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.

6.  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.

7. Album Advert

8.  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.

9.  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.

10.  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.
 Another major convention that I challenged was including the HMV
and iTunes logo’s as when I looked at previous Enter Shikari posters
they do not contain them and also in general I came across very few
posters that contained the logos

11. Video

12.  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.

13.  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.