In what ways do your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?11TH JANUARY 2016SCARLETT MURPHY

What are forms and conventions?

The form of a media text is the structure of a product, the end shaping. This is made up through elements known as conventions.

To make up the form, conventions are elements which are easily recognisable to similar texts. They are the ‘norm’ of how something is done or made up of. The reason we have used similar conventions in our music video is because it means that our target audience will find it easier to recognise the genre of our product.

In music videos especially our genre of Indie- Pop important conventions we looked for and found included the set, rhythmic editing, conspicuous use of lighting and the close ups.

Form 1:Performance

The use of this form gave a structure to our video In my music video performance was used to showcase the new artist Flora. We wanted to show her as a strong sassy female who has a connection with her fans and feels like they do. Our target audience were females aged 14 to 20 who are going through their first heartbreak and love. To reach these girls one technique used by our artist was direct address to her audience, to make the gap between the product and the audience seem smaller and closer. We shot this in close ups and mid shots. This worked really well with the song as the song was an explanation of ‘How to be a Heartbreaker’ and having our artist look directly into the camera lens and use both her hands and face as a way of explanation made a strong connection with the audience as it looked as if she were talking exactly to you making you feel closer to her and understand her more. This furthermore made our artist more recognisable to the audience, this is particularly important as it is her first music video and therefore is not a huge star already but needs to make her place in the music world. This therefore showed Flora to be strong, new, exciting and relevant to today’s wants and making a gap in the market for her.

This helped to create a marketable star image for Flora as she comes across as a young normal, middle class pretty blonde girl but with an attitude. As a result of this we can see how this fits in with the media theorist Richard Dyer’s paradox which concludes that the star show be both ordinary however with an extraordinary talent to connect with their audience, she is a new and fresh on the music scene and songs are very relatable to teenage girls going through heartbreak making it easier for audience to idolise her and therefore buy her products.

Iggy Azalea, Fancy

Form 1 [Continued] We adhered to indie-pop conventions through the performance style of Flora. We showed her to be dancing at points both individually whilst also in a group. This helped to demonstrate her abilities and talent, as well as singing also dancing.

This was a convention which we saw in many music videos of indie-pop including Eliza Doolittle’s Skinny Genes. One thing we noticed in more indie-pop videos we that the dancing want precise routines choreographed and then worked on like in many pop videos like Rita Ora’s I Will Never Let You Down. The dancing we had was more naturalistic, joking around and having fun. We made extra rehearsals to work on this and make it look to fit this style. We found that this could also potentially help us in cross promotion as the audience would see Flora as an all-round performer and then want to buy her concert tickets to see her perform live. Due to our artist being from a big record company like Parlophone Record who cater for both big artists like Kylie Minogue and more ‘indie’ artists like Becky Hill and Flora is a cross between the two of them. This made us want to adhere to the stereotypes of pop music videos as they know that they work and therefore appeal to our target audience.

This helped our video to be more aesthetically pleasing whilst we complied to many pop videos having shots of arms, legs and shots of butts as it sexualises the artist showing her as a sexual symbol of youthful and creativity of Andrew Goodwin’s values of music stardom which we decided we wanted to portray in our initial pitch.

Eliza Doolittle, Skinny Genes

Form 2:The Length

Most songs have a length of 3 to 4 minutes in length. Now to help combat piracy problems in music videos this can be even longer as it can include a pre-roll which potentially can dissuade audiences from illegally downloading the song. (This was a technique used by Taylor Swift in her song ‘Trouble’). The song ‘How To Be A Heartbreaker’ before we cut it was 3.44 minutes, which one can see is just under a minute longer than our version. The reason we cut this song down was because after looking at artists like Marina and the Diamonds which included Charli XCX and Sky Ferreira who are both Indie-Pop/Rock/Punk female artists we found that many of their songs were the length of 3 to 3 and a half minutes:

After watching these videos we could see how it is hard to keep an audience interested and involved in a music video, and therefore we shortened the length of the song. Therefore we feel that after showing target groups that it was the right length as they didn’t drop off or click off the screen.

Convention 1:Use of Lighting

Christina Aguilera, Bound to you We used bright colourful lighting to follow many other indie-pop artists. In our music video the most important lighting element was the Fluro, which enhanced our artists beauty, it glamorised her through defining her cheekbones, purifying her skin and making her to look bright, awake and omnipresent. Christina Aguilera’s music video Bound to you became important in inspiring us these shots. It showed us how using blue light in a slow part of a helps to create a melancholy tone and to make the video feel more emotional and easier to connect therefore to the emotions of the artist. We understood before our shoot day that the lighting should be conspicuous and not to draw attention away from the artist whilst working with them to improve the overall video therefore we worked with using gobos in the background and the speed that they swirled around to stop them from distracting from Flora. If one stares right into Flora’s eye in these shots we can see the reflection of the fluro triangle which helps to add to the star quality of our artist by literally visualising almost as star and something special about the girl.

Convention 2:Close Ups

The importance of close ups is a convention of all music videos, but especially with new artists this is because it critical to emphasise and establish who the artist is to the audience. This is because this is who is being sold and in a world centred around aesthetics is important to explore their aestheticsand therefore make them as animatic as possible due to it helps to show their personality on camera which helps the audience to ‘like’her as an artist. This is important to our target audience as they are more likely to feel connected to her and as a result of this willwant to buy more of her records to see where else she can relate toteenage girls, who are often emotionally vulnerable and their life experiences.

Because Flora is a new artist we straightaway showed her in a closeup in the first shot in our music video (right image) so that it was clear who the artist is and she was therefore the main focus in our music video. The use of lots of close up were due to helping for our artist have more of a connection with the audience and therefore increase her fan base.

We deliberately chose to put the colour pink as our background, we picked a brighter more girly pink than Katy Perry in This is How We Do as we wanted to appeal to a girlier and younger audience.

Katy Perry, This Is How We Do

Convention 3:Rhythmic Editing

Editing puts all the different footage which looks as if it has no relationship together to make it all link, potentially into a narrative. In all music videos a hugely important convention whilst editing is to cut on the beat because it subconsciously makes the music look more aesthetically pleasingly. Rhythmic editing makes the visual elements match with the aural element (the track). How to be a Heartbreaker was therefore edited to cut on the beat and not on the lyrics.

One element of our video which worked really well with this was the gymnastics element which was something that was inspired from Eliza Doolittle’s video Big When I Was Little this was because we choreographed the moves to be on the beat and therefore it was easier to cut to this and it looked really cool as a result of this! This therefore stuck to the convention of music videos and shows our artist to be more mainstream which also connotes that she is popular.

Eliza Doolittle, Big When I Was Little

Convention 4:Costume

In most pop videos especially those made for a female artist or group show females to be highly sexualised and this can be shown through the mise en scene of their costume. This is very clear in Nicki Minaj’s videos (above) and Flora does not take it this far however throughout the video we see more suggestive imagery, this is because of her target audience of teenagers who would not necessarily want to be shown as much nor would parents like it. However you can see (above) how we have shown areas like the thighs, midriff and cleavage. Therefore here we have adhered to pop conventions however to a lesser extent than some conventions due to wanting to make it family friendly and also by thinking about what our target audience want.

Clothing changes throughout a music video is a common convention and can also be seen in both Anaconda and Black Magic (by Minaj and Little Mix.) In the preproduction stage and whilst casting we decided to give all the girls in our music video completely different styles which would hopefully physicalize their characteristics. This is something that can be seen in Little Mix’s video. It helps to identify with lots of different people with different personalities and quirks therefore making Flora appeal to a wider audience of girls.

Our artist, Flora wore many different costumes throughout this music video, these ranged from a gym kit to a dress amongst others. This helps to explore the star image around Flora because it starts to create an image which institutions can build upon and market. This therefore creates a result of two different main responses, for teenage females (primary target audience) to idolise her and try and copy her this can be further utilised by selling one of her costumes in merchandise making more money. However it also can be used to entice a secondary audience, teenage males, and through her costume they potentially could be sexualising Flora to worship her. This all works with Dyer’s paradox that ‘the star should be ordinary but extraordinary at the same time’. It helps the audience to connect and relate to the artist (Flora) which Dyer constantly stressed as if they could replicate her style they would feel closer to the artist and therefore increasing her popularity which in turn increases the profit she makes. Another benefit of using lots of different outfits in a music video is that it can help to make Flora into a fashion icon which again can help to generate more popularity, attention and money around her.

Little Mix, Black MagicNicki Minaj, Anaconda