In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In terms of real media products our main source of inspiration was the Libertines live performances, from Top Of The Pops footage and more recently Reading festival. We then looked at The Libertines official music videos for inspiration on mise en scene, we then looked at related artists from our own knowledge and recommended views, including Stiff Little Fingers, Sex Pistols, The Skids, The Buzzcocks, Happy Mondays and Joy Division, to have a more in depth understanding of common features of this genre.


Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
Uploaded by hushhush112. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.


Seeing as many of the bands which are similar to the Libertines are from the 80’s and late 70’s i feel whatever our video would look like, it would always challenge current forms of conventions. Myself and Marianne worked with this by looking at the changing nature of music videos by looking at various genres through music channels and Youtube. I came up with the storyline of how two people would get ready after a rough night and to reunite and to break up this footage we would use maz’s attic room for the location of a live concert, after coming up with this idea i searched for similar styles of video on youtube where i remembered such videos, i took strong inspiration from Joy Division- Love will tear us apart video where i trie
d to incorporate Ian Curtis’ actions and devotion. In terms of a live gig scene myself and Marianne wanted a “skins party” style where the camera is distorted to feel like the viewer is taking drugs, I also wanted to include union jacks to represent a strong british element similar to the Libertines. I feel our main media product is more in line to the current magazine publishers of NME and Kerrang than to current music videos, seeing as magazines seem to represent a wider audience than music videos which seem to be more amount competing to be the most expensive and use the most special effects.





This videos includes many similarities in movements created by our band, ian curtis motions when similar are nearly exactly the same as Joe's and the guitarists is very similar to the actions of owain.

In summary of my main piece i feel we go against current conventions in pop music such as sticking to a more real life approach with a live appearance, i also feel our style of video goes against the more alternative style such as Foals and The Courteeners, such videos consist more of a short film.

For my ancillary Product i chose to follow current conventions as i drew heavily from the Smiths cd covers, i used a simple image featuring a person similar to all of the smiths albums and then to put a color filter over the top using photoshop. I used the most of existing media elements in my cd cover, i used the font like the foals total life forever but with inverted colours, the back cover being very simple was similar to those of 80’s pop groups such as new order. The main convention of todays indie bands is to not feature the name of the band on the front cover this is to confuse the audience. I feel my main cover does not go against current elements but takes the best of a variety of a genres to create a new look.



I was especially creative for my cd booklet, i always wanted to do a rough style of lyrics, i tested with these using various backgrounds and fonts on photoshop and by hand. I chose to use a stained paper effect to give it a rough urban feel similar to the artist but different to anything done within this genre. I took alot of inspiration from Pete Doherty’s life than of the life of the libertines, taking more time to look through babyshambles back catalogue and Pete Doherty’s solo material. This backed up my idea which i got from Pete Doherty’s Book of Albion. I feel this product defies all current Cd booklets as the look at the moment is too feel crisp, clean and fresh while my cd booklet is more of the convention of the punk, post-punk era.



I chose to design my Album poster to be simplistic yet engaging. My first draft consisted of the same image but without a plain straight border. This looked adequate but didn’t match my genre at all. I therefore changed this to a more ragged/rough edge this was created by tracing over the outline of the image several times with my bamboo tablet using the pen tool on photoshop, by using the bamboo tablet this gave me a unique style to my image and doesn’t comply to the more modern forms of band poster advertising, such as Ce lo Green. I wanted to use simple wording and for my poster to have a minimalistic look which is used in current music magazine posters, while looking at the maccabees tour poster which isn’t similar to the style of the Likely Lads i came across a plain but very bold font, which i found online at freefonts.co.uk, i used this in my work to contrast with the rough look of the band image.

Overall i feel my media products were formed from a loose initial view then after thorough research and planning i came up with a more solid idea which was influenced by current conventions, but i feel our product didn’t copy an idea, i feel i took pieces from various media elements and added them together while adding my personal touch.