Written version of question one

1. Media evaluation
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
The products I have created both conform to and challenge conventions of real
media products, specifically the standards of music videos that have become the
hegemonic norm within the K-Pop industry. Whilst researching, I noticed certain
conventions of K-Pop music videos that I did not personally agree with due to the
indirect messages that are encoded by the producers/entertainment companies to
the audience. K-Pop has become a globalized phenomenon with artists making a
significant impact in the Western world. The look of the star in K-Pop music videos
follow the stereotypical portrayals of females and males. Females are either to dress
cutely or sexily depending on their concept, these are the most common portrayals
found in music videos which I personally did not want to conform to. The consensus
view for K-Pop music videos appears to be that the physical attributes to whoever is
on screen, holds the top spot of what producers take into consideration. Artists have
to remain at a certain weight (which are often alarmingly unhealthy) and females
notably are subjected into wearing tight fitting and short clothing in music videos as
this is what attracts their fans (most fans of female artists being males). From
watching many K-Pop music videos, it was clear that there was a separation of the
‘good-looking’ and the not so good-looking within groups. Certain members will not
have as much screen time as others due to their physical appearance. A convention
that stems from this is the division of specific roles each member is in charge of. For
example, each member will be assigned to a certain role like the leader (who is
usually the oldest member), rapper, lead vocalist and the visual. Having a role such
as the visual infers to this idea that that member is the ideal way one should look like
and fans should aspire to be. It also causes members to have low self-esteem or feel
pressurized to maintain their image. This image of the K-Pop world is detrimental to
the artist and the audience of K-Pop and thus I chose not to create products,
especially my music video as it is a moving image production, to further perpetuate
this unhealthy image of how the ‘ideal human’ should look like. Alternatively, I
wanted to create a narrative based music video that conveys the importance of
values such as love, responsibility, and dependency. I wanted the meaning of the
song to be the focal point and not have to be concerned with how the artist looks in
front of cameras as such.
Boy groups in particular, have been dominating the industry for more than a decade.
The main audience of K-Pop is actually the female demographic within Korea who
are mostly within the younger cohort and this specific range of audience means how
I chose to represent my artist in the music video was highly important as this
audience is arguably the most impressionable. Therefore, the song I chose for the
creation of my music, called Dinosaur by AKMU, is technically identified as K-Pop
however it is also a hybrid between Folk and EDM. Dinosaur being a song that is
associated with three distinct genres meant I had plenty of media products to take
inspiration from and create a music video that stands for the things I believe to be
important, i.e. the moral of the story.
There are conventions of K-Pop music videos that I chose to include in my own as
these helped make my magazine advert and digipak unique in comparison to what

2. we see in the Western music industry. Specifically, the use of vibrant colours was
definitely something I incorporated into my ancillary tasks. Colour is an element of
visual language and usually marks the first thing that catches one’s eyes, hence,
having bold colours as my house theme enabled my magazine advert and digipak to
guarantee people would recognise my work. K-Pop music videos are thought to be
the most visually aesthetic ones as the use of bright colours from the artist mise-en-
scene to the location mise-en-scene come together to make a strikingly bold
statement. The two main colours that were my house theme were yellow and blue –
this is an odd pairing but actually adds to the purpose of promoting the product as its
contrasting visual aspect will make it that much easier for the audience to spot.
Colour is very flexible in the sense that by slightly changing the levels of saturation or
opacity, one colour can create different aesthetics and produce different moods. This
was something I took into consideration when deciding what colour theme I was to
go with. Yellow and blue can be harsh to the eyes if they are too bright so I changed
the opacity of both colours to make them pastel shades that worked better. Yellow
and blue have similar connotations – one being happiness. Connoting feelings like
happiness were one of the deciding factors that led me to choose these two colours
as my final choice. My music video shows the relationship of two siblings and how
they interact with one another on a daily basis, so using blue and yellow for the
magazine advert and digipak further highlighted the youthfulness of the characters
that I wanted to portray.
In terms of the technical choices I made for my music video, I focused on the
meaning and conventions of Folk and EDM music. I was not familiar with either
genre but after reading about their respected history and watching music videos for
songs of both genres I noted the camera angles and editing techniques that were
used. Folk songs originate from communities whereby people would often sing about
social issues or family stories. Dinosaur follows the traditional view of folk music as it
describes a personal story of the artists; the dinosaur is a metaphor used to describe
a debt collector who came and wrecked their house when they were little. The song
describes a personal experience and thus falls under the Folk category. From
understanding what Folk music really is, I chose to shoot many close-up and mid-
shots of the actors as these capture the facial expressions at an intimate level that a
long shot cannot do. Folk music tells stories, and the emotions felt by those featured
in the videos are key signifiers of what is going on in the story. Through the use of
close-ups, the audience is invited to share the feelings of the character and are
drawn into the personal space of the character. This is more significant as the
international audience of K-Pop can only rely on what they see on screen due to the
language barrier and so having such shots makes it easy for the audience to
understand and follow the story regardless of whether they understand what the
song is about. EDM on the other hand is music that is primarily used in nightclubs
and similar settings as they are tense and build up in tempo quite drastically. For this
reason, editing seemed to be the appropriate feature to focus on when watching
music videos as my song also builds up during the choruses. Fast cut editing was a
common editing technique used in EDM music videos to match the beat of the song
and this translated into how I edited my music video. For the choruses as they built
up, I used fast cut editing to not only match the beat of the song but also keep the
audience interested as there was a variation of editing techniques used. Andrew
Goodwin states there is a relationship between the visuals and the music. This refers
to the editing techniques used post-production whereby the cuts and edits of a music

3. video are in sync with the rhythm and beat of the song. In the pre-production stages,
I had planned the parts of the song I was going to use a different shot by marking the
second the beat drops or when the instrumental has been stripped. Personally, I
believe that my music video has successfully followed the link between visuals and
music as there are a diverse use of various editing techniques like fast cutting and
split screen to invoke a feeling of nostalgia that the audience will decode and relate
to.
The images I used for the ancillary tasks also varied between close-ups and mid-
shots in respect of Folk music. The images highlight the actors’ innocence as all the
audience can see are their faces. The images used on the digipak in particular (with
the exception of the front cover image) all only show the faces that are smiling.
Having close-ups avoids the actors from looking unnatural as they only need to focus
on their facial expression instead of worrying about their body language too. Its
simplicity links to the nature of children in the sense that they don’t overthink things
and convey honest/true emotions when in front of the camera. Similarly, the images
used in the magazine advert are a close-up and mid-shot – the mid-shot meant the
location used was on display. The images were taken in a bedroom that has a bunk
bed. Having the actor sitting at the top of the stairs with posters and books behind
him make the theme of youth more realistic as the location belongs to a child.
Lighting played a big role in my ancillary tasks. Both products have images on them
that were taken with blue fairy lights being the only form of light used during the
production stages. I chose to use blue fairy lights as I realised that when on the
night-portrait setting on the Canon 550D, the images had a blue/green hue to them
that highlighted certain features of the actor’s faces’. This use of colour once again
leads back to the conventional use of vibrant colours in K-Pop music videos but also
to how EDM music relies on colour in music videos and the setting of nightclubs all
feature disco lights and etc.
The song is sung in Korean which meant that the international fan base would not
understand what the artists are singing about, but in these cases, most music videos
include English subtitles so that more of the audience can understand. Following
this, I also added English subtitles to my music video by adding a title sequence to
every scene a new lyric was sung so that I could choose the font, colour and
positioning of the words rather than relying on the automated captions services like
YouTube provide. It also determines the accuracy of the translation which is an
important factor to take into consideration as some videos get the words wrong and
cause it to lose all meaning. Language, in general, was a big part that featured in all
three of my products as I also used the Korean language, Hangeul, to write the
artists name, AKMU, in their Korean spelling. From having analysed various
magazine adverts, I realised there was a combination of English and Hangeul used
which may be for promotional reasons. In this respect, I followed another convention
of real media products as this was something that would benefit me as my product
would reach a wider audience instead of restricting me to those who only know one
of the two languages.
In accordance to Andrew Goodwin, it is a narrative, illustration based music video as
it tells the story of two siblings and what is shown on screen corresponds to what the
lyrics are. It is a circular narrative as the story and characters end where they

4. started, there is no actual story but rather the theme of love has been applied
through the narrative. Goodwin argues that within music videos, there is a
relationship between lyrics and visuals with the micro-features like mise-en-scene
often matching with the lyrics of the song the video is representing. This is true for
my music video as, throughout it, there are different kinds of dinosaurs (toy figurines,
dinosaur shadow, and dinosaur drawing) which evidently relates to the title and
chorus of the song. Although I have not entirely followed the true meaning of the
song, I applied similar themes to the video that still correspond with what is on the
screen. The older sister is shown taking care of her younger brother and lets him
know that he can rely on her unconditionally. It also conforms to his idea that music
videos demonstrate genre characteristics in the fact that my music video is a
narrative one which is conventional for Folk music. There are certain features that
are naturally expected out of a music video and they are dependent on the genre of
the music. My music video is for a folk song and so the expectation would be the use
of close-ups and mid-shots which I have demonstrated throughout the video.