Evaluation task 1 (Mahdi Maah)

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Codes and Conventions of Music video (Hip Hop/R&B)

Men: Jeans Sweater Glasses Hat Jacket JewelleryWomen Minimal

Clothing Heels Make Up Jewellery

In the Hip Hop/R&B genre, the music videos are generally very passionate , usually about a love interest. For example Drake’s “Find Your Love” there is the constant use of red to connote love and romance to synchronize The use of colour is to aid the audience of the narrative and match certain lyrics like, “I’ll bet if I give all my love". The way in which this song challenges the codes and conventions of contemporary Hip Hop/ R&B is that it portrays the male actor(Drake) as vulnerable through the use of camera angles, lighting and colour, in comparison to other conventional Hip Hop music videos, in which they use low angle shots to demonstrate the dominance and arrogance of the main artist, these conventional Hip Hop music videos insinuate the shallow personalities of rappers/singers. This was an inspiration for our music video in which we wanted to break the convention and challenge it while still developing and keeping the original concept

Drake – Find Your Love - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyv4Bjja8yc

Different Types of Representations And Our Representation

Women – Similar to the male representation, female artists from Hip Hop/R&B, tend to have a huge amount of emphasis on sexuality. The way in which they present this is through the minimal use of clothing as I mentioned in the previous slide , the representation conforms to the (one could argue) general stereotype of women and how they are viewed by society. This representation conforms to Laura Mulvey’s “Male Gaze” in which women are seen as voyeuristic in the video rather than fetishtic. Recently there has been a rising movement in breaking away from the convention, music videos such as Beyonce’s “If I Were A Boy”, this video’s sees women performing what seems to be a man’s stereotypical role. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWpsOqh8q0M. Our music video tends to break away from the stereotypical women portrayal and not present the love interest in a provocative manner.

Men – Similar to the female representation, male artist are often topless and is very sexual to highlight the theme of sexual promiscuity. The use of black/white adds to the sensual imagery of the video and adds a sexual tone to the music video. An example would be Trey Songz “I Invented Sex” www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zI3OeNsnvI .

There are artist’s that break away from the codes and conventions such as Drake’s Marvin’s Room, in which the artist is actually reminiscing on a past lover, which also inspired our music video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwyjxsOYnys

Our Representation When presenting the male gender, we

decided to use colour blue to emphasize the state of melancholia that’s surrounded him, as he is constantly being reminded of his past love, same way in which Drake uses red to reflect the lyrics present in the song. We felt that it was crucial that there should be a clear relationship between the lyrics and the video, following the Andre Goodwin’s theory on what makes a successful music video.

When presenting the female representation, we decided not to go with Laura Mulvey’s “Male Gaze” , we decided to go with a fetishtic portrayal of our female actress, borrowing the inspiration from Beyonce’s “If I Were A Boy”. We wanted to have that clear distinction between the contemporary Hip Hop/R&B, which tend to over-sexualised their female actresses, to make our video stand out from the crowd.

Codes and Conventions (Clothing) Our music video uses various different forms and conventions of real

media products in a variety of ways there are some examples of real media products in comparison to ours below.

Our Media Product

Real Media Product

The top two images, show the similarities with the glasses being the main conventions of Hip Hop, the connotations of being ambiguous, hiding from something and being distinguished. The side by side photos, have a huge amount of emphasis on locality with our music video, the beginning taking place at an underground station, to show the urban aspect because there is a significant amount of graffiti on the sides of the train or the walls, which compliments our video because it is the key conventions of Hip-Hop music videos. The other still image from our music video, was taken place at Crystal Palace Park and the significance of using the tower is because it is the closest thing we have to an Eiffel Tower, which is essentially the love capital of the world, this is to put an emphasis on our narrative and subconciously recognise the use of intertextuality we have used in this music video.

Codes and Conventions (Lighting)

Our Media Product

Real Media Product

As you can see there is similarities between both products , there are elements in our media product which would speak to our target audience. The lighting in the first panel is very concentrated to show that the attire is completely opposite to the background placed, this is to distinguish the artist making him stand out by using opposite colours, because if were to use the colour coordination to match his clothing then it might make him hard to see to the audience because he could potentially blend into the background. Whilst developing on real media products, we feel that it is necessary to challenge it for creative purposes, it makes the audience pay close attention to the performer as he is clear to see and this helps them to digest the lyrics easier and not get distracted

Codes and Conventions (Editing)

We used final cut pro to edit our music video, it proved to be effective in creating background for the green screen footage. The colourful city, represents the colourful aspect of R&B, which is prominent in most R&B music videos. This is to put emphasis on the fact that when two couples love each other then the whole city becomes colourful, it is there to denote happiness and love. The way in which we edited the video we had to keep in mind that the rapping and the singing have to be different to represent a clash in genre, because these two genres are completely distinguished for obvious reasons we had to implement different conventions to make that distinguish clear to the audience and prep them for the chorus. The video that inspired the colourful background was Chris Brown’s “Forever”, this was used to aid the audience into differentiating between both genres.

Codes and Conventions(Camera Angles)

The use of camera angles, was helpful in extending the narratives, like the above shots of our music video, the singer in front of a skyscraper were used to connote the arrogance and boastful nature of contemporary music videos, it is Intertextual reference to Jay-Z “Empire State of Mind”.

This is an over the shoulder shot to show the actor walking by to hand her flowers The scenery is romantic emphasizing the narrative and the general concept of lost love.

Codes and Conventions(Editing)

In order to intricately relate our media product to our target audience. We cut and placed our footage over key sections of the song. Not only did this allow for very tight lip syncing but it allowed us to used different editing techniques, such as cross cuts and continuity editing. Which is a feature that is prominent in the production of real media products (music videos). The effect of on beat editing allowed us to make the video memorable to our audience, because they would notice a pattern we used when cutting the video.

This is an examples where cuts are used to match the beat as well as used for lip syncing, this video was key in terms of influencing how and where we cut and placed our scenes.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liZm1im2erU

Tzvetan Todorov’s Theory Todorov proposed that all narratives(whether

that be plays, books, music videos etc) contain these five fundamental stages in this order:

1 – A State of equilibrium (all is as it should be) 2 – A disruption of that order by an event. 3- A recognition that the disorder has occurred. 4 – An attempt to repair the damage of the

disruption. 5- A return or restoration of a NEW equilibrium(it

does not have to be the same old system)

Our Narrative Structure (Todorov’s Model)

This is the equilibrium – the main artist has not meet his ex lover, the tone remains neutral at this point in the narrative

This is a disruption in the equilibrium, with the ex-lover , setting in things in motion for the flashback to follow.

This is following the disequilibrium, which shows the state of the artist, with the colours reflecting his state of mind.

This is the new equilibrium, which reflects what state the narrative is set in, this is not the same equilibrium from the beginning this is the equilibrium caused by the events that occurred

Uses & Gratifications Model

 The uses and gratifications model does also fit into our music video, due to the diverse meanings behind it; the narrative offers escapism, but also touches ground with reality allowing the target audience to possibly identify with the video; this video can be used and interpret in different ways by the consumer, giving them an active role with dissecting and integrating aspects of the video into their own lives more relatable.

Connotations Used

We used natural lighting in this shot as a way to show love between boy and girl together denotes love and affection in particular when both are smiling at each other. The natural lighting gives the connotation of affectionate love and compassion.

This is an ode to Lupe Fiasco’s song which, utilised this to create a natural glow emphasizing the naturalistic approach, which we have used in our music video

Connotations Used

Not only did we edit on the beat but we also edited to the lyrics as well. We added several things such as add text to physically display the words of the song in key places. We feel this was one of our more creative techniques. we used this in order to have a closer relationship with the genre, we also used abstract footage in places such as the sky to match the lyrics.

The significance of “Heart Robbed”, we presented it to have two distinct themes, where “Heart” is in red to signify love, whereas “Robbed” is presented in black to reflect sinister and dark. We used this to have the effect of oxymoron.

Andrew Goodwin’s Theory according to his book “Dancing in the Distraction Factory”

The following conventions were listed by Goodwin as attributes which make a successful music video.

Demands of the record label(representation of Artist)

Link between Lyrical and Visual Content Music video Style and Iconography reflects

music genre Relationship between the music and the visuals Intertextual references Star Iconography Reference to Voyeurism

Reference To VoyeurismThe representation of women in our music video challenges the forms and conventions of most Hip Hop and R&B videos by our actresses not dressed in provocative manner this is to highlight the fact that she is integral to the narrative and we wanted a positive representation of our actress.

In our music video, we tried not to follow the conventions of the “Male Gaze” when portraying the female in our video. We dressed her in casual clothes so that her body(especially shoulders and legs) was covered. This music video is about lost love, if we were to have the female dressed provocatively the storyline would not fit as it would just seem as if she is flaunting herself to the male. We tried to keep the male/female roles balanced to make them equal entities.

The relationship between lyrics and visuals

To make this link we edited the majority of the shots to follow the slow 4/4 beat of the song.

In the chorus’ we cut to shots of both the main artist reminiscing, to show reaction and evoke emotion.

We made a strong link between the music video and the lyrics when the main artist raps “When I reminisce about you, my god”. In this case we cut shots of the past and present, showing the effect of the lost love.

Conclusion

Our music video in essence is a Hip Hop/R&B video, but the way in which we went about it was different. Instead of going with the original concept of the song and having a sensual tone to our video, we decided to make it a narrative and break the conventions seen in most Hip Hop/R&B videos. The way in which we used conventions from media products is that we had an urban setting, and a variety of camera angles to display dominance, wealth and the competitive nature of Hip Hop, which is present in majority of Hip Hop videos. We used different backgrounds such as the graffiti wall and the colourful city, to highlight and differentiate between the different genres and have backgrounds that suits their respective fields, and clothing that suits their genre of music. The way in which we challenged the conventions was our female actress, and the way in which she was portrayed was not provocative and did not have any sexual overtones, we wanted for her to be seen as a former lover without having to resort to anything sensual.