Evaluation Question 1 (Draft)

In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products?

For my video, digipack, and magazine advert, I realised that I would have to follow many of the conventions of the metal genre. Heavy metal is a very visual genre of music, relying greatly on a set of preconceived forms and ideas. If my video was to succeed and fit the role I wanted it to, it would have to stick to these conventions pretty well, although some developing or challenging of the conventions would make it stand out from the rest. The main artists I chose to base my work on were shock metal bands like Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie. These bands focus greatly on horror and controversial imagery, sometimes being very anti-religion and anti-society. I have tried to keep this with my project, especially in the digipack and advert campaign, using several horror-based drawings to keep my work following the conventions. My video also contains a horror theme, primarily in the hooded figure stalking the girl throughout it. Marilyn Manson is usually more subtle during his music videos and doesn’t usually follow a strong narrative, although I felt this was the route I wanted to go down, rather than just random gothic images.                                                     

I turned the darkness and saturation down on most of the shots in my video and on my digipack and advert images. This fits with the metal genre well, as they prefer to go for a darker, more twisted, and fiercer view of reality than other music genres do. I made sure that the girl in the video was wearing a bright red coat, as not only did this link it with fairytales like Red Riding Hood, but it also stood out even more once everything around it in the shot had its saturation turned down. The red stands out beautifully against the greyscale surroundings, giving connotations of danger, as red can signify this pragmatically.                                                                                   

The location my video was shot it was some woods around my local area. Dark woods have been used several times in metal videos, so I felt like I was sticking a convention of the genre by using a location like this. Metal videos that are set in woods include the video for ‘The Animal’ by Disturbed, ‘Curl of the Burl’ by Mastodon, and ‘The Amity Affliction’ by Chasing Ghosts. The foreboding forest could be said to be a cliché, but I felt like it was the only location where my narrative would make sense. Using that sense of nowhere to run, and obscured vision, that a forest creates.                                                                                                                                  

The artwork used in my digipack and on my advert follow strong rules of heavy metal conventions. Metal artwork is known for being hand drawn illustrations, usually portraying fantasy scenes or monsters, as mine does. I have gone for a more horror theme, as stated before, so have tried to connect the generic metal artwork with the themes that bands like Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie use in their work. Also, the image of a man on an upside crucifix plays on two conventions of metal. The first is the controversial anti-religion and anti-Christian imagery that Marilyn Manson in particular uses. One of his most controversial albums, ‘Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)’ features a similar picture, of Manson himself on the cross. The other feature found within many heavy metal albums and songs, is the strong Satanic or quasi-satanic theme that they utilise. The fact that the image shows a man on an inverted cross links to Satanism, as this is one of the signs attributed to it.