12/01/2015 12:05

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Discuss how your music video follows conventions (give examples from

real media texts and discuss how these then influenced yours)

My chosen music genre was pop, I created a music video, digipak and

magazine advert for the song ‘Icona Pop – I Love It’. Doing research into

the genre initially enabled me to be able to understand pop conventions

which exist in real media texts. During the planning stages of my project I

was to decide whether to use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of these real media pop products.

Real media products from pre-existing well known pop icons is where a lot

of my inspiration came from as well as my desire to be creative and think

outside the box. Artists like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Rihanna are

regarded as female pop stars within the music industry so viewing their

music videos and magazine adverts along with their digipaks was

appropriate in order to understand common characteristics, themes and

styles when it came to branding my own product.

To begin with deciding what genre I wanted to create my promo package

for was the first thing I did. Deciding on the genre pop and then choosing

the Swedish duo Icona Pop whose sub-genre is techno. I began looking at

existing real media products to give me a better insight to the typical

conventions an audience would expect to see in this genre of music.

A convention I found that was common if not always seen in a pop music

video is star image and brand identity. This was conveyed through close

up shots of the artist, and the audience is quickly known to who the main

artists are within the video within the first few establishing shots. (SHOW

CLIPS FROM MUSIC VIDEOS) One of the songs which would be an

example of this is my 9 frame analysis task of Taylor Swifts ‘Love Story’.

The narrative of the music video centres around Taylor and her ‘Romeo’.

Its whole narrative and visuals are illustrative of the lyrics and show the

love story which unravels throughout the video as it progresses through

the night, following the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ story. Another video which

supports Andrews Goodwin’s theory of star image, where the artist will

appear in their own work in order to establish and create a recognisable

role model, helping to increase artist popularity and sell themselves is

Lady Gaga with her music video ‘Paparazzi’ which I chose to analyse.

An artist which I have found which challenges this idea of using

themselves to advertise their music and help sell it is ‘Sia’. More often

than not she chooses not to feature within her videos and even when

performing live, faces away from her audience. She uses choreographed

dance scenes in an artistic manor to convey deeper messages which are

left up to the audience to decipher and make their own opinion off which

may be controversial leading to her latest video ‘Elastic Heart’. My

particular video challenges this alternative form of performance within the

video as both my artists are heavily involved in the narrative of my music

video and my concept is very literal and easier to understand from the

audiences point of view.

I developed the costumes of my artists throughout the progression of the

video. Within the first chorus/verses of the song, the costume was

bright/colourful and feminine. Typically pop artists have numerous

costume changes throughout their video as their location or set changes. I

followed this convention and had numerous different costumes

throughout. A bodycon coloured union jack style dress was wore on my

main artist in the powder paint scenes at the beginning and then to a

neon green bandeau within the second verse to reflect the mood of the

scene and the vulnerability of my artist.

My main inspiration for my narrative and the visual ideas were from the

real media texts ‘K$sha’s – Take It Off’ and ‘Warpaint – Stars’.

(VIDEO) This is were the powder paint idea came from,

When storyboarding my music video Carol Vernallis’s theory of the

features of a music video I found useful as this helped me create

appropriate camera movement and framing, she stated that the camera

will move in time with the music and as do the characters. By

creating a powder paint fight scene, this made sure that my shots were

going to be quick, keeping the pace within my video and cutting my

footage to the beat was needed in order to keep the narrative moving and

so that the footage fitted with how fast the music was moving. Therefore

With my video I attempted to develop similar conventions of what is

typically expected and seen throughout most pop videos within the music

industry and that is to establish star image.

Andrew Goodwins Music Video Theory

- Relation of visuals to a song

- Thought beats – Not all videos within the pop genre use thought beats

(the edit)

- Star image

- Narrative and performance

- Technical Aspects

In order to create successful ancillary texts, I researched into a number of

female pop icons in order to see the design of the images which they used

in order to advertise and brand themselves and their music. Popular

conventions which appeared across artists like: Katy Perry, Rihanna, Little

Mix, K$sha and Lady Gaga is they have a oversized image of themselves

on the front panel with the title of the album in much smaller writing. An

audience is drawn to their album from recognising the artist because of

their star image rather than their name/album title (INSERT IMAGES OF

ALBUM COVERS) this supports Jason Mittell as he says that industries

use genre to sell products to audiences, using familiar codes and

conventions that very often make references to their audience knowledge

of society and other texts. This refers back to and supports my research

into real media texts (music videos) within the pop genre, the music

videos I researched provided familiar expectations of how women are

more than not presented within the music industry.

I challenged the way female artists and women who feature in music

videos are represented in the pop world. Artists today are expressed in a

very sexual and seductive way due to their body language and

provocative outfits. For example in Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ at the

beginning of the video she is wrapped in ‘DO NOT CROSS’ yellow police

tape whilst in some very sexual poses (INSERT VIDEO CLIP FROM

VIDEO) which gives off this sense of voyeurism supporting Laura Mulveys

‘Male Gaze’ theory were the audiences view is from a heterosexual male

and women are objectified almost to appeal to male pleasure. The

costume of my artists/actors are more covered up and bright, although

the second half of my video my artist is just wearing a bandeau because

of the vulnerability I am portraying rather than trying to sexualise my

artist, within the shots and expressing of emotion through the tribal

pattern painting.

12/01/2015 12:05

12/01/2015 12:05