In what ways does your media product use, develop

or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

Mustafa Evlat

Digipak

• Digipaks normally gate fold similar to a book, there is a front cover, back cover and two inside covers. The digipak is part of a campaign used in order to promote an artist, they usually consist of a recognisable font, a colour scheme stereotypically associated with the picked genre, pictures symbolic to the genre or the artist/band. The front cover is usually has a picture associated with the album or in relation to the artist. The back usually consists of a track listing, artist/album name, barcode and the record label. Different digipaks come in different styles dependent on the genre of the artist and the style of the artist. My digipak follows the conventions of the hip-hop genre, it uses a black colour scheme, a font related to the hip-hop genre, and images symbolic to the artist as well as the hip hop genre. I have made half the front cover in black and white and the other half in colour, this is a representation of both the dark and light side of the artist and is developing of the genre as the genre usually only tends to consist of dark themes. The back consists of the track listing, another image of the artist and other specifics commonly seen on digipaks, however it does not contain the record label as the artist isn’t signed to one, challenging the conventions of a real media product.

Inspiration for Digipak

• The digipak in which I had gained my inspiration was Giggs’ ‘Walk in da park’, he uses a predominantly black colour scheme and includes a picture of himself and the park in which he used to play in as a child, similar to our artist but I have made it broader by using the whole city rather than one specific location, also the poses both artists use are similar in the sense they are looking down and both have a dark side and light, however Giggs’ 'Walk in da park' does this through shadowing rather than through colouring.

Webpage

• Hip hop artist web pages always consist of similar conventions, most consist of a predominantly dark colour scheme, with the name of the artist centred at the top of the page. I chose to follow this convention thus not developing or challenging it. Also almost every hip hop artist has similar tabs on their pages, I chose to develop this to a small extent and added one tab that I have not yet seen on any other artist page and that is a tab for the record label in which the artist owns. This is developing the conventions as a separate website is usually made for the record label. I have laid out every tab in a similar manner to other artists. I personally chose not to add a store as the artist has not released any clothing or albums that can be paid for, all of his work is free. However I have added an iTunes link for two pieces of his music for his fans to support him, they can still gain access to the music for free though. The layout of my artist’s website is unique and challenges the conventions of a hip hop artist, I have laid out the page in a similar way to artists of the rock genre, the use of font isn’t commonly seen in the hip hop genre and the colour scheme although predominantly black is also rarely seen within the Hip Hop genre. I had decided to fulfil one of the most used conventions and add a social media bar to my artist’s webpage with links to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, however unlike most artists I didn’t present feeds from all 3 of these social media platforms.

Inspiration for webpage

• The main inspiration for the webpage I had created had been from artist J Cole. I used a similar layout to J Cole purely on the basis that I enjoy his music and the music he creates is similar to Yogz on the basis that it is honest and from the heart, from this I gathered that Cole’s personality is similar to Yogz’ therefore laid out the page to suit Yogz’ personality.

Music Video

• Andrew Goodwin states that visuals either illustrate or contradict the visuals within a music video. Our music video illustrates the lyrics, it consists of our artist in the ‘hood’ in which he is from. This is illustrated in the lyrics as he talks about the struggles of the hood. This links to Sven Carlssons narrative theory, our music video is performance based rather than conceptual, there is no specific message from the video, instead the lyrics and his performance in the video, this is a typical convention of the genre as most music videos within it our performance based, however there are examples in which they aren’t, for instance ‘Crooked Smile’ by J Cole. The location of our music video is also fulfilling of the hip hop genre, specifically within the UK as many upcoming artists use the streets in which they grew as a location for their music videos and refer to the location as their ‘hood’. Due to what is normally seen within a UK hip hop video we felt it was essential to include the block and gritty streets our artist grew up in, as well as to use a dark colour scheme to match that of the Digipak, all of this is typical of the UK hip hop/rap scene. One way in which we possibly developed the genre is by including two music videos within one both contradictory of each other, one has an aggressive vibe to it and is very performance based whereas the second video is very slow and has many conceptual elements to it.

Inspiration for music video

• The main inspiration for our music video was Giggs’ music video for ‘You Raised Me/Open Up’. Similar to our music video it consists of two songs in to one video. However Giggs’ video was purely conceptual and contains few performance elements to it. Another inspiration was Skepta's 'It aint safe' he is seen on the streets of London and uses a lot of imagery and colours typical to the hip hop genre, this is also a very performance based video with some conceptual aspects to it, we used a similar location to the ‘It Aint Safe’ video, similar to Skepta we had used blocks as well as an area the artist is familiar with and can class as local.