Evaluation

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


Indie digipak's are normally dull colours with a splash of brightness added to them to catch a person's eyes. The front cover of my digipak's colours are black and white, which are colours that don't initially attract a person's attention but it has a couple of red letters which captivate my target audience and give it a simple look instead of a dull and boring one. This is very conventional within the indie genre and indie digipaks such as Coldplay and Snow Patrol.


The writing on the front cover is simplistic and quite plain. This is something that is constantly portrayed in both the inde music videos and digipaks. Snow Patrol have used a simplistic writing style in their new album 'Final Straw' which sits very well on the front cover. The simplistic writing on our front cover is quite bold which is unusual for indie digipaks and this develops conventional indie themes.

Snow Patrol Digipak front cover

The middle of the digipak has a black and white image which gives the digipak an old fashioned look giving the digipak a calm and cool look. This attracts my target audience as a key emotion of the indie genre is a calm emotion. But the red box at the bottom of the page contrasts greatly against the black and white image and this contrast in colour is quite conventional as Coldplay do it on their album X&Y where they put a navy blue and put an array of colours over the top of it.


However the second half of the inside of my digipak has no colour to it. It's in black and white which again gives an old fashioned look to it. The simplistic tone then appeals to my indie audience. Although there is no colour on this side of the middle the digipak the simplistic tone and colour is very conventional and makes good use of traditional indie conventions.

Writing in the middle of an indie digipak is not long and it doesn't bore people. It is left to a minimum to portray a simplistic and calm tone because if it had too much writing in it the it would seem boring and too desperate to grab the audiences attention. My digipak uses this convention and therefore appeals to my target audience.

A normal indie back cover is normally plain and has no images to it. There is normally just a coloured background with black or white simplistic writing on the front of it. However our back cover to our digipak challenges the conventional indie back cover. Our back cover uses an indie image which consists of two chairs with guitars stood against them but it does use a bit of the conventional indie conventions by using simplisitic writing.

The advert is a traditional and conventional indie advert and uses every aspect of an indie convention. The image used for the advert is the same image as the digipak which is very conventional as it's simple and shows the audience "what you see is what you get". The comment underneath the heading is sophisticated and praises the digipak which is very conventional on an advert.

When an indie band produces a sad song they often use matching colours. We use this mise-en-scene in our music video to show the audience the theme of love. We use the colour red as this is the colour of love. This is very similar to Snow Patrol's 'Set the Fire To The Third Bar' as this uses black to represent sadness. We used this as a template as it has a hidden metaphor for love that attracts the indie audience.

The narrative structure challenges normal indie conventions as the band members are different to the people in the story which gives the narrative a bit of a twist whereas in the Kaiser Chiefs 'Everyday I Love You Less And Less' it's different. The lead singer is the main character in the story. It's very conventional in the indie genre and our music video challenges that convention.

The band scenes are a completely different colour than the story scenes. The black and white scenes are completely simple whereas the story scenes are colourful and bright. In conventional indie music videos the story scenes are in colour and so are the band scenes. We developed conventions to add more indie conventions to our music video.