Daniella Lawrence Question 1A2 Media Production

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

conventions of real media products?

When planning ideas for my media production, I had done some research before hand

as I needed to find out what types of music genres there were in the industry and what

the codes and conventions consisted of. I found that there were many different types

of genres which include rock, R&B, pop, indie, grime, classical and many others.

I had been doing this research as I knew I would have to gain a clear understanding of

the techniques and codes and conventions used within the real industry, as I would

have to follow the codes and conventions of music videos as much as I possibly could

in order to target the audience effectively. In order to maintain an effective music

video, I had realized that you would need to include many of the elements that a pop

video consist of as that’s was the genre of our song, these include:

A focus on the individual song or singles, rather than on extended works or

albums

An aim of appealing to a general audience, rather than to a particular sub-

culture or ideology

An emphasis on craftsmanship rather than formal ‘artistic’ qualities

An emphasis on recording, production, and technology, over live performance

A tendency to reflect existing trends rather than progressive developments

Much pop music is tended to encourage dancing, or it uses dance orientated

beats or rhythms

Andrew Goodwin is an individual to think about when considering the analysis of

music videos. He believes that music videos demonstrate genre characteristics by the

way the video has been structured, whether it is performance based or narrative based,

Daniella Lawrence Question 1A2 Media Production

depending on the genre. He also believes that there should be a relationship between

the lyrics of the song and the visuals of the video for it to be effective to the viewer.

The moving image of the video must relate to the lyrics of the song in some way or

another to ensure the audience follow the meaning or narrative if any. Performance

videos tend to be the most popular type of videos as they feature the artist/band sing

or performing in various locations. Gow suggests that ‘the predominance of a

performance as a formal system in the popular clips indicates that music video defines

itself chiefly by communicating images of artist singing and playing songs’.

Lady Gaga is an American pop artist who has creates songs that appeal to a wide

audience; she has a very unique and funky style that makes her stand out in the

industry, which is why she has been a major influence in the production of our video.

The use of striking make up within her videos was something that stood out to us and

gave us ideas straight away, also the choreography used within her videos is

astonishing as it is very synchronised and funky; you immediately get drawn in and

want to watch more. Lady Gaga uses many conventions of pop music within her

videos, such as bold make-up and the use of choreography. The use of close-ups

within these videos are very effective as they show the use of facial expressions which

shows the confidence of the artist. This also makes you feel involved in the video as

you are able to feel that you can link to what is taking place.

Daniella Lawrence Question 1A2 Media Production

Speakerphone is a pop video which is very performance based and mainly focuses on

the artist on her own rather than others within the video. During the production of

this video, I felt that we challenged many of the conventions of pop videos.

Throughout the video, the main focus tended to be on our artist but parts consisted of

the artist alongside two back up dancers. Another way we challenged the convention

of pop videos was by the use of striking make-up, glitter and costume change, which

are all part of the star persona we tried to create. This challenged the conventions as

we managed to keep our audience intrigued by the use of bold, eye catching make-up.

Choreography was something that was carefully thought about when

planning our music video as it is a key feature of pop videos

that defines the genre. We felt this would make our production

similar in a sense but differ in the style of the choreography.

This is because our main focus was on the singer with her back up dancers assisting

her at times, we didn’t want our dancers to be too synchronised, so the back up

dancers did different moves at times, making it more original. Although we followed

many of the conventions, we also kept our ideas original and tried not the make it

similar to that already on the market, we did this by creating our own style of make –

up which hasn’t been seen on many artist within the current industry, ensuring our

video would stand out. During the planning and production of our video, we had to

think about the kind of images that our audience would be interested in to ensure our

video would appeal to them in the way we wanted it to. We thought it was important

to feel that our audience could identify the genre our video belonged to, through the

star persona of our artist.