1. in what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
for the convinience of readers my evaluation will be split into four posts
We were assigned the task of
creating three promotional pieces, a full music video for a single song, the
graphics for a digipack(a special release album with extra features) and a
magazine advert. Through all of this we had to establish a brand image with our
chosen musician and bring that across in each task. The purpose of all three of
these pieces of advertising in a real world scenario would be to promote the
musician behind them. Firstly a series of adverts in magazines and on TV would
go out to herald the release of a single or an album from the musician, this
would be then backed up by a music video that would garner interest in the
songs in the album and eventually the digipack would be released either after
the album as a special edition or simultaneously as a collection of fun extras
including behind the scenes information and the musicians thoughts and opinions
relating to the songs.
In many ways our finished video was
made to conform to the standards and conventions of the real videos that people
enjoy. When discussing conventions in the music video it is most important to
think of things in terms of the genre of the song chosen, for example our
chosen song was Fun by Kristen Faulconer which constitutes a pop song. Several
conventions of pop music include ideals about what the singer should be
wearing, where they should be in the video and how to frame certain shots. When
looking at videos of a similar genre one can easily build up a repertoire of
elements to build the promo around.
In pop videos by popular artists
such as Madonna and Ke$ha there are many things to note such as…
·
Heavy amplification of lyrics, an idea that is
expressed lyrically is explored in the figurative through metaphor rather than
being directly played upon. For instance in the video for Bad Romance the idea
of a wrong love is explored through the narrative. This video of course picked
up on the Bad Romance aspects of a primarily sexual relationships or in the
case of the narrative the using of women like slaves by a man.
·
Heavy sexualisation in female artists-playing
off the sexuality of a female singer is popular especially in videos such as
“material girl” by Madonna
·
Narrative-in a pop video narrative can either be
heavy or light. This is directly affected by the director’s decisions regarding
whether the lyrics of the song should be illustrated(which would create a
straightforward narrative based upon the song) or amplified(which would create
a video drenched in symbolism and metaphor)-an example of illustrated lyrics
could include the use of lyrics to construct a narrative and character
background in the Ke$ha video Tik Tok
·
Camera work and editing-a pop promo as a
standard is composed of lots of short sharp shots that are edited together to
maintain continuity into one another. This is only ignored in the case of dance
routines or performance pieces which are made up of longer shots
Of course it is
incredibly important to reflect on our initial influences, We had many
influences both for our overall style (artists such as Ke$ha, Madonna and Lady
Gaga) and individual shots. For instance our car shots at night were inspired
by similar series of shots found in the Human League video for “Don’t You Want
Me Baby?”
Initially we had planned for
the video to follow a narrative drive by illustrating the lyrics in the song
and making them into an easy to follow narrative of a downwards spiral after a
girl feel betrayed by her boyfriend and ruins herself with drinking and a party
lifestyle. However due to constraints of location and time we could spend with
our actress we were forced to rethink this. We eventually turned the video into an amplification of the lyrics through
it’s representation of the party girl lifestyle with at times mild disjuncture
from them for the purposes of artistic expression such as when we feature our
singer in a costume that includes a policeman’s cap meant to be representative
of the change in the music during the bridge where the music becomes more
repressed. The song lent itself quite easily to a performance angle as well
which is why the video never cuts from the singer except during the bridge in
the song during an extended guitar solo.
We had fewer influences for our construction of
the Digipack and the magazine advert although we did find early on in our research
that examples such as the Dethklok and Kings of Leon adverts that we had to
make the advertisement as artistically produced as the video. To this end we
decided to build our ancillary tasks around the video using a similar scheme of
costume, location and mise en scene. This translated into the Digipack covers
inspired by earlier scenes in the video 
we made significant changes such as brightening up the
colours and using a daytime exterior shot rather than a nighttime one this
would ensure the advert would be more attention grabbing and draw focus when
placed in a magazine or on a wall as a poster, a idea we considered as we
designed it in order to make it versatile enough to be advertised anywhere.
·
For our Digipack we decided a colourful and eye catching
approach would be an excellent idea based on previous examples such as the one
seen above (the cover of the CD Digipack for popular Japanese band Project
Delta). We saw things like this on the market being sold online and knew that
they were the prime example to base the aesthetics of our Digipack around.
Notice that the cover is colourful and draws the eye to it. The titles are
placed in a way that makes the noticeable because they are placed at the focal
point of the design. We followed a similar idea when constructing our Digipack
making it almost humorous in how it draws your attention to the titles. We
followed a theme throughout making the pack and stuck to the themes established
within our video such as Fun, and the party girl lifestyle.
Costumes and
Locations
Costume
In our original plan
we stated that costume should be a primary focus due to its connections to
establishing a character in our actress. This was the plan during the original
idea where we planned to focus mainly on the narrative and not amplification of
the lyrics. When we decided to go for a more performance focused video it was
decided that we would make costume changes quite common whilst remaining
similar and containing a set piece, many artists work around these changes
quite well for example Lady Gaga in the video for Bad Romance was known to
change costume several times. For our actress every costume change was done to
cover the dress she wore in every scene. Costume changes were made on cues
given by the song for instance when the actress dons a black cardigan and a
police hat this is more for the more rhythmically stable part of the song
during the bridge it indicates authority and subtly sets a mood of repression
also indicated by how the singer is much less active during these shots.
Following the bridge when the song speeds up the actress dons a blue hoodie
jacket. This is a symbol of the change in the music to a faster more upbeat
tone like that seen in modern rap and hip hop which this style of dress has
become a symbol of.
Location
Our locations were
originally selected from places that we could easily access in and around our
local area. This was made difficult given our rural background when the song is
so reminiscent of city life particularly the club scene. We did initially
attempt to record inside a club but were turned down by all night spots we
asked. We needed to improvise an interior set in the school’s drama studio but
were restricted to only being able to use it for one day out of the week so we
could not use it to its full potential. When we became limited in this way we
decided to take most of the shots outside which presented little or no
problems. The highlight of the exterior shots should be noted to be the shots
taken in and out of a subway outside Bourne which I believe helped create a
very urban atmosphere when used against the shots of our actress in the streets
and alleys of Bourne. The convention for location in such videos is to
establish a connection between artist and background. This is important in
order to finalise the cultivation of the artists image. In our case it was very
important to create the image of a young girl from the streets which is why we
mainly used exterior locations and tried to stay within the framework provided
for us by our artist choice.
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