member in our group that was already aware of the rock genre and because of this you could see their passion for it reflected throughout their performance. With our performer obtaining such confidence and enthusiasm for this task, we were able to follow the convention of making the vocalists role look believable, emphasizing their emotions and expressions in order to portray a believable, realistic performance. Another convention that reinforced this was being aware of the right type of mise en scene, especially in our performance shots. In order to help make it believable we had to gather the right props which a band would use and set the scene up to look like a gig, even though we had to change the plan of our performance set last minute, I do think it was still successful and the outcome was a lot better than expected. Not only did we film a scene in the style of a gig, but we also filmed in the woods, a drama room and a bedroom. This also follows the conventions of music videos having around 3 different sets, however we developed this further to include 4 which helps the audience get a better understanding of the narrative.