Conventions of Music magazines.

During one of our lessons we created a mind map of all of the different conventions of music magazines that we could think of. Here are our suggestions:

• Artificial performance - (Non- naturalistic, for example musicals 'burst into song.')
• Lip-sync - Artists mime along to the song.
• Choreography - This is used more with dance and pop music, if a rock band used choreography this would break the conventions of the rock genre.
• Interpretive abstract approach - Acting out the 'story' of the song.
• pastiche - A copy of something that is not exact.
• Parody - Mocking the original song.
• Homage - A tribute.
• Interextuality - references found from sources elsewhere.
• Narrative - giving the feel of a short film within a music video.
• Compressed narrative.
• multiple locations, situations and costumes.
• Challenging or using existing tropes and memes.
• A montage anchored by music.
• Symbolism used within music videos.
• MTV cutting.
• Editing matches beat - example, cuts.
• Purpose: Itunes £2 for music videos.
• Purpose: Promotes the band or artist's song.
• Purpose: Sells the product (shifts units).
• The genre of the music affects the style of the music video, for example in the rock genre your more likely to have the band playing along to the song. Whereas with rap your more likely you have woman dancing in the videos.
• Some music videos are just live footage, from the band or artist live in concert this gives a more naturalistic feel, this is more likely to be used in the rock genre as stereotypically 'it's all about the music'.
• Direct address by the performer - breaking the fourth wall.

Problems of Doing Short Films

There are many problems of creating a shot film. Some of these include, having to write the screen play, then having the issue of continuity problems with clothing and hair styles changing daily, having to find the right actors to use, to much to do in a short film eg, camera angles , then of course the time, this would be an issue as we only have a certain amount of time to produce our coursework, and in making a short film there is so much to do.

As a class we made a list of ideas for a short films,

• Reworking a fairytale.
• basing a short film on an existing film.
• basing a short film on the Canterbury tales.
• using betrayal as the theme.
• Murder and death.
• using a shakespearean story/tale and modernise it.
• Crime. - a twist in the tale
• Love. - old people.
• basing a short film on lyrics from a song.
• poem.

Choosing an A2 brief.

For our A2 coursework we have been given three briefs to chose from.

These include:

• A promotion package for a music video.
• A short film.
• A promotion package for a film trailer.

Promotion package for a music video.

If i chose to produce this for my coursework i would have to create two of the following:

• A website homepage.
• A cover of a digi-pack.
• A magazine advert for the digi-pack.

I like this task as i find the task interesting as i am very interested in music. Also i could use my boyfriends band for the music video.

There are also reasons why i would not like this task, as i would be always comparing my video to ones that have been produced professionally, as my video wouldn't be a high quality compared to professional videos.

A short film.

If i chose this task for my coursework i would have to create two of the following:

• Film magazine review page.
• Radio Trailer.
• Poster.

I like the sound of this task as the subsidary tasks sound a lot easier to produce.

However, i would not like it as it isn't much of a challenge to create, and the tasks are not as exciting as the others.

A promotion package for a film.

• Website homepage for film.
• Film magazine front cover.
• Poster For the Film.

I like the sound of this task as i have had experience making magazines therefore i can use this to my advantage.

I dont like the sound of this as i think this would be difficult to do as we would have to do make a story line.