A2 Media Question 1

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

2. Goodwin's Theory
1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics
(e.g. stage performance in metal video, dance routine for boy/girl band).
2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
3. There is a relationship between music and visuals (either illustrative, amplifying, contradicting).
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 (a visual style).
5. There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and
particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body.
6. There is often intertextual reference (to films, tv programmes, other music videos etc).
*Points highlighted in green are relevant to my music video*

3. Generic conventions music video
demonstrates
In my music video me and my group used a range of generic conventions that we found whilst researching,
these include:
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Love story with a happy ending e.g. Katy Perry's 'Hot N Cold'
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Young artist with supposed sense of modern day style e.g. Jessie J and Ariana Grande
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Special effects in editing e.g. Leona Lewis' 'I Got You'
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Set during the day(Bright colours) e.g. Ariana Grande's 'Baby I'
●
Various locations e.g. Britney Spears's “Toxic”
A generic convention that was challenged was having dance scenes in our music video, we did not involve
this as our song was quite slow/medium paced which made the song feel more relaxing, by adding dance
scenes which generally tend to be in a lot of pop music video's, for example Ariana Grande's music video
“Baby I” we believed that this could make the music video unconventional.

4. Relationship between lyrics and
visuals
From my research, I found that the relationship between lyrics and visuals in a Pop music video can vary from the following; illustrative, amplifying,
performance and or contradicting depending on the lyrics and the artist.
After listening to the song, reading the lyrics and receiving audience feedback, I recommended to my group to make our music video a illustrative
music video with some performance.
Audience feedback included comments such “I expect it to be a narrative based music video, so whatever is in the song should be shown in the
music video, how it's made and the effects used is usually down to the production team and what they have access to” and “I expect to see the story
which is told in the song, with possible flashbacks of the love interest she is referring to also I expect to see quite few effects e.g. black and white or
blurred screen for the flashbacks”.
'Click on the Prezi link to see my audience research' →
A major influence of my creative thinking for my music video was Bridget Kelly's music video, Special Delivery.
Like Bridget Kelly's music video,
we used a lot of close ups of our
artist as a build up towards our
chorus as the lyrics in the chorus
become more personal for both of
the artists.
← Click on the pictures to view this music
video.
→

5. Visuals Influenced by Lyrics
From the research I carried out, I noticed that the artists facial expressions could be amplified by the lyrics as well as the body
language, location, mis-en-scene and make-up used, for example, in Jessie J's music video “Who You Are”, the artist does not wear
very bright clothing, uses very dark/dull make up, the location (bedroom) were she is based uses low level lighting and the artist does
not smile throughout the music video. All of the following factors contribute to amplifying the lyrics, so even if the volume was turned
down, the audience/viewers of this music video will be able to tell and get a grasp of what the music video is about.
← A scene from Jessie J's music video were the mood of the music video
can be seen.
Click on the picture to view this music video.
As the factors stated above can heavily impact upon the music video as a
whole, we ensured that our artist's expressions, the location and mis-enscene related to the lyrics, this included making our artist smile a lot as the
song is about a happy and strong relationship, having an open and wide
range of locations to link to the openness of her love life in her lyrics and
the mis-en-scene included e.g. clothing, links well to how we wanted to
market our artist.
A scene from my music video were the mood of the music video can be seen. →
Click on the picture to view this music video.

6. Relationship between music and
visuals
From researching Pop music videos I noticed that some of the music videos I decided to analyse, all
had a strong amplifying relationship between the music and visuals, for example, Jessie J's 'Who
You Are' music video the mis-en-scene and the artist's characteristics, reflects on the music as the
song is a dark, upsetting song and that is what she portrays in the music video.
Our music video has a slow but upbeat feel to it, because of this we ensured that there was a
continuous flow of editing techniques used, smooth movements were made by our characters and the
camera was steady, this was done so that our song matched our music video when it came to the
representation we wanted to create.
A generic convention that I thought would be wise to incorporate in our music video was to have a
limited use of instruments as the majority of instruments that can be heard in our techno-beats such
as Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Leona Lewis. This has become a common trait for a lot of Popstars in
today's society, which almost makes playing instruments seemed old-fashioned, this may not be the
case and something I do not agree with, but as there's only one main stream Pop artist who
successfully uses instruments in her music video's, Taylor Swift, I did not think it would be a good
idea to use instruments in our music video unless we could deliver it as well as or better than Taylor
Swift.

7. Visuals Influenced by Music
The music is the biggest influence on how the visuals are set out, this can be seen in Ariana Grande's “Baby I” music video.
The song is a modern day Pop song and is very upbeat, because of this, the music video is based during a sunny day, all the
actors, actresses, dancers and the artist are all wearing bright colours and there is a lot of dancing in the music video.
The tempo of the song is quite fast, because of this most of the movements of the artist, actors, actresses and dancers are
quite fast as well as the so the editing is synchronized to the beat of the music(this is a key convention of the music video).
The camera is rarely stationary, it continental moves, this gives a real sense of energy and excitement to the video, which the
producers hope will appeals to the audience.
The influence of the music on the visuals is a convention my group and
I decided to follow as in some cases a music video can contradict the
actual music, we believed it to be wiser for the visuals and music to link
as the music video might appear to be pointless if it did not match the
music, an example of this is the School of Seven Bells' music video “ I L
U” the music is quite upbeat and the song is about a love story,
however the music video shows two dull colour puppets and their
human counter parts, the music video ends with one of the puppets
killing the other.
Click on the picture to view
this music video.

8. Demands of the record label
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●
●
According to both Andrew Goodwin and John Stewart of the Oil Factory, record labels have certain demands of what
they want their artist to have in their music video. This includes a dominance of close ups, this heavily influenced the
planning of our music video and the shots we wanted to use and our editing techniques.
I chose Decca records as my record label because they have a wide range of artists of different ethnicities. Another
reason why I chose them was because they only have a few young artists, because of this by adding our artist to their
roster could bring in a new market.
I looked at how their artists are presented and some of the music videos of their artist such as Abigail Washuburn's
City of Refuge and Billie Holiday's My Man, from looking at these, I noticed that none of their artist have a certain
look(Nothing too generic), so this would allow me and my group to play with the look of our artist, none of the artist's
have music videos which present them in an explicit way, so me and my group ensured our artist was presented as a
mature and classy person and the music video's consist of different ethnic groups, in our music video our artist is of
white and black origin and her love interest is of Asian origin.