OCR Media Studies G322 Evaluation

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

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed in the 1960s from 1950s rock and roll , rockabilly, blues, and country music. The sound of rock often revolves around the electric guitar or acoustic guitar, and it uses a strong back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or, since the 1970s, analog synthesizers and digital ones and computers since the 1990s. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form," it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody."

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, rock music branched out into different subgenres, ranging from blues rock and jazz-rock fusion to heavy metal and punk rock, as well as the more classical influenced genre of progressive rock and several types of experimental rock genres. 

The massive popularity and worldwide scope of rock music resulted in a powerful impact on society. Rock and roll influenced daily life, fashion, attitudes and language in a way few other social developments have equalled. As the original generations of rock and roll fans matured, the music became an accepted and deeply interwoven thread in popular culture. Beginning in the early 1970s, rock songs and acts began to be used in a few television commercials; within a decade this practice became widespread. Starting in the 1980s rock music was often featured in film and television program soundtracks.

The rock and roll lifestyle was popularly associated with sex and drugs. Many of rock and roll's early stars (as well as their jazz and blues counterparts) were known as hard-drinking, hard-living characters. During the 1960s the lifestyles of many stars became more publicly known, aided by the growth of the underground rock press. Musicians had always attracted attention of "groupies" (girls who followed musicians) who spent time with and often did sexual favors for band members.

(Wikipedia)

After spending enough time on research and planning, I decided to focus on the "Sex, drugs and Rock n' Roll" convention of rock music. 

Here is my final media product: Front cover of a music magazine. 
Genre: Rock

This magazine cover, in particular, is very similar to my media product. It features Ville Valo, who is holding a cigarette, emphasizing on drug and cigarette usage of those associated with this particular genre of music. The color combination is very subtle and gloomy and restricted to only 3 or 4 colors namely black, grey, white and red. So, while constructing my magazine cover, I kept this combination in my mind.

Convention: Sign of the horns

The sign of the horns is a hand gesture with a variety of meanings and uses in various cultures. It is formed by extending the index and little fingers while holding the middle and ring fingers down with the thumb.

It also has a variety of meanings in heavy metal subcultures, where it is known by a variety of terms, most commonly maloik, devil sign, devil horns, Leviathan Horns or metal horns, among others.

Ronnie James Dio was known for popularizing the sign of the horns in heavy metal. His Italian grandmother used it to ward off the evil eye (which is known as malocchio). Dio began using the sign soon after joining (1979) the metal band Black Sabbath. The previous singer in the band,Ozzy Osbourne, was rather well known at using the "peace" sign at concerts, raising the index and middle finger in the form of a V. Dio, in an attempt to connect with the fans, wanted to similarly use a hand gesture. However, not wanting to copy Osbourne, he chose to use the sign his grandmother always made. The horns became famous in metal concerts very soon after Black Sabbath's first tour with Dio. The sign would later be appropriated by heavy metal fans under the name "maloik", a corruption of the original malocchio.

Terry "Geezer" Butler of Black Sabbath can be seen "raising the horns" in a photograph taken in 1971. This would indicate that the "horns" and their association with metal occurred much earlier than either Gene Simmons or Ronnie James Dio suggests. The photograph is included in the CD booklet of the Symptom of the Universe: The Original Black Sabbath 1970–1978 compilation album.

Hence, the use of "Sign of the horns" on my media product implies that the product focuses on Rock and Metal music.