"In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?"
In his book "Dancing In The Distraction Factory" (Routledge, 1992) the theorist Andrew Goodwin identifies numerous established music video conventions and features. Goodwin states that there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, the visuals can illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics. This also applies to the music itself, again it can illustrate, amplify or contradict the music. Genre related style and iconography is also present, as well as intertextual references to other media texts, intertextuality is often employed in humorous videos.Goodwin also states that voyeurism often plays a major part, especially in relation to females. Voyeurism is used to increase the video's attractiveness to male audiences.
Our media product adheres to many of the conventions identified by Goodwin. As the song we have chosen for our media product “Aspirin’ has no lyrics, it is not possible to state whether is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. However, there is a clear contrasting relationship between the music and the visuals. “Aspirin” is an upbeat, melodic song and this contrasts strongly with the dark themes and strong messages in our media product. This serves to amplify the song; the use of contrapuntal sound ensures that the video is memorable and highly ‘watchable’. Music videos need to be memorable and hold the audience’s attention.
“Aspirin” is part of the House music genre and so the video observes the conventions of this genre, namely in that the artist does not feature in the video. Artists in this genre seldom appear in their music videos, preferring anonymity. In terms of audience, House is more popular with male audiences, so in order to target this audience, the main protagonist in our media product is an attractive young female. This adheres to the convention that Goodwin has identified; we have deliberately used a female protagonist in order to increase the video’s attractiveness to male audiences.
Intertextual references to other media texts are present throughout the media product, our work has been influenced by many music videos and in many cases we have attempted to emulate or replicate techniques, frames or sequences from videos that have inspired us.
Britney Spears “Every Time” video heavily influenced the final sequence of our media product, in which the main protagonist commits suicide. Essentially, we have attempted to replicate Britney’s drowning scenes.
(Britney Spears "Every Time")
We were also influenced by Ed Sheeran's "A Team" video. "A Team" follows a similar pattern to our media product. As with our own video, "A Team" is a mixture of both the narrative and non linear format and structure. The narrative pattern is also similar, the video follows a mysterious girl throughout a day in her life, her life contains hardships as she sleeps rough. Again, as with our own media product, there is a strong social theme behind the video, there are representations of race, class and gender.
We chose to emulate a key frame from the "A Team', the shot of the main protagonist sleeping on a park bench as we felt this was a powerful shot and immediately positions the audience to feel sorry for the young girl and sparks curiosity about her. Instead of a park bench, we chose to place our protagonist on a cardboard box. In contrast to the girl in the "A Team", our own protagonist is very well dressed which immediately leads the audience to question why she is sleeping outside.
(Ed Sheeran, "A Team")
Another video which influenced us is Chicane's "Poppiholla", this video has very strong representations of race and class. The video follows a black male, dressed in a hoody, walking through a very middle class town. The reactions of the town's residents are mainly of suspicion, distrust and dislike. We decided to subvert these representations in our own media product, we placed our protagonist, who appears to be very well dressed and wealthy, in a council estate and used close up shots to clearly present the reactions of the residents to our protagonist.
We chose to emulate a key frame from the "A Team', the shot of the main protagonist sleeping on a park bench as we felt this was a powerful shot and immediately positions the audience to feel sorry for the young girl and sparks curiosity about her. Instead of a park bench, we chose to place our protagonist on a cardboard box. In contrast to the girl in the "A Team", our own protagonist is very well dressed which immediately leads the audience to question why she is sleeping outside.
(Ed Sheeran, "A Team")
Another video which influenced us is Chicane's "Poppiholla", this video has very strong representations of race and class. The video follows a black male, dressed in a hoody, walking through a very middle class town. The reactions of the town's residents are mainly of suspicion, distrust and dislike. We decided to subvert these representations in our own media product, we placed our protagonist, who appears to be very well dressed and wealthy, in a council estate and used close up shots to clearly present the reactions of the residents to our protagonist.
As "Aspirin" does not have lyrics, we felt it was extremely important that our mise-en-scene was extremely strong in order to give the audience something to visually engage with as without lyrics there is no audio stimulation. Our location is the key element of our mise-en-scene, visually it is very powerful and lends an urban, gritty feel to our media product. This location also serves to amplify our main protagonist, the sharp contrast between her pretty dress and the derelict buildings is evident, she clearly does not belong there.
Costume was a key element in our representations of class and race, the residents of the estate are dressed in urban, street clothes with contrasts with the main protagonists appearance.
Another notable theorist, Richard Dyer’s Star Theory can be broken down into four clear components, understanding these components is essential when analyzing or creating music videos. The first component of the theory is that stars are constructions. This constructed, artificial image is part of the stars image and brand. For this reason, record labels demand that the music videos feature frequent close ups of the artist. Dyer states that audiences read music personally and will base their understanding of the star’s persona on the sentiments expressed by their songs and performance. Therefore it is essential to include close ups to place emphasis on the artist and also to reflect the location, emotion or amplify lyrics.
In terms of editing, we have used transitions such as fades and jump cuts. Jump cuts are the most common edit in music video; they are used to display changes i.e. in location, costume. The pace of editing is always in synch with the music; in our own media product we have used the pace to highlight scenes of key importance. We have also used techniques such as split screens to add visual interest to the media product.
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