Use of real media conventions

Through analysing existing music magazines during the research and planning stage of the project, I already had a good idea of the types of codes and conventions seen on magazines of a similar genre to my own. In my music magazine I used the conventions of a colour scheme, title, rule of thirds, columns, quote in the middle of text (on double page spread), as well as others. I used a colour scheme consisting of blue, white and black throughout the whole of the magazine. Doing this showed the magazine was linked and gave a familiar sense as you were reading it. Q magazine also do this, as they use a red, white and black colour scheme. I did not go against any real media conventions in this piece of coursework, apart from the hand writing seen on my double page spread is quite different I think it still conforms to the conventions used within real media products.

Analysing existing music videos and digipaks/adverts was helpful for my music video project as I knew the conventions seen in real products, so could then use them in my own. We used conventions such as variations in shots, edited to the beat and close-ups of band members in the music video and in the digipak/advert we used a colour scheme pictures of band members and track names. Through looking at existing products in the research stage of the project we saw that these conventions needed to be included in order for it to be successful. For this project we did subvert conventions. For example, the condensed narrative at the beginning of the song isn't usually seen. In a music video the narrative usually lasts throughout the whole of the song, whereas in mine it is all seen at the beginning of the video. We also subverted conventions when using a paint theme and stop motion drawings. These two features are not very often seen in music videos which is why our video is very different to real media products in many ways.