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

The first media product that I am going to talk about is the magazine cover, the conventions which I used and developed was the star rating. From my research I noticed that majority of the covers had this, this would help sell the album which is being advertised and help people listen to the artists music since there is opinions from well known newspapers or well known indie magazines. This would help attract a certain crowd of people. With the indie genre being so hard to define, I think it makes it easier to apply certain conventions of the magazines. I chose to have the theme of the front cover to be black and white as I think a certain choice of colour would effect the convention forms and wouldn't refer to indie. The black and white theme is throughout all of my ancillary texts, it is also in the CD Digi-Paks. I did think about using colour but then it didn't fit in with the mood i wanted to project through the album advertisements and the music video. The text on the advertisement took me a while to decide what i wanted. I came to the conclusion to have something quite plain but make the important things stand out. I actually made one of the comments from 'Q' magazine a little bit more bigger than the others to highlight that, the magazine is well known and it is good to have their comment feature. I also had some writing bold, such as the title and information that means it is the album of the year. One thing that i did challenge about this advertisement is showing that you can buy it on a Vinyl. I think this represents the indie genre as a lot more people are buying it on vinyl now compared to the past. I find that the advertisement is a little bit plain but i didn't want it to look too over crowded as i related a lot to another magazine cover which was plain and only had small text and had the main band singer and the others in the background. If i could change anything about the image which i used, would be to use the costume which she wears in my music video,  I think it would've linked them nicely together. Although I think that it still goes well with the genre in the costume she is in. When i did the shoot for the magazine cover, I didn't want her bouncing around as it wouldn't show continuity as in every other image i have used of her, she isn't. The images i used for my CD covers, are her either in a studio, or outside. One thing that i could improve to make my images look a little bit more interesting would be the background of my images. E.g. Magazine cover, the background is very plain and it could have been a black background and white writing to look a little bit more interesting. My magazine challenges the appearance of girls in the indie music industry. Some women dress for men to look at them where as my model had her own fashion although she had a lot of flesh on show, it isn't seen as sexual where as if she was dressed different she might be seen as different. I have looked at every little bit of detail such as the necklaces she is wearing, this is all the way though out every image relating to my ancillary texts. The music video that i chose doesn't refer to the male glaze (Laura Mulvey) theory. It is seen as a typical love story. My story board was based on a couple who then have an argument as the guy gives another girl attention which causes the conflict, he then makes it up to her by taking her to a meal. The original music video is like that too. I wanted my music video to be a happy ending but then I didn't want too much conflict, but at the same time I wanted it to be obvious that it happened. In other music video's they have fast cuts when the conflict scene happens. This applies to my music video too since I didn't use a tripod to keep it steady, instead I used it handheld to give it that dramatic affect. A music video which I used as inspiration was Max Schneider and a music video which he is in, called 'Say Something'. It is featuring another girl called Victoria Justice. Within that video they are sitting back to back, i used this in my music video to refer to my conflict scene. It shows them making up and showing their effection towards each other.
In my music video this is just after the conflict scene where they slowly make up and become loving and having a laugh again. Since all of my music video was in black and white, I showed continuity by having my images which is shown on my digipaks and the advertisement black and white too therefore you could see the link between them. I only chose images which included the girl since the idea is that it is meant to be the artist who is part of the narrative created by this music video.

For my shoot I wanted todo something which not many people do with the images. I tried infrared photography to see if the outcome would look any different and some of them did. Not many real media products use this, so I thought it would be a good idea to try and do something that would challenge the conventions and form.

Draft of Music Video (Still missing bits)

Creating My Magazine Cover.

When i was planning this i knew that i wanted it too looked quite simple but effective and i wanted to have the correct information on my poster to be able to advertise for the right things and gather publicity. I know that i want to make my images black and white therefore i decided to use Photoshop to edit my images which i used to create my covers for the digipak. I already am quite experianced on photoshop as I learnt how to use it in depth in my A Level Photography class.

The first step that i always take when i am editing an image on photoshop is adjusting the levels. This shows me the clear image before the camera made changes itself. I always like to increase the white balance as it gets rid of the orange/cream look that is created from the lighting mixed in with the back drop. I also increased the black as it made the clothes look more definate and stood out a lot more.

This is what the Levels looked like once i had finished working with them. As you can see i put the white and black at either end which gives it a nicer effect. I also found it helped if i clicked 'Auto' as it brings the picture back to normal too.

Once i changed the levels i then move on to use another setting which is all about the saturation which will get rid of the orange in the background, i find that this doesn't need to change drastically as the smallest movement makes a huge impact therefore i only moved it ever so slightly down to decrease the orange. It also makes the skin look a lot more vibrant and normal. This image below is what the sliders looked like once i had finishe moving them.

After changing all of the settings to effect the shades of colours that are in the image, I had to change it into black and white, to do this I just used the settings that are automatic therefore it created the effect itself. I personally chose to have this effect increases the shadows and makes them a lot more visible. I think that it shows it differently to the CD cover but still the imagery of my model and artist are the same. 

I wanted change the size of my image as the magazine cover would be A4 size in the magazine therefore I think it was only right to make it this size on Photoshop as this is where I am most confident.

With the crop tool I can also create a frame, I tried to create the frame so it was white but I didn't think it looked right or good. I had a frame on my CD cover so I ink it is important that the conintuity is there. 

This is the outcome of the frame and I think it looks good as it links in the other colours and shades of black that is included it also sets the colours of the fonts so it can be as many different colours as possible and there will be no contrast.