A2 Media Studies Evaluation Questions By Monique Fearon

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

For my A2 Media Studies coursework, we used conventions of a real music video, CD digipak and an advert to create something new. We choose the genre pop as we thought it would suit us more and it would be more commercial. The song we chose to do was Nicki Minaj and Cassie- The boyz.

The actual video was very colourful and fun, so we tried to keep that element the same for our music video to.

The conventions for a pop music video is meant to be colourful, fun, have loads of dancing, singing and have scene changes. This is seen throughout my music video as I wanted it to be made obvious that it was a pop music video.

Most importantly, I researched how to make a music video and what was needed to be in a music video. I found out that it good to plan everything before you record your music video, so you don’t end up wasting time making the video. I was able to put this forward into my planning and research, so when it came to doing our music video, I already knew what to do. I analysed a lot of pop music videos such as Rihanna, Britney Spears etc. to gain an understanding of pop music videos. I also looked at gender representation of woman as stated in the video (down below) and found out about the male gaze.

My artist Nicki Minaj was on the front cover of the digipak (at the centre) to show that this was her album and that she should be the main focus of the album cover. Her name Nicki Minaj was written in front of her with her album name written in bold pink capitals to reflect her boldness, (like I have seen in her other album covers). At the back of the CD package features common conventions like the track names and a bar code. Something that we added was a little message to her fans thanking them for their support.

The advert used many conventions, that you would naturally expect to be on a advert such as when the CD is coming out (21st January), where you can buy it from (itunes) and where you can find more information e.g. twitter (#CANDY).

On the back of the album cover, I used the copyright note telling people who buy the CD that it is owned by Sony and that they are not allowed to copy the CD and sell it. I also used the bar-code so people can purchase the CD in stores

I challenged the use of times I could use the album title. Researching album covers, they only have the album title written once or twice max three times. On my digipak altogether, the name title ‘Candy’ has been written five times. This is enabling the audience to get the name of the album title ‘drilled’ into their heads so they remember the title.

I developed the album cover by adding more girly images to represent what the album was about and who it was more targeted for. Even though boys can like it.

Spine repeating the album title

Camera angles

When research and planning I looked into a number of different pop music. For example, artists I looked at were Rhianna, Azealia Banks, Nicki Minaj, Cassie etc. I looked into these artists in particular as they are all female and represent the stereotypical ‘sexy’ females in music videos.

I have taken a print screen of my video (on right) and Azealia Banks video- Van Vogue (on left). Both videos have the exact same camera angle; which is a mid-shot, showing both the artist from the waist up.

Editing

When researching different genres of music videos, I found out that there are different types of editing for different genres. In both Azealia Banks and I’s video, there are a lot of edited effects. In order to use and develop this convention, we decided to include this into our video.

Above ,you can see how we used the same editor effect. We developed it and challenged it by having her stand up instead of having just a ‘side head shot’ like in Azealia’s video.

Mise en Scene

Just like Azealia we used a very simple set (location). We developed and challenged it by using more than ONE location.

Lighting and Colour

Lighting and Colour can make a difference to a music video, for example bright colours can make the song seem happy and joyful. Using different levels of lighting and colour can portray different emotions to any song. This technique is widely used within real media products. For example in my video and Rihanna- rude boy video below, we both use bright lighting and bright colours to attract our audiences.

Sound

Often in narrative videos where they introduce the characters or the artist in the videos, there are diegetic sounds at the beginning of the video and at the and of the video. However, in my video I did not include this as it wasn’t a narrative song. In addition, I did have non-diegetic as the music of the song was added in postproduction.

Representation of women (watch our YouTube video below)

In my research I found out that the female stereotype, in music videos are “Women portrayed as decorative objects that dance, pose and do not play instruments”. This is made evidently true in my music video. I decided to go and use the stereotypical representation of women, as it matched with the song ‘The Boyz’.

Performance Video-Theory

According to Sven E Carlsson our video is a Performance Video as the “audience are able to see the artist(s) singing and dancing throughout the video.” This is true. I used this, as I thought it would be more entertaining to watch and this is what my target audience would want to see.