Evaluation Task 1

WHAT ARE CODES AND CONVENTIONS?
Codes and conventions are the predictable and familiar forms and techniques used by media to communicate certain ideas or convey a desired impression.
In order to understand how codes are used, it is important to understand the signs systems and their conventions or rules. The reading of signs is therefore essential in analysis and this way of interpreting the signs is called semiotics and is applied to reading visual imagery. Signs can offer denotations and connotations to the audience.
Conventions are generally established ways of doing something. They are an unspoken rule that we have learnt to accept and identify. Conventions become so familiar and natural that they become something that as audiences, we expect to see. They can be used, supported or reiterated as well as subverted. Different conventions can be applied to different media concepts such as narrative and genre.
Both codes and conventions are used to create meaning and as a method of communication. They make it easier to create a product for a specific genre as you only need to repeat the conventions. This is very useful for producers as they can easily target their audience. It can be safer to stick to conventions rather than challenge them.

TYPES OF CODES:
These are used as signs to convey and meaning and are divided into 3 categories; technical, symbolic and written.
Technical - this includes the camera angles, sound and lighting, the framing, juxtaposition and composition, the depth of field (including the rule of thirds)
Symbolic - this includes the mise-en-scene; the clothing, body language, actions of characters (including lip syncing), the locations
Written - this includes the headlines, captions, style of font and graphic design

KEITH NEGUS' CODES AND CONVENTIONS

Organic Artists

• Develop career initially independently of to the music industry
• Tend to write and play most of the instruments on their songs
• Develop through playing live venues before signing with a record label
• Have more freedom initially to chose their image and songs for release
• May starts their career independently
• A 'naturalistic' approach to artists 
• The image of the artist is 'enhanced' by the record company
• The artist is given time to evolve and progress through their career

Synthetic Artists

• Manufactured by the record labels and TV demands
• Generally have an image that is directed towards a tailor made audience
• Begin their careers recording songs either written for  them or chosen by record companies
• Limited freedom of choice

ANDREW GOODWIN'S CODES AND CONVENTIONS FOR MUSIC VIDEOS

• There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals
• There is a relationship between the music and the visuals
• Particular genres have their own video style and iconography
• Artists develop their own star iconography in and out of their videos 
• There are lots of close-ups of the main artist
• There is reference to voyeurism
• There are inter-textual references 

JOHN STEWART'S CODES AND CONVENTIONS FOR MUSIC VIDEOS

• Music videos have the aesthetics of a TV commercial, with lots of close-ups and lighting being used to focus on the star's face
• Visual reference comes from a range of sources, although the most frequent are cinema, fashion and art photography
• Inter-textual references are used to create nostalgia and new meanings for the audience
• Video allows more access to the performer than a stage performance can. The mise-en-scene in particular is used to emphasise an asprirational lifestyle

THE CODES AND CONVENTIONS OF AN INDIE MUSIC VIDEO

• Low budget
• Common settings include things like studios which are easily accessible 
• Simple setting to allow the audience to focus on the artist
• Often include a live performance
• Embedded narrative into performance to add interest
• Editing is fairly basic

To further my understand the conventions of the indie genre, I looked at the star images of indie artists such as Hozier as well as looking at various indie music artist websites and digipaks.

THE DIGIPAK

THE MUSIC VIDEO



We also applied Carol Vernallis's theories to our music video.

• The use of jump cuts to speed up time
• Narrative is not complete but is suggestive of an idea
• Camera movement can give the illusion of an edit even if there isn't one
• The fourth wall is broken

We applied these theories to our video in a number of ways.

• There are several jump cuts both between narrative stands and within them.This allowed us to show a variety of different activities quickly and helped us maximize the length of the song. Within the length of the song, this meant that we had more time to show more footage and connote the narrative to the audience.
• All of the narrative threads in the video are not complete as this leaves it open for the audience to interpret what they have seen. Despite this, the narrative is clear enough to give the audience an indication to what is going on and therefore, they can understand it.
• Sometimes, we moved the camera which gave the illusion that we had cut between shots, when in reality, we had continued filming in a different place.

THE WEBSITE

http://mediastudiesbms.wix.com/media

FONT
Like all websites for artists, we used the same font for all the headings on our website, including for the hyperlinks as well as a different font used for all bodies of text. This was important in the continuity for our website and making the audience recognise the font for our artist. This is similar to the way in which two different fonts are used, one which is used for the artists name and is the same on all the Jack Garratt products and a slightly different, more basic one for the hyperlinks on the website

LAYOUT
Like many websites, we kept the hyperlink bar at the top of all the pages as this makes it easier to locate and therefore use. This is important for ease of use for the audience.
Like Jack Garratt and Ben Howard's website, we positioned the artists name in the top left corner as this was easy for the audience to see and identify.
We also saw that social media links were either positioned at the top, like they are on Jack Garratt's website or on the bottom as seen in Ben Howard's. We decided to put ours at the bottom as this is out of the way of the other links on the page so does not distract from these other aspects. Additionally, we felt that the top of our website was already crowded with the hyperlinks and artist name so would get lost and may be missed by the audience. This conforms to what we have seen on other websites as the social media links are often placed on their own.

HYPERLINKS
We included a hyperlink bar at the top of our website with various links such as 'Gallery', 'Live' and 'Store' because when looking at websites for similar artists these were common links which came up. Additionally, we have a hyperlink for a biography which is significant as our artist is still establishing himself and therefore needs to provide the audience with information about him in order to create a connection with them and then as Masnic says 'give them a reason to buy'. This was different to most the websites for similar artists as they didn't have an 'about' or 'biography' page as they are not all new artists still establishing themselves.
We also featured hyperlinks to social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as well as to Spotify as this was something that we had seen that other artists had done. We felt that this was very important as it would enable our target audience to connect with the artist in a different way.

IMAGES OF OUR ARTIST
For the background image of our website, we decided to use the same image as that on the digipak but chose to change the colour scheme of it. This was done in order to create a recognizable product and allow the audience to connect the album with the website. Ben Howard's background for his homepage is his latest music video which also helps the audience to connect the two products. We also chose to have an image of our artist on the front page to make his face more recognizable to the audience.
The image we used also shows the guitar which is effective in creating an authentic and organic indie star image as it re-enforces the idea that our artist plays the  instrument and uses this skill when making music and in his performances. The grain on this image creates a vintage feel and contributes to the organic image we wanted to present.
The images on the photo page of George Ezra's album included some of performances with a guitar as well as some from photo shoots. This helped to emphasize his organic, indie-folk images. The images we chose to appear on the gallery page were inspired by this and also feature the guitar which further adds to our artists organic image. We also included some with out the guitar and close-ups of the artist which use direct address as this is something that we didn't do on the album cover and is important to create a connection with the audience who would feel as though the artist is looking directly at them.

MERCHANDISE
We looked at the merchandise of artists like George Ezra, Hozier and Tom Odell from which we saw that they all sold very simple items such as t-shirts, jumpers, mugs, posters and sometimes guitar picks and wristbands as well as CDs and vinyl. We also noticed that these all had either a logo or the artists name on to make the products recognizable. This was something that we also did when creating our merchandise. We took particular note of the vinyl and the guitar picks as these keep in line with the indie and organic image as the vinyl signifies a vintage aspect and the guitar pick encourages audiences to play guitar like the artist as well as emphasises that this is something that the artist can do.

NEWSLETTER

Much like on the website for every music artist, we created a page for fans to sign up to receive email newsletters. An example of this is Hozier's newsletter from which we could see that the newsletter tat indie artists send out is very simple, just like everything else. It has his name in big in the header with all the text under this, something that we also did. Additionally, we conformed to the idea of having social media links on the email which further promotes fans to connect with Jay on social media.