CCR Q4

Q4- How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

After the selection of our song, we were able to identify the genre and, and the theme of our song. The genre for this song is R&B (Rythm and Blues).  We also identified the conventions we had to research. Weeknd’s songs are usually based on themes such as love, heartbreak or the desire for freedom. The use of visual effects in the original MV such as blurring, strobing lights and colour grading gave us an idea on how to create and enhance the mood and theme in our product.

Common conventions in Weeknd’s music videos include being intense and emotional. He often sings about love, heartbreak, and wanting things that might not be good for him. His music also talks about parties, and feeling lost. The music itself has a dark and mysterious feeling, like you're in a movie. So in order to follow this convention, I designed the digipak myself with the vision and retro aesthetics that would suit my product. Also, I used ‘blue’ and ‘retro’ aesthetics to design my social media page which further allowed us to match with the theme.

One convention that was challenged was that we decided to go for fast paced editing as R&B songs are usually slowed but ‘blinding lights’ is an upbeat song. Even The Weeknd’s challenged this convention. We researched about the social media page as well. Going through artists' accounts gave us inspiration for our own page too. Most of the artists post their album aesthetics, and spoiler posts so I did the same. This creates the anticipation of the product, among the consumers or audiences.