Codes and Conventions: Task 1

Richard Dyer's theories of star image are based on paradox's. One of these paradox's is that a star must be both present and absent. By singing into the camera Holly, our lead singer, appears to be singing personally to the audience member. In the same way, by belonging to this demonic fantasy world, she is absent.

Like Adele, who often is featured in her video's singing into the camera wearing very normal clothing can be seen, by the audience, as 'normal', we can relate to her, she is singing to us yet at the same time she live's a life full of camera's and fame.

Because the video has the running theme of a demonic, nightmarish party, we wanted to have a set that reflected this. Originally we were going to film in a forest with the forest creatures coming out of the trees but due to wether condition this was not possible. This meant we had to build a set. We decided that instead of haveing a predictable setting, having a scrap yard with club lighting would make the creatures even more strange and threatening. I felt that this worked really well. Bringing in club lighting brought us back to the music as the genre is dance/club/elector with a hint of metal hence the nightmare creatures.
In this 'Daft Punk' video of 'Da Funk' it features a man with a dog's head walking through the street. a strang characture in a compleatly juxtaposing world seem's strange yet makes the video memorable and add's to the repeatability, as we hoped our strange animals and set would by subverting the accepted convention that set and characters must match. It gives the video something different.

We used fast cuts to match the fast pace of the song but by having very quick cuts that don't allow the audience to fully see the image on screen makes them want to watch the video again because they feel that they missed something. not revealing every detail also means that everytime the video is replayed, the veiwer notices something else, therefore preventing the video from getting boaring after one veiwing.

These are the Codes and Conventions we followed or subverted within our music video, to show our audience themes demonstrated through lighting, set, shots and characters.

Digipak and Advert

For our poster we used the background of a rough wall in a dark colour to show that our band is connected to the street, youth, city life. The dark grey was used to show that the band is not the average mainstream band who might use bright neon and electric colours. the mouth image is instantly recognisable as similar to the Rolling Stones, who were a sign of rebelion in their era, with the dark lips wich suggests rebelion and possibly a hint of gothica, together with the tongue piercing show that our band go against stereotypes of respectable people, are rebeliouse and possible even anarchists. The writing in an off white stands out again the background and the font has relations to graffitii artand other bands who follow the electro/dance/soft metal genre.

This is 'Lost Prophets' poster. The lay out of band name at the top, album name then information at the bottom is similar to ours. It makes it easy to read with the information clearly presented in a easy to understand way.

This poster is similar to our. With the bands trademark image in the middle with white writing on a dark back ground to make is attention grabbing and clear to read. the fornt, although different in some respects to our, holds similarities to graffitii art. The cracks in the font remind me of barbed wire and city life.

Like ours, both of these posters define the music as slightly anarchic and non-conformist, aimed at youth, maby 15-25 male.

The DigiPack:

Our CD has a simple design and matches our digipack and poster so that the image becomes recognised.

This is our digipack. we had the running theme throughout 'Back Bones' of the wall background. This neutral yet textured background provided a unique but black canvas to print easily readably information onto.

We kept the text in off-white to maintain continuity and not over crowd the album cover, making it unreadable.

Here are some other Album Covers:

 This is Borgore, a Dubstep DJ. Although the gernre of music is different it can still be traced back to the club/electro.dance genre that our band folows. Here a simple textured background has been used, the image in the center of the cover and the information around it. This shows that we have conformed to the convention of album cover layouts because they have been tried and testes, resulting that they are the easiest to read when a consumer is browsing over albums and wants to get the information quickley and effectively without haveing to pick it up and study the cover. If the consumer can not read the cover the chances are that he or she will not take the time to work it out, rather that they will just find another album that gives them all the information they need to know in a few seconds.

Pendulum, a similar band to ours, have opted for a simple background with a bright, contrasting image in the center and a simple font to convey their information.

'Daft Punk' have conveyed their electro genre to their youthful target audience with graffitii inspired writing, electric colours on a dark background. because they are a well established band not much information is needed, only their name which stands out boldy against the album cover.