New evaluation part 1.
- 1. Evaluation Part 1 By Olivia Laherty
- 2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
- 3. Conventions This music video shows all the key representations of the Pop culture. The overall acting and mise-en-scene enables her target audience to relate to her attitudes and the overall song. Throughout this A2 level task I feel music videos like this have really helped me to grasp the basic and developed conventions of real Pop music videos. I learnt that in order to be successful, target audience attraction is key, and relating to them throughout is crucial. When developing this idea further, the introduction of primary and secondary audiences allowed me to understand how to target a wide range of audiences whilst maintaining the mature attitude for my older audience, however still keeping to the traditional ‘Pop’ culture whilst doing this. . Music videos like this allowed me to conform to these conventions and in term create a successful music video. Using Taylor Swifts music video ‘22’, the conventions of the Pop genre became clear. Throughout her music video she has used a wide range of props for example the heart made out of roses, and many outfit changes and scenery's as shown which tell an overall story that portray the characteristics of her younger audience that is targeted. This performance and narrative based music video is representative of the lives of many teenagers in modern day, this is all shown through the use of camera shots and angles that are continuously changing to show Taylor swift with a broad group of friends in different locations. These conventions are later developed through the use of the screen shots cutting to the fast tempo beat of the music. Taylor swift also uses theorists to develop her work, for example through Andrew Goodwins theory whereby her lyrics correspond with her visuals. These conventions of her music video are all representative of her teenage audience, as she shows herself with a group of teenage friends, and as her lyrics states ‘make fun of our ex’s’ which is the main focus point of many teenagers from this age group of 12-17 year olds. The various uses of shots use help to tell the overall story. For example, using long shots create a sense of atmosphere throughout the music video and also helps to set the scene. This in Taylor Swifts music video is used to portray a sense of freedom and happiness amongst herself and her friends. When creating our music video, a lot of the conventions that are included in this Pop video needed to be included in mine. For example the use of close ups and long shots were very helpful to us as they allowed us to create a sense of emotion that needed to be prominent throughout our video.
- 4. Continued.. However, when comparing this to a different style and genre of music, my use of research into the various conventions of music videos broadened. Using Ciara ‘Like a boy’ as an example, I was able to establish the differences of the conventions from different genres. Ciara’s music video targets the ‘RnB’ genre whilst still including aspects from a the Pop culture. There are many ways by which she targeted her audience yet again revolving around the mise-en-scene, however with added importance on the lyrics of her music video. To start, all of her music video is shot in black and white which automatically targets an older audience as it adds a level of sophistication and seriousness to the overall music video. Also, the screen shots show a range of different camera shots, much like Taylor Swifts music video, however they are more intimate and are featured with the artist in an older range of clothing. This image corresponds with the overall feel of the music video as she is linking to the Pop culture through the means of her lyrics. Ciara's music video tells a story of romance following a break up. This relates to the Pop genre as she has used the same storyline following the lyrics of her music video, despite the fact that it’s a performance based music video. From this representation she dresses herself up as a boy in order to relate to the lyrics ‘like a boy’. This attracts her older audience as she creates a rapport with them by telling a story of most teenage experiences. The way she has presented herself also relates to Laura Mulveys theory as she portrays herself through the means of the ‘male gaze theory’, and then following this presents herself as a pretty feminine character. These representations work towards creating a successful music video through the means of dress and dance. These conventions of the screen shots and props link closely to Taylor Swifts music video however at an older audience. Throughout our music video, I have used my research to develop the conventions used. I have used some of the conventions from Taylor Swifts music video for example the lighting, and clothing, however in order to target our older audience we needed to add some conventions from Ciara’s music video as our primary audience focuses around the older teenage audience. We have presented our artist much the same as Taylor Swift whilst using some aspects of Ciara’s music video such as the facial expressions throughout close-ups. This clear link between the two music videos allowed us to successfully target our audience through the means of basic and developed conventions. This also challenges the traditional iconography of Pop genre music videos as we are incorporating two genres and two target audiences.
- 5. What’sincludedandwhy? Throughout this process I learnt the importance of conventions in music video and how much of an impact they have over the overall representation of the music video. The use of close-ups allow the audience to feel the emotions of the music video whilst a long-shot sets the scene and adds towards establishing the music video itself. These conventions have been used throughout the creation of our music video and have all stemmed from the research taken place over the period of work. Even though in the music videos shown, the use of props have been prominent, throughout our music video we have chosen to stay away from too many props. This is because we felt that in order to attract our audience; using the lyrics of the music video we had to express our artists feelings through the means of facial expressions and clothing. Where Ciara’s music video is shot in black and white, we have taken this seriousness and added it into the performance of our music video. Throughout these moments our artist is shot wearing black and white to heighten her overall feelings and upset courageous emotions of going over past memories. However, using Taylor Swifts music video, we incorporated her clothing into the memories of our music videos as it features our artist in a happy, bright and colourful mood due to the fact that her memories are were she was happiest. Using these conventions to portray our artists overall emotions I feel have really helped to set the storyline we was aiming to achieve. Our artist tells a story through the means of facial expressions and close-ups whilst her clothing and the location of the central London scenery; due to the fact that there is a vast range of tourist attractions and activities, all allow our target audience to understand what she’s feelings and what she has gone through.
- 6. Digipak Conventions This real media Digipak products follow the norm of conventions from the Pop genre of music advertisements, all of which have been developed based around the artist’s target audiences. However the different conventions used allow their target audience to be attracted to the CD itself. In Rihanna’s Digipak, the use of close-ups have been used to show her facial expressions which are of considerable seriousness. Even though her Digipak is simplistic, the colours used attract the audience as it allows her to stand out. Her red hair and red lipstick signifies strong feelings of love, strength and passion. This Digipak does not challenge the traditional Pop/RnB advertisements as the bright colours stand out to the audience, and her backgrounds are iconic of the female audience as it shows roses, yet again showing signs of love and happiness and overall femininity. Using these conventions in a Digipak advertisement broadcasts a message of her lyrics throughout her album. This CD advertisement targets an older teenage audience, which is what, as a group we have developed in the creation of our CD Digipak. Ellie Gouldings Digipak allows people to connect with two types of music just from the visuals. Her Digipak creates a sense of the Pop culture whilst incorporating a sense of country music in this. The settings and clothing of the artist portray these conventions which allows two types of audiences to connect both of which from an older teenage age. Her Digipak is set outside, and also shows the artist in a recording studio. This allows an automatic connection between her target audience and herself as we can see the process of her music take place. Even though her Digipak has simplistic conventions, it is still representative of her target audience. This Digipak challenges the normal conventions of a Pop Digipak as she has incorporated two types of music and different settings to what can be considered the norm. From looking at these Digipaks I leant the importance of targeting your audience purely through visuals. The visuals need to express the lyrics and feelings of the artist throughout the music video given. From this, our ideas developed towards what types of imagery we would be using and what type of message we would like to broadcast to our target audiences. These Digipaks really helped us to grasp being able to target a feminine audience, which we then developed and challenged the normal conventions of these CD Digipaks.
- 7. What we used, challenged and developed… This is is a picture of the front cover of our final Digipak. Based on our research into different front covers, as a group, we were able to create a front cover both conventional and appealing to our target audience. Our use in lighting and colours are the most prominent aspect of this front cover. Using Rihanna's Digipak ‘LOUD’ as an example, as an artist she was able to denote what her album was conveying whilst connoting the powerful aspects of being a female artist. From this, we understood the importance of targeting an audience through the use of colour. The colours included stand out because the lighting is bright, and strong. This is completely conventional of our target audience and our sub-culture of the ‘Pop culture’. Whilst these conventions target our main audience, the writing used on the front is something by which we developed in order to establish a hidden meaning behind our Digipak. The writing on our Digipak front cover, has aspects of sophistication and femininity, however is also considerably powerful in the way in which it is presented. We decided to have our artists name in italics, surrounded by black with pink in the middle. The slight black around the sides of the writing shows our artists anger towards her situation fading, and the happiness coming through (through the use of pink), all of which is shown in our music video. However, contrasting with this, the writing of the actual song presented in the music video is of a bigger font and also in italics, but however much darker and in a bold font. This shows basic aspects of our music video. The fact that the name of our music video is of a bigger font allows the audience to see clearly that her feminine ways and sophistication are of bigger prominence, even though throughout our music video she is still showing herself gradually progressing in strength. The storyline of our music video corresponds very closely with this Digipak front cover whilst completely appealing to our target audiences. We decided to develop our music video to be different in comparison to past music videos from the Pop genre, However, this was only because as a group we felt that portraying our artist as strong, whilst still showing feelings would not be easily represented through a simple image of our artist. Portraying our artist as strong was highlighted through the means of her make-up, hair and clothing as they all stand out very clearly making our artist the main focal point of the front page. The colours used are also hugely conventional of our target audience whilst also representing the personal aspects of our artists emotions.
- 8. Advert Conventions These Digipak adverts are suitable for many different types of audiences. However, the conventions vary purely around this. All of the adverts given express the artists in a very serious light which can either be used to portray the lyrics, or themselves as an individual. The original conventions surrounding these Digipak advertisements all include the artist, and the name of the album they are promoting. These conventions are then developed by including a review of the single/album from a newspaper or magazines perspective. This will heighten the fan base for the artist as a good review will promote the artist. Then, adding to this further, including a direct website address allows the audience to connect with the artist on a personal level and interact with the music they are selling. However, the overall selling of the advertisement revolves around the imagery of the advertisement itself. For example, an advertisement needs to be simplistic enough for the audience to have the artist as a main focal point, but also has to be interesting enough to attract the varies audience members to want to listen or purchase the music they are trying to promote. All of the advertisements shown are simplistic but seem to have a hidden message behind the connotations of the artist themselves. For example, Lana Del Rey’s advertisement has high levels of triviality amongst it, which suggests that there is further emotion to be shown in her performances and lyrics. Throughout the creation of our advertisement, we have developed this image further, however challenging it slightly due to the fact that our artist may not be positioned looking directly at the camera. This creates a sense of loneliness about our artist .
- 9. What we used, developed and challenged… This is our finalised Digipak print advertisement. At first glance, our artist stands our automatically due to the fact that she is the main focal point of the advertisement itself. Yet again, based on our research, we found that the majority of print advertisements had their artist in the direct center of their page. This allows a connection with the audience, as they can clearly identify the feelings of the artist through the means of facial expressions and body language, which is why we decided to include this throughout the creation of our own. The dark colours included in our print advertisement relate to the overall music video and album we wanted to create. Even though our CD front cover was bright and colourful, we decided to adapt this concept so that the meanings behind our music video were clear to all members of our target audience. We decided to dress our artist in black so that she would stand out against our background; whereby it looks as though our artist is amongst the spot light. The colour black was used to connote feelings of sadness all of which is represented through the narrative of our music video. However, the brightness of the spotlight effects allows our artist to stand out against the otherwise dark colours which heightens her facial expressions and body language – yet again strong and powerful. We have tried to create this look in order to relate to our target audience as the narrative is very relatable for young teenage girls worldwide. From this, we developed the usual connotations of a print advertisement, as a darker advertisement is usually insinuated with a different type of genre e.g. RnB. This to some extent challenges the conventions of a ‘Pop’ print advertisement as the colours we have used are not conventional unlike our CD front cover. However this print advertisement will appeal very closely to our primary audience of 14 – 21 year olds due to the fact that the storyline is more relatable to this audience. We have also included quotes from Pop magazine ‘Top of the Pops’ as this will attract more members of our audience who read the magazine on a regular basis.
- 10. Continued… Here is another clear example of how we have related to our artist, and used some of the conventions. The writing in our print advertisement corresponds very closely with Demi Lovato’s from the colour of the writing, to the changing fonts throughout the writing. However, this is also an aspect in which we developed. Where Demi Lovato’s writing moves from bold to regular fonts, we changed ours to bold to italic. From this I believe this development added a range of writing styles whilst targeting our female audience and identifying what our music video was trying to represent. As shown, the colours are also the same in our print advertisements, however we have kept the correlation of the writing throughout the CD front cover and print advertisement in order for there to be a link between the two even though the colours may differ.
- 11. As shown here, we have also made clear similarities between the lyrics on the left-hand side. The lyrics are both in a simplistic colour and font. The names of the lyrics also have clear similarities. Our lyrics have very powerful names which correspond closely with the feelings throughout our music video. This makes enables a clear relationship between the album and the music video. In comparison to Demi Lovato’s back page, it is clear that similar conventions have been used. We chose to make clear comparisons between the two due to the fact that we have based our music video around Demi Lovato as an artist, and therefore have the same target audience. As shown, the mise-en-scene between the two women is similar, both portraying power and independence. The gold chain in our image shows this whereas Demi Lovato’s outfit is strong enough allowing the artist to be portrayed in a strong light without the need of a statement necklace. The make-up also has clear similarities of heavy eyes and pink lips. These conventions automatically target our audience and allow a clear link between the two back pages to be prominent. We also allowed a clear relationship to be formed between the imagery, having our artist shown through the means of a medium shot too. This clear link between the two back pages will target our audience hugely as we have opted for the same audience of Demi Lovato – females from the ages of 14 – 21.
- 12. Using Andrew Goodwin's Theory 1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. 2. There is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals. 3. There is a relationship between the music and the visuals. 4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work. 5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking. 6. There are often intertextual references. Throughout the production of our music video and ancillary task we made frequent referencing to Andrew Goodwins theory. One of the most prominent of the 6 is that our visuals correspond very closely with the lyrics. This created an automatic relationship between between all of our tasks and caused our visuals to represent a professional artistic level. Throughout our music video we have also included a range of shots, with intertextual references at some points. Our overall music video strongly convey genre characteristics and I believe was created at a successful level.
- 13. Attractingouraudience We attracted our audience in various ways, all of which originated from our target audience research. To start, we underwent basic research by looking through and analysing the general conventions of Pop music videos and their advertisements. This broadened our knowledge towards the Pop genre and our target audience which in turn allowed a successful creative product to be inevitable. After this, we decided we needed to get an insight into our target audiences thoughts and feelings towards the ideas of our music video and our Digipak production. This proved very helpful especially in terms of interviewing our secondary audience who surprisingly gave a similar approach to our music video as our primary audience. Without this knowledge, targeting our audience would have been based upon general idealist ideologies. From this we found that our target audience prefers music videos of a narrative nature, in order to tell a story which heightens the emotions of the storyline, As shown in our music video, our artist is hugely conventional of our target audience alongside the narrative. Our clothing and make-up were all something strongly considered throughout this process in order to allow maximum attraction of our target audience. In terms of our Digipak, we had to ensure that maximum attraction of our audience was still strong, This meant that our music video had to strongly correspond with our ancillary task. Yet again, audience research and further research into Digipak productions of Pop artists was hugely helpful. However, we had to adapt our imagery from moving to still. This meant that we had to portray the feelings of the music video to our target audience which would attract our audience further as they would develop a rapport with our artist as the storylines often occur in real life, revolving our main primary audience – females from the ages of 14-21. These screen shots taken from our music video clearly show the effects in which we were trying to create. In the first picture we added the use of wording amongst a memory to show what their relationship used to be like. We also continued this by including a zoom in of pictures of the couple before they broke up. Following this our artist was positioned in a clearly isolated position staring directly into the camera as she sings the chorus. This not only highlights her isolation at this time, but shows her strength as the eye level shot shows her upcoming power.
- 14. Adapting conventions In order to make our three products stand out against the hugely competitive market of the Pop culture, we had to adapt our conventions to give a different feel. This involved the slight changes made in our music video. Our music video goes against the general conventions of most music videos which have been stated by theorists. For example, theorist Todorov expresses his ideas of the basic conventions of a music video by stating they involve a equilibrium – disequilibrium – equilibrium. This however, has been adapted in our music video due to the fact that we challenge this statement and begin our music video with a disequilibrium. Even though to most members of our audience, this would appear a small change, we have gone against the general conventions of traditional Pop music videos which in turn makes our music video stand out. As shown below, our ancillary task has been continuously adapted in order to target a widespread audience. I have included the changes made to our front page in order to make it more appealing to our audience, which was achieved through the process of adapting conventions. We significantly changed the lighting and the positioning of our artist, however kept the overall imagery the same. In comparison to our back page, the adapted the conventions to show a darker side to our artist and the album itself. Whilst our print advertisement was hugely adapted in order to portray the huge sense of power and strength insinuated with our artist.