Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I believe that my product challenges the stereotypes of the reggae genre, we do include the drugs, guns, violence etc. but we turn it on it's head by replacing them with stereotypically childish things. I think our product is quite unlike any other things I've seen, I believe it's a relatively new, entropic idea.

For me, the inspiration for the idea came from watching other reggae/rap videos. The majority of them seem to contain drug use, violence, gang culture etc. The song that we created the music video for had an anti gang-culture message, so it seemed perfect to take these conventions, and turn them around to parody the genre. The research we did into the genre really helped us to form our ideas.

I  believe that challenging the forms and conventions actually helped with the success of the video within our focus group. The audience that we were aiming for enjoy new, interesting things. This really came through with our focus group's feedback. The video was not so entropic that it was difficult to understand, but not so redundant that it became disinteresting, which is what our focus group seemed to enjoy the most. I believe combining elements of the classic conventions, and the childish elements proved a good move as it was interesting and eye catching, yet was still identifiable within the intended genre.

When editing the video, we also tried to keep to the conventions of the genre. The editing is relatively slow during the beginning of the video, mimicking the editing style of slower paced reggae videos. When the faster paced, drum and bass part kicks in, the editing style quickly speeds up. This creates a more exciting feel, especially in comparison to the slower editing.

The song itself challenges the conventions of the reggae genre, the style of singing in somewhat different, and the integration of drum and bass in the end is also a big change of pace to the genre, so the product also had to reflect this.

In summary, our target audience enjoyed our product. We were told it was different and innovative, and none of them could compare this to any other music videos that they have previously seen, as they had not seen any of a similar kind. I think the new ideas were welcomed as they are interesting and different, so they are quite effective in drawing in attention.