In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions of a real media product?
Andrew Goodwin argued that a key aspect that makes music videos is the relationship between the lyrics and visuals. In our video the lyrics are very vague and unclear which therefore means that it was difficult to link the visual in our video with the lyric of the real artist song which therefore indicates that we haven’t followed Andrew Goodwin’s theory. This isn’t very surprising as our music video genre is R&B and majority of R&B videos have no link with the lyric and visual. The beat of the music goes accordingly with our music video; this is because the artist moves with the music, and all the shots are in time with the beat.
R&B music videos usually have a lot going on in their video such as heavy jewellery, make-up hair and the outfits are out of the ordinary. Our music video has some of these elements for example the artist eye make-up is a very dark and gloomy black with a gold underline which ironically the colour’ gold’ is associated with R&B music videos for example Beyonce videos. The video has a variety of close-up shots on the artist as Andrew Goodwin theory explained a music video has to have. Using close-up shots is an important aspect for R&B music video because it’s all about the artist and the ‘perfect image’ this is what we used these shots throughout the video.
In our video there is a clear intertextual reference to the childhood film ‘little red riding hood’. The red cape is the key element to this story and this is exactly what we have our artist wearing in our music video. R&B music videos typically have some sort of intertextual reference such as the brand new phone out. By our artist wearing the red cape it is a clear indication that someone is following her just like in this fairytale ‘the wolf’ is following little red riding hood. This shows that our video has some sort of voyeurism because she’s being watched and we portray this through the type of editing we included in the video which is called ‘lightrays’ this gives the effect of someone being watched. Following on from this, the fact that someone following her shows that our video has some kind of spook to it which is unusual in and R&B video because usually they wouldn’t have the theme of horror/thriller in the videos, this would lean toward the Rock genre. Although our music video is categorised under the R&B genre because of its slow/high tempo, it also breaks the R&B convention of slow and sexual songs. The fact that the music video setting is mainly in a forest indicates that it could potentially have another Genre within it because usually R&B video are either in a house, street or club so having a forest as a setting is breaking the conventions completely. Therefore our music video transcends genres and isn’t as straightforward as other music videos.
Towards the end of our video we see a Gold balloon this kind of prop is very typical for an R&B media products because they usually have random things in the video, the reason being is that it just makes the video more interesting for example in Rihanna music video ‘you’re the one’ she is holding a black stick, this prop isn’t essential to the video but it gives her fan someone to think about. This is why we choose to incorporate the gold balloon however to some extent the balloon in our media product has a meaning which is freedom; she’s trapped in this forest with nowhere to go and no one to see then she comes across this balloon which symbolises hope and maybe is an indication that she’s going to find her way out soon. Even though our artist make-up in our media product is similar to real artist make-up the outfit is completely the opposite. In the video she’s wearing jean shorts which is classic in a real R&B media Product, she’s also wearing thick grey tights with wellington which isn’t very typical also the white top is very neutral and implies purity. In the case of real media products such and R&B videos this would be a completely different story as women would be wearing tight, leather revealing clothing in order to promote their music however we have decided to do the completely opposite and show less skin. The lighting of our video is bright and clear which is usually what R&B videos are like. When the lighting is bright is allows the audience to focus on the artist more, which is why we choose to flim in the day light.
Touching on the subject of close-up shots again, our video has many of these and this is because we want the audience to focus on the artist and nothing else, also the kind of genre we have chosen has many close- up shots on their artist to show intensity and facial expressions. For example when our artist says the word ‘stranger’ we ensured that there was close- up shots at this point so that the word cloud be emphasised. We also have low angle shots of our artist feet running this shot is significant in so many ways because it shows that she is being chased and is scared just like red riding hood was when she was in the wood. R&B media product is usually based on the artist themselves; the camera is always on them and no one else so this is the reason why the camera hardly ever comes off our artist. At the beginning of the video we see her walking towards the camera this is a distinctive camerawork for the genre we have chosen, I say this because in real R&B media products it’s all about the artist body, for example in Beyonce music videos she has plenty of long shots and this is to show movement which is why we did exactly the same but instead our artist is moving towards the camera.
Our Media product has a variety of different editing, we incorporated video transitions, stop motions, light rays etc. Without these things the video wouldn’t really follow the genre of R&B in today music video industry. The reason I say this is because back in the days there wasn’t much editing in R&B Video, for example the Maria Carey song ‘heartbreaker’ doesn’t have much editing but more of a general storyline. However saying this recently her videos such as ‘obsessed with me’ have more editing and less of a storyline. Even though we do have a storyline it isn’t so straightforward and doesn’t really follow Todorov theory, because at the beginning something or someone is following her which isn’t a happy equilibrium and at the end the just when she thinks she’s free we see that someone chases her and she becomes shocked which therefore means there is no new equilibrium because we don’t get to find out what it was following her and whether or not it made her happy or not which mean that the video ends in a cliff hanger. This is the reason why we added many editing because our video doesn’t really have a storyline and means that it is in non-liner order. The editing of our video tells the story for example in the middle of the music video we see a point of view shot of someone looking for her , this scene has an effect called light rays which makes the clip look gloomy we then speed this up to give the impression that whoever is following her is very angry.
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