Eval task 1
- 2. WHAT ARE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS? ▸ Conventions in music campaigns are signs which create meaning for the audience. Conventions, over the years have essentially created what we call ‘genres’ and helped us differentiate between media products, such as pop and rap music ▸ Conventions allow the audience to easily tell each genre apart, and find what they are looking for. ▸ Conventions can be split into two categories; technical and symbolic conventions. ▸ These can be conveyed through a myriad of different things, such as as set design, camera work, costume and editing.
- 3. THE (FEMALE) POP GENRE ▸ Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid-1950s. ▸ Female pop is a sub genre of pop music, which is essentially a female pop artist. ▸ Typically consists of one ‘beautiful’ female. Usually pop stars are young and tend to be white. ▸ Madonna is known as the ‘Queen of Pop.’ (right) ▸ They follow a defacto set of rigid conventions, which are prevalent through almost all of their videos, appearances, artworks and shows.
- 4. SIMILAR PRODUCTS RESEARCHED: Katy Perry Dua Lipa Miley Cyrus Taylor Swift Britney Spears Mariana Martinez Ariana Grande Christina Aguleria Lady Gaga Selena Gomez Rihanna Mariah Carey Miranda Cosgrove Camila cabello Fergie Zara Larsson Carly Rae Jepsen Kesha Sia Pink Ellie Goulding Jess Glynne Jessie J Demi Levato Victoria Justice
- 5. VIDEO
- 6. SET DESIGN ▸ In Dua Lipa’s video, the set design is very minimalistic, in that it consists of a single chair in a nondescript white room. In our video, we emulated this and used a single red chaise longue on a plain white set. We did this because the pop genre demands a focus on the artist, above all else, so by placing the artist in a white room with nothing but her and what she’s sitting/lying on, the audience instantly focuses on her, effectively engaging them.
- 7. CAMERA WORK ▸ On the left is a screenshot from Britney Spear’s ‘Oops I did it again.’ On the left, the shot used is a close up of the artist, framing the star’s face in near the middle of the shot. We DEVELOPED this further, by placing half of our artist’s face in the middle, and half of her out of focus body. We did this because our modern age has witnessed a rise in idolising women’s bodies and showcasing their features above all else. A prime example of this is all famous pop stars at the moment, such as Ariana Grande, and people like Kim Kardashian.
- 8. PERFORMANCE ▸ On the left is P!nk’s music video, ‘Try’. It utilises a male ‘love interest,’ to keep the audience engaged, as representing both genders in the music video will of course engage both genders watching. We used this performance convention in our music video, as we knew it was appealing to our target demographic, young girls between 10-25. In addition to this, it adhered to the conventions we had in the video previously, such as the themes of romance and love which came through our choice of costume and colour schemes.
- 9. COSTUME ▸ In the music video on the left, Katy Perry chose to have a regal looking white dress, to what I believe is to connote a sense of regality, elegance and innocence. Similarly, in this frame we used a white dress as a costume to connote a sense of elegance and innocence as well. We did this because we wanted to create a greater contrast to the sensuality and romance portrayed when our artist wears her red dress in the red room. This would engage our audience as it makes the costume change later in the video have more of an emotional and visual impact.
- 10. MAKE-UP ▸ Within the female pop genre, beauty is what essentially creates a best-selling artist. There are have not been, in any era, a famous female pop star whose looks were subpar, or aesthetically dissatisfactory. Make-up is then a helpful tool which helps enhance and highlight beautiful features on the artist. For example, on the left, what makes Taylor Swift attractive in this instance is her lips and eyes, and aptly they are well made up. We used this convention on our artist to enhance her eyes, which are a key feature of her beauty, and we also used red lipstick to contrast against her white skin and white couch, which draws more attention on the artist, contributing to her star-image, in that she is the centre of attention.
- 11. EDITING ▸ Generally, pop music videos utilise editing that cuts with the beat of the song. For example, Miley Cyrus’ ‘We can’t stop,’ cuts to a different shot every time we hear the bass beat. We developed this further and used it in our music video at certain times, to convey something that was emotionally charged, such as when our main artist, Cheri is dancing in a white sheet with her lover, we cut every time a piano chord is played. (The 4 screenshots above represent around 4 seconds of the music video respectively.)
- 12. DIGIPAK
- 14. FONT ▸ The album cover on the left is from Madonna’s “you can dance.” The font she uses conveys a girl-like quality, in that it is neatly cursive and looking like it was handwritten. In this way, we used this idea, but developed it to make it appear more feminine. We did this by making the text more ‘girly’ through more decorative cursive, such as the embellishments on the ‘C’ and ‘H,’ which are not on Madonna’s album cover.
- 15. COLOURS ▸ In Taylor Swifts album, ‘Red,’ the main colour schemes on the digipak are red and white. Similarly, on our digipak and music video, our main colour scheme is the dramatic contrast between red and white. As you can see on the left, the artist’s lips are red, the same as the title of the album. Her name in contrast is in white, to make each title more memorable to the audience. On ours, we had a red background, and a white centre. To make it seem more visually appealing, we also included a red lipstick ‘kiss mark’ to add to the star image of our artist; in that she is attractive, welcoming her fans and adores them just as much as they adore her.
- 16. LAYOUT ▸ Both of the album covers have placed their text in the bottom left hand cover. We emulated Carly Rae Jepsen’s layout for her front over, through placing out text in the same place, but we developed it further through placing our artist on the same side, rather than on the right, as we felt it would make the audience recognise and remember the connection between the artists’ name and the artist herself.
- 17. LIGHTING ▸ In Demi Lovato’s ‘Remember December,’ she uses a white light on a white infinity reel, to bring out her eyes, hair and jewellery. Similarly, in our image, we use the same lighting, in order to enhance the colours of our image, specifically the red of her dress and lips, and to improve the sharpness of the iPhones.
- 18. PICTURE ▸ In Ariana Grande’s album cover, she has opted to the current trend of pop stars, where she showcases her whole body, rather than the traditional head or mid shot. We CHALLENGED this convention by using a close up head shot of our artist, putting an emphasis and focus on her facial features (lips and mouth) rather than her body, as is the case in Ariana’s cover, which showcases her sleek limbs. We did this as a way of ‘surprising’ the audience in what they would traditionally expect, and to engage them to what we think is more of an attractive feature of our artist: her blue eyes, symmetrical lips and subtle nose. Also by showcasing her face more than anything, it adds to her star image to make her appear like a goddess, as her face is a sufficient expression of her beauty.
- 19. WEBSITE
- 25. OVERVIEW ▸ Our website was largely inspired using similar conventions from existing pop websites. ▸ We included a homepage, gallery, tour and music page on our website, in line with what typically appears on female pop websites. ▸ In addition to this, we placed a signup to our artist’s mailing list on the homepage of our website, which would be the first thing the audience would see when they opened the website. Typically on pop websites they encourage you signing up to their mailing lists, but rather in the corner of the webpage. In this way we developed this idea by making it the first thing the audience sees, in order to encourage them further.
- 26. HOMEPAGE ▸ On our homepage, we challenged the conventions of typical pop star’s homepages. This is because, typically, they use a single colour or a colour gradient as their background. On our homepage, we use tiled GIFs of our artist as the background, to make it seem as if the homepage was “Cheri-Central.” We did this as we felt our target audience would be more engaged with a GIF of our artist, than just a solitary image. ▸ We also showed our music video on the homepage of our website, but showed it without audio. This is because audio that plays by itself on webpages can be intrusive, and annoying. In this way we developed the convention of having an artist’s music video on the homepage, as it will play by itself, but without annoying the audience or potentially embarrassing them with the audio. Instead, we give the audience the choice of choosing to listen to the song themselves, by using the ‘hover’ feature, which turns the video into a player for the song, where the audience can click on the play button to hear it. ▸ Our homepage contains the music video, information on the new album, tour dates and social media links. This is using conventions of our genre, as almost all of the pop genre home pages contain these.
- 27. COLOUR SCHEME ▸ Like the rest of our campaign, we relied heavily on using the same colour scheme; cherry red and pure white. We did this because we saw that other artists do similar things with their campaigns, and so we USED this convention, as it has been proven to be engaging and successful in the pop genre. By using the same colour scheme on our website, the audience will be able to create more associations to the album itself (what we are trying to promote).
- 28. TOUR DATES + GALLERY ▸ Through our research we saw that almost all female pop stars advertised their tour dates on their website. ▸ In addition to this, they all typically had a gallery, with a range of images of themselves, both professional and candid. ▸ In this way we used the conventions of similar pop stars. However, we did develop the concept of the gallery further, by including our artists “own images” pictures she has taken herself, to make her seem more down-to-earth. In this way, we developed the gallery convention, by making it more personal to our artist, and showcase another ‘artistic’ side of herself.