Evaluation Planning Question 1

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

There are many ways in which our music video and my digipack have similar conventions of real media products.
Throughout the video there are various shots used which are used in other music video's, a main one being the opening of the video which has location shots of the city which is also used in video's such as Devlin's Shot Music Ft. Giggs.  The location being Leicester City Centre in our video it is recognisable by people watching as the main audience are people from Leicester areas and so know the places in the city which we have in our video.  As the artists are from Leicester, this gives the video a hometown feel to it as they are within their hometown in the video, and for audiences from Leicester who are watching, they will be brought closer to the artists and be able to feel for them as they could relate to what is going on.  This technique is used in other videos such as another of Devlin's songs, Community Outcast. 
The way the artists are introduced into the video are through a long shot of both artists which then cuts into a mid shot of Andy and immediatly a mid shot of Rakesh, this i feel is a good way of showing the artists to the audience as it is their first song/music video and so it allows the audience to see them early on in long and closer shots to get a good look of what they are about.  This convention is used in Professor Green's single, I Need You Tonight, where we have the artist introduced early on in the video, in the first shot infact, and so the audience again, are able to see the artist and get an impression of him. 
We have included in our video the use of other characters who interact with the main artists only 2 or 3 times in the video and are shown to be trapped and lonely in the city as the artists are and so they can relate to one another within the video as well as with the audience. 
We have the use of rotational shots for each artist throughout the video which show the artists to both be looking around at their surroundings, feeling trapped in the city, and the shot shows the buildings and structures behind them as it follows them around.  This idea we found was useful from Devlin's Runaway as it gets a wider variety of the artists surroundings rather than them just standing somewhere.
We have also included different shots of the artists walking down different streets at different points which gets an even more wider perspective of their surroundings and also the way they walk showing them to be slow.  This is something we didn't really copy from anywhere as we did it anyway but a song which does use this is Eminem's, Not Afraid, in which the artist is walking down a street pavement looking into the distance as we have in our video.
There are also conventions on my digipack/poster which are similar to existing media products.  The basic ones being on the CD cover itself, the title of the album and also artists name which is on many albums by many artists, an example of this would be Eminem's, Curtain Call: The Hits.  I feel this is a good idea as it lets the audience know the name of both the artist and album name and as it is the first album for my artists, it is a must to not just have the album name without the artsist name.  I have also other little basic things such as the barcode which every CD will have, not much more can be said on this except for the fact i have put it in the bottom right hand corner of the back of the CD cover where it looks best.  Also i have on the front of the CD a parental advisory logo, this to let the audience know that there is explicit content on the album, as it is a hip-hop album this could be generalised already with this, however putting this on is a requirement to let the audience know that soe of the songs will have explicit content, and these logos are on many hip-hop albums including all of Eminem's albums. Again, another convention i have which is on every CD i have ever come across and is another must, is the copyright information, including record companies, websites, twitter feed and also the dates to show when it was produced and this again is on every CD. 
For my CD and poster i have used the same picture of the artists standing against the clock tower in the city centre so that it shows continuity from the poster to the CD aswell as from the music video where we have various shots of the artists near or against the clock tower and this makes it recognisable by the audience so that they are familiar with the artists and location (it is reinforcedin their minds). An album which uses a similar convention is Eminem's, The Slim Shady LP which uses the same picture.