Evaluation Question 1

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

The common codes and conventions needed to be a massive basis for our work, for both our main and ancillary tasks. In this way, I feel we were very successful. By sticking to them and at the same time using them in our own way, we were able to create an effective final piece.

One of the most widely used conventions we incoporated into our piece was the pace of the music affecting the pace of the editing of our music video. We tried to make sure that when pace increased, so did the editing, and vice versa when the music slowed. A prime example of this is the change at the very end of the song, from very swift cuts during the final build up, to cross fades when the music slowed. This allowed us to slow the editing and therefore follow the pace of the music more effectively. The picture to the left shows the fade between two shots at the end of the video. To achieve this fade we added it as a simple transition between the two clips.

Another convention we used was the simplicity of having a performance as the basis for the video. This particular convention is widely used, and the Foo Fighters themselves used it for their own version of "Times Like These". Simply having a performance allowed us to keep from over-complicating the video itself, and we were also able to make it more professional simply by doing this.

A third convention we used was the use of shots of the band on the artwork of the Digipak. Again, this added to the professionalism of the piece, but more importantly it made it more believable that it was a real piece. This particular convention is also used to create a continuous brand throughout the marketing of a band, and we were able to use this here. For example the same image of the band can be seen not only in the video, but also on the cover of the album and on the magazine advertisement.

However, another big part of our work was challenging these codes and conventions laid down by the music industry as it is. A particular way we "took the rules into our own hands" was by not choosing to have the name of the album emblazoned across the body of our advertisement. We chose instead to let the recognisable name of "Foo Fighters", and the the font in which is written, pull the audience in and then see the album itself, ergo the name. We chose to do this because we felt "Foo Fighters" as a brand was much more likely to engage the attention, and subtly including the album name was much more effective. It ensured less space was taken up by unnecessary components, and that the brand was the main hook of the advert.