Codes and conventions of real media products.

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

Our A2 media task was to produce a music video along with a CD pack and a poster for it. These products fit together to form a promotional package for the Katy Perry song 'Firework'. I think all of these products fit in well with the codes and conventions of the chosen song and genre as we looked well into the codes and conventions used in the original video.
There are four main focuses in our video, these include a young girl who is upset and comes running into the bathroom to clear her face and looks at herself in the mirror as she wipes her tears, through out the video we see that she gradually realises she has nothing to be upset about, takes a deep breath and walks out of the bathroom. The second focus is on a young boy being bullied in school, he is pushed up against lockers as older students search through his pockets, the young boy realises through out the song that he is better than them and pushes them away and worries them when he starts showing off his magic tricks. The third focus is on a young boy having to deal with his parents fighting and his dad being abusive towards his mum, throughout the song he realises he can protect his mum so he runs up to help her and pushes his dad off.
The fourth focus is on a boy being bullied in the classroom. For this narrative scene, we developed the conventions of the genre by including a performance shot within this. I am singing in the front with the boy being bullied sat behind me. To fit in with the conventions we filmed this scene from two angles, one being a straight on mid shot and the other being a mid shot from the front still but slightly to the left so that it shows more of the narrative in the background and we can use both of these shots to cut between through out the video.
The pictures below show the performance shots we used throughout the video.

As you can see, we used different shots in the same setting to make the performer the main focus of the video and to stick to the codes and conventions of our chosen genre, as singers such as Katy Perry use a variety of shots in one location. In the original video, Katy Perry is always singing towards the video and looking straight at it, occasionally looking around and moving her head which is what we tried to do. I was constantly singing towards the camera, but occasionally looking around, especially in the narrative/performance shot so it looked like I was more involved with what was happening behind me.

We have developed the codes and conventions of the genre and original video through out the narrative shots as well. The main shots of the narrative scenes are shown below.

This narrative includes 5 different shots.

This narrative shows 5 different shots

This narrative shows 6 different shots.

We used from 5 different shots for each narrative to show each story from different angles to show emotions and to be able to show everything that is going on. The original video also shows the narrative through a variety of different shots so we developed this by doing many different shots but from different angles and using different types of shot. In the original video, each piece of narrative is resolved, we have done this to stick to the codes and convention of the video, but to challenge them we left the narrative that is also linked in with the performance shot in the classroom unresolved so it is a cliffhanger and the audience are left wondering what happened in the situation.

For the ancillary task I felt I really developed the codes and conventions of her original CD packs. Below is my CD front cover and a variety of Katy Perry's own CD covers.

Although my own CD cover is quite different to Katy Perry's CD covers, I feel I have linked in various original covers together. Some of the original covers have used close up shots and others have used a lot of imagery as background. I have used a close up shot and have also used imagery in the background of a firework but after feedback I decided to blur the firework slightly to make the performer and the text stand out more. For the text I have used colours that match the firework image and to make it stand out against a similar colour behind I have used a drop shadow on it. For most of her covers she has used texts that are more decorative, but for mine I have used a simple text for the title of the song to make it stand out more and then a more decorative text for her name as this sticks to the codes and conventions of the original products.

For the inside of the CD pack I found that many CD packs link in together, but not necessarily relate to the front cover. To develop the codes and conventions I kept the inside pages relating with each other, using photos from the same photo shoot on each page. I found that the text inside of CD packs usually included lyrics and 'thank you' messages to their families or production companies. To stick to the codes and conventions I included the lyrics of the song and a 'thank you' message to her production company, but to challenge the conventions of the genre I included an autograph of Katy Perry inside. For the back cover I kept it quite different to the front cover. The back of the CD cover doesn't relate to the video, unlike the front cover where the performer is wearing the same dress in the video. I did this to stick to the codes and conventions of the original CD packs in the same genre.