To begin with, my A2 Advanced Portfolio (A music video for Catfish and the Bottlemen's 'Cocoon') develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products in a multitude of ways. As well as my main product, I also created a magazine advertisement and a digipak for my advanced portfolio, which was inspired by previous, real media products.
Firstly, for my music video for 'Cocoon', the genre that was intended for the video was an Indie/Rock genre. After analysing multiple indie band's music videos and Digipaks such as The 1975, Imagine Dragons and twentyonepilots. These videos and ancillaries contained many abstract themes to their work which categorised the videos into their respective genres. Because of this, I included these conventions into my music video, for example, while the character is travelling to his destination abstract themes are played in the background with effects to further reduce the level of reality that the music video has, making it seem more like a dream rather than an actual passage of events. It was important to add these conventions into my music video so that my target audience are able to identify it as an indie music video, which links with Steve Neale's theory that 'Genres are instances of repetition and difference', and also suggested that 'Difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre'. Because of this, a music video and what genre it is classified as is determined by 2 things: How much the media text conforms with a genres stereotypes and conventions and also how much a piece of media text subverts these stereotypes and conventions of the genre. My music video must have kept some of these conventions so that it can still be identified as an Indie video, but must subvert conventions enough so that it can be identified as a unique piece of media without been identified as a clone to another video. Therefore, because of this, I conformed to similar conventions from real media products such as the 1975 and applied them to my Advanced Portfolio so that my target audience, young people aged 18-25, could identify both my main and ancillary products conforming to the Indie genre. However, I also subverted from the indie genre by adding my own unique twists to my music video to give the audience a more entertaining video. Also, I subverted some conventions of the Indie genre, such as using a linear narrative rather than having a 100% abstract video. This made the music video have enough conventions to be classified as an indie music video but had enough differences to be classified as its own individual media text.
Furthermore, I also used audience feedback to help me to develop forms and conventions of real media products. For example, for my ancillary tasks, a Digipak and a magazine cover for the album, I asked multiple people of different ages and genres to analyse my media products and give criticism on how to improve them. Because of this, my ancillaries looked much more professional and conformed to conventions of the indie genre. An example of audience feedback was when I gave the people who were analysing my media text an image of my digipak, and gave criticism such as 'Looks too serious' which in turn made me change the digipak to give off a more abstract feel, such as maing the main image more blurred and faded. This feedback allowed me to make my ancillary tasks much easier to develop and conform to the conventions of the indie genre.
In conclusion, I believe that both my main and ancillary tasks for my Advanced Portfolio develop and conform to conventions of the indie genre, however I also believe that they subvert some conventions of the indie genre which I think is good, as otherwise these media texts would just be seen as clones rather than its own media text.
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