EVALUATION: QUESTION 1

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

WHAT ARE CONVENTIONS

Conventions are real media products that the audience are expecting to see. Conventions are commonly used and differ according to the form and genre, creating different meanings of texts. The audience play a significant role on the different interpretations of these conventions in texts and can therefore creating their own meaning through their understanding of the text. All of this relates to the theorist Stuart Hall of having a preferred meaning of the text.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT WHAT THE CONVENTIONS WERE OF REAL MUSIC VIDEOS? AND WHAT MUSIC VIDEO CONVENTIONS HAVE YOU

INCLUDED/ NOT INCLUDED AND WHY?

Conventions of a

Music Video:

Casting

Clear genreI chose to do a R&B genre

Lip synchingChoreography-

Ballroom Dance routine Costume and

makeup

Clear star persona

Brand Edit to the

beat

❖OBJECTIFICATION- women being made to feel like an object.❖EMPOWERMENT- making a woman feel dominant in the music video as she is usually or often objectified and sexualized.

❖STAR PERSONA- an icon that represents something in the media-their media personality.

❖INTERTEXTUALITY-referencing/linking other media texts.

❖PASTICHE-homage-positive intertextuality. ❖PARODY- mocking, negative.❖VOYERISM- feeling of being watched.❖COMMODITY- concept of stars as marketing tools.

GOODWIN’S THEORY

His theory points out that in every music video there is either PERFORMANCE (focusing on a band or dance routine etc), NARRATIVE (a storyline, usually to do with the lyrics), CONCEPT (opposite or completely random). In our music video we chose to take a narrative approach to our music video as we thought we could interpret the title of the song ‘Earned It’ as being something more sinister or with a different meaning- for example cheating or fated love not being so fated.

Mulvey’s Theory

The Male Gaze- I used subjective camera work, with many close ups to portray the female in the perspective of the male gaze.

Richard Dyer’s Star Persona

He says that music videos are essentially a form of advertisement and can be used to construct and support an image for an artist. For example, Hip Hop artists are associated with wealth and power, Rock bands are authentic, and band associated with instruments-very raw. Our chosen genre was R&B which is associated with love, relationships and heartbreaks. We then chose the theme of unfaithfulness.

Intertextuality

Intertextuality is referencing or referring to other media texts in your products. This enhances audience pleasure and changes the audience’s perception because of the intertextual references- also expanding audience range. For example, J-Lo- ‘I’m Glad’ intertextualises ‘Flashdance’ the final scene. This opens the audience to people who loved wathing the film. The message is that anything in possible and to dream big.

Homage-Ed Sheeran

In our music video we intertextualised the Cinderella narrative but created it with a twist. Instead of having the ‘princess’ fall in love with the prince at the ball we made her fall in love with an ordinary guy who she then runs off with at the end and lives happily with. We also reinterpreted the ballroom dancing scene which we intertextualised from Cinderella but also paid homage to Ed Sheeran’s thinking out loud music video by choreographing a dance routing- recreating the one in his.

RepresentationAs part of my narrative based music video I intertextualosed the story of Cinderella. I have however, added a twist to the soryline wheereby, the princess does not fall in love with the prince, she falls in love with an ordinary guy. This subverts the stereotypical expectation of a fairytale narrative as typically the princess is expected to fall in love and marry the prince. In addition, I have subverted the stereotypical ethinicity of a prince as typically the prince is of a white ethnicity, differently the prince in my music video is black. However, the fact that the white ordinary guy wins the princess is stereotypical. The white princess conforms to stereotypical princess ethnicity, especially in fairytales.

BRAND

❖Our theme was…..

❖We wanted to create a classy theme throughout, sticking with a very simple and basic colour scheme whilst also making it remain professional and formal.

❖To do this we also made our artist represent such with modesty through his costume of wearing a shirt in the digipak front cover and particularly stuck with a blackish background colour as black is usually associated with black tie and class.

Digipak Conventions

❖FRONT: the front of a digipak tends to have an eye catching image which have a relation with the songs or artist. The front page also has the album name.

❖BACK: has the tracklist for the album, barcode, record label, artist/album name, extra information

❖INSIDE: inside a Digipak you will find a plastic CD holder and more information to do with the artist or album.

I have applied all these conventions to my own work to create a successful digipak for my promotional package.