In what ways does your media product use the forms and conventions of real media products?

Syra and my music video is under the pop/contemporary rnb genre. Before planning how i wanted my video to be i watched lots of videos from artists in the same genre such as Nicki Minaj, Beyonce, Azealia Banks and Rihanna to help me understand themes and redundant forms which show the type of genre. I really wanted my video to have a comedy theme about it to make it less serious and give the audience an idea of the artists personality. I tried to do this by using choreographed dances. I used jump cuts and synaesthesia alot because i wanted the editing to run smoothly which it did in most music videos of my genre. We feel it is redundant to rnb videos however entropic to pop because it has no storyline. When researching and planning we looked at similar pop/rnb artists such as Beyonce, Rihanna, Rita Ora and Jessie J. It was clear there were redundant features in all the videos however some had a storyline and others just had performance. We wanted our video to be fun and carefree like Rita Ora - Party and Jessie J - Lazerlight. The use of Laura Mulvey's theory, the male gaze was a big element in our video, we had lots of shots of our models midriff, bum and lips to sexualise her because after researching we saw that most videos in this genre have the artist in minimal clothing with shots of their sexual body parts.







There are lots of conventions of a music video of this genre such as a theory called the male gaze by Laura Mulvey, this is the idea that women are presented in media texts for men to look at. We incorporated this largely into our video because after researching our genre it was clear that it was a main feature in rnb/pop music videos. We did this twice, we shot it as a slow movement up her body and edited it so it would move with the music. Doing this it allowed the male gaze but still Synaesthesia is also a common trait in our genre. We did lots of this with our editing so the shots would flow better together. I think we managed to make this fit well into our video and it made it work with our genre. Most rnb music videos feature it and we liked the effect in Beyonce's Video Phone music video where there are flashes of red fitting the beat of the song. Another feature we included in our music video because of the research we had discovered of the genre is bright colours. We didnt have a large amount of this however we felt it gave a informal feel to the video similar to Rihanna's Rude Boy video which is one we really liked and wanted to have similar elements. We did this by setting and costume by having Thea wearing a bright orange beanie stood infront of an orange door which gave an urban feel to the shot. We didnt have the camera angle straight because we felt we didnt want it to be produced like a studio setting, we wanted an informal/urban edge. We felt this is entropic to the genre however we didnt intend our video to be entirely redundant.

My digipak i feel is very redundant to my genre because it connotes women to be independent and strong which rnb/pop female artists are such as Rihanna and Beyonce. I used black and white as a continuous theme which also was included into the music video during the comedy shots. The shots are all mid close ups like most in the music video because after researching i found that most digipaks have a clear similarity to their videos whether its a party scene or just a certain costume. My digipak clearly shows female dominance with the boxing gloves and the poses, I based this on Keri Hilson's Energy Video. I liked this video because it was the same as my genre and I feel the track I was using needed to show how dominant women are becoming in society so using redundant forms to my genre I was able to do that. I feel that boxing gloves connote determination and success which I feel the song was written about so I wanted my star persona to portray this which I carried through to the music video as well by having her training in a gym and punching. I feel my digipak was more redundant to the genre than my music video because I tried to keep the forms very similar using mid close ups to show the star persona. However with the music video I had minimal redundant forms but they were obvious when I did. Something which we focused on was the quirkiness of Azealia Bank's 212 video because we liked the way it was very random in its shots and choreography. To link our video to hers we had the shots which were similar in black and white because the whole of her video is. Her music video is very playful and informal but gives a clear star persona for the audience to see. We felt it was important to have repeat conventions to let the audience relate to other similar videos. We had conventions we had researched on such as unchoreographed dances and visual motifs such as male gaze using lipstick and revealing clothing. I also had Thea pulling similar faces as that of Azealia's to refer to that video. I didn't want the video to be a complete copy of the conventions because the audience wouldn't be as engaged so I had entropic conventions such as the lack of narrative throughout the video, this kept it very unpredictable unlike most pop/rnb videos which feature love stories. My video was basically about the artists day to day life. My main redundant convention was having performance because every music video features this no matter what genre because it is a demand of the record labels. 

                                                                           I had some very entropic shots such as the stop 

motion effect. I liked this because it meant we could remind the audience of the song title so it would fit with the track and we could also edit it to fit the beat. I fitted this into the part when the lyrics sing 'When it comes to making cake, well you can be the icing, I'm still gonna be the cherry on top', this is the only bit of footage which fitted exactly to the lyrics because I wanted entropy. This is similar to videos such as Thrift Shop - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis where throughout the video they have the image fitting the lyrics.