the collection of products we made includes a music video, CD cover front/back with inserts and a magazine advert, is fairly conventional in relation to the Punk/Ska genre. this is very well but we still wanted to make our product original and give it a Unique Selling Point of which the band can use in the possible future career. the band do not like to brand themselves as solely a punk bad as they like to take inspiration from many different genre's, this gave us more freedom in the conventions we wished to follow as we can look into different genre's conventions also.For example allot of other punk and rock bands use narrative and concept features in their music videos, such as Mustard Plug's 'Mr Smiley'; and allot of rap and punk artists use colour to reflect the sound of their music, much like we have done with our products. the lyrics and sound have also got a range of conventions. For example in the music video the lyrics are shown through our visual and because we represented some the stereotypes with occurrence that people commonly find on public transport in a very over exaggerated way, this over exaggeration shows how we have followed the particular convention of humour, , which is commonly found in our other media products. This is a convention which is followed in many music videos from bands in the same or similar genre, for example the 'Sabotage' video by The Beastie Boys.
we decided to make our magazine ad and our CD cover be very cohesive with each other, for example we used the same logo for our band name, this is a convention within many bands, it is done to create a way where the band can be more recognisable to potential buyers. NOFX do this with all there CD covers they use the same font. but there are some differences for example there is a quote from a magazine this is a convention as many bands wish to show if large magazines complement their products as it gives the band more credibility. By adding effects to images of the band, more attention is drawn to them, and we incorporated this into our magazine ad as well as our CD covers. The image on the ad contains props common to the genre such as instruments. Instruments convey a certain representation of the band and makes them have more appeal to the target audience, much like other bands in the genre. This technique was also used for our CD covers and inserts, bringing cohesion.
In regards of our music video the conventions around it we found to be very fitting and so we did not challenge them. For example, using a narrative and performance based concept for a punk video is not uncommon as shown in the H2O video of which i analysed earlier. Narrative concepts tend to add cohesion between the the lyrics and visual due to the way the visual can show the lyrics, which is why it was a good idea to use it for our video. another convention we chose to follow is that of adding humour in various parts of our products, in our circumstance within the genre special effects aren't conventionally used so instead we took a more slapstick route in that we used everyday objects in humorous ways. for example the shot of the lead singer holding a big umbrella to stop the 'rain' coming down from the purposeful watering can is an example of this. Bands from the punk/ska genre tend to write songs that apposes political issues they disagree about, therefore representations and stereotypes are used in songs often. Splutter does this by showing it in the music video, for example the image of the 'bad boy' on the bus playing "crap music to add to the noise" The use of stereotypes also links back to the use of humour through exaggeration. we decided to purposely film some of our music video clips in bad weather and particularly light rain, we believed this to be important as it links in with some of the storyline of the music video in showing bad situations and to add misery this is in compliance with the convention using specific lighting to match the feel of video, for example as seen in Mr smiley the lighting changes with the mood
We chose to follow many generic conventions in the making of our CD covers and inserts. For example the mood and feel of the sound and chosen lyrics are represented in the images and use of colour. This is similar to the album cover of the bronx wear dark colours and images are used to portray the dark and brash sound of their music. we decided to use a colour scheme for all the products this is to add cohesion to all our products linking them all together.We used black and white, grey and off-white backgrounds with a black font. This quite dark colour scheme is used to portray the slightly darker side of splutters music, the meaning full and brash side. This use of imagery and colour links to the pathetic fallacy used in our music video, creating cohesion. another generic convention we have followed is how we have used images to give the viewer more of an insight into the band and their personality. this convention is captured perfectly in the NOFX poster i analysed where the band are captured goofing around being their selves. we did this through our inserts as we used individual pictures of the different band members
There is one area of our package that deliberately challenges the conventions of the punk/ska genre. This is that we chose to use a photograph as the main image of the CD cover. normally punk ska band tend to chose animations or other images for their album covers, and therefore by using a photograph, the band are going against the convention that normally complies withe their genre. we decided to do this in order to give the band originality and a unique selling point.
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