In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I believe that the purpose of a music video is to represent the style of a particular artist, as well as allowing them to communicate the lyrics of the song through a visual performance for the audience. When looking specifically at the pop genre, I found it common for the videos to feature the artist themselves performing the song to camera, with a parallel narrative happening throughout the video, often literally depicting the lyrics being sung. I decided to challenge this convention as I featured only one performance based setting; however I employed the use of props and costume to bring the narrative aspects of my video into the performance so my artist is literally singing about things that are happening around her. It is clear that my artist is aware of the setting she is in as the black and white photos that I hung from the trees fly around her as she sings to the cameras, reflecting the idea that my artist is trying to escape her past and memories that she has of her previous relationship. My artist is frequently depicted directly addressing the audience through eye contact with the camera in the majority of my shots, breaking the fourth wall and connecting with the viewer. Furthermore, I developed Andrew Goodwin’s theory of visual relations as the visuals that I am providing for my audience illustrate particular lyrics in my song. Also I intended to keep the narrative of my music video fairly vague in order to allow my audience to develop their own idea of what the message of the video is. I believe that, in doing this, I am allowing my audience endless boundaries, without restricting them to one particular portrayal of the song, thus making my video adopt the ideas put forward in reception theory.
My video can also be linked to Todorov's theory of equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium, where my artist is placed in her surroundings (equilibrium), is left to reflect upon her good memories before having to let them go (disequilibrium), before finally letting go as she realises that she should’ve made the decision to end her relationship ages ago (new equilibrium). Additionally, I can link my music video to some of the concepts explored in the theory of postmodernism as I have dressed my artist to somewhat mimic the character of Miss Havisham. However, this character role has been reversed as it is my artist that has made the decision to not go through with her wedding. I would describe this form of reference as pastiché because I have utilised the original story and recreated it in a way that celebrates its iconic recognisability.
Overall, I feel that my music video challenges and subverts many of the key conventions and theories associated with the production of music videos. This is mainly down to the fact that most videos of the pop genre include parallel scenes of performance and narrative based footage. I wanted my video to be simplistic with a loose narrative structure. Even though I feel that there is a beginning, middle and end to my video, I have left it up to the audience to piece together their own idea of what the meaning of the video is. However, an obvious convention of music videos is to provide an aesthetically pleasing production that allows the audience to ‘escape’ they’re lives and participate in the artists. I have ensured that this is possible by using eye contact between my artist and the camera throughout the video alongside the woodland setting, which brings the audience outside with the artist. The lack of identity with my location allows the audience to imagine themselves wherever they want to be, leaving no boundaries.
When creating my digipak and magazine advert, I looked into applying the conventions that I have become familiar with as a consumer. For example, my magazine advert includes access to the twitter page and website of my artist, as social networking and technology have become a crucial way for artists to gain success virally. Moreover, when looking at similar, real life media products to my own, I found that there is normally a certain level of cohesion between them. I have emulated this convention by using images that I took on the set of my music video on the inside pages of my digipak and on my magazine advert. I believe that this will also help me to promote the themes of love and nostalgia that I feel accompanies my artist’s image. The image that I chose for my magazine advert also emphasises the idea that my artist is innocent and pure and this can lead her to be portrayed as a role model for the younger members of my target audience. I wanted the iconography of my artist to be very independent, ‘clean’ and I feel that this is often common in female pop artists, for example Taylor Swift. I also wanted to explore the theme of nostalgia through the iconography of my artist and I did so by incorporating the black and white photos into all the products that I created.
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