2. How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social
groups or issues?
Ans. For our Advanced Media Portfolio we created a Music Promotion Package for a Soul Music Band ‘AKS’.
This Promotion Package includes a Music Video, Digipak and a Website for the band. Our music video has a
linear narrative and was a hybrid between performance, narrative and concepts. For the digipak we made a
front page, inlay, CD and a back cover. The website that we made was using WIX and had several different
pages such as Home, Music, Bio, Contact, Shop and Tour.
The genre for our music video ‘SOUL’. Soul music was the combination of R&B and jazz. Soul music is very
common and it lends itself to many emotions. The tone is very smooth and gentle which helps in
expressing those emotions. Repetition plays a major role in soul music. A variety of instruments are used
together in soul music such as a guitar, piano drums etc.
To understand our genre better I did research on it and looked at the many codes and conventions of soul
music. We looked at music videos specifically based on this particular genre which were Love me now by
John Legend, I'm not the only one by Sam Smith and Hello by Adele. Some of the many codes and
conventions that we looked at were that in almost all of the videos and those were that they had:
• Very soft lighting
• Colors are used to show sense of reality
• Videos are aimed at younger generations
• Medium Close ups and Close ups will be used to show emotions
• Most of the music videos have a narrative or our concept based
3. We discussed how to portray these codes and conventions and in what way we could challenge them. One of the
most important convention followed by every Soul music artist is that in the videos a concept and a narrative is being
shown and the video is about loving someone and caring about that person. These two people can be anyone for
example husband and wife (as seen in John Legends music video), a mother and a son or between any two people.
Our video follows the same convention of showing love in the video and showing a strong relationship between the son
and the mother and shows how the mother accepts the gender of her child.
4. Another convention that we followed was the use of Medium close ups and Close ups to show the emotions of the
characters and by looking clearly at the emotions the audience can feel what they are going through and can relate
very easily.
Soul music artists are mainly shown wearing casual or semi-formal clothing. The artists in our video follow these
same conventions and both wear white shirts but one wear formal black pants underneath and one is wearing black
jeans and scarf. No makeup was done as it looked more natural and the lighting made them look better. To show the
artists Medium Long shots or Medium Close ups are used and we have also used these type of shots.
5. Another key convention that videos based on this genre have
that there are symbols which have a very significant meaning.
Different videos have different symbols and sometimes they
are out of the focus but still hold immense importance. In our
music as we were already focusing on intersexuality we wanted
to show how child abuse is also increasing but we decided to
keep in minimal. We researched and found out that the symbol
for child abuse is a pinwheel and decided to place a pinwheel
somewhere in the video where it wouldn’t be prominent but
still shows that child abuse is something that we should
prevent. We placed the pinwheel in the bag that our
protagonist is packing when he decides to leave the house with
his mother
6. Recent studies show that Approximately 20 million children in our country needed attention from mental health
practitioners. This is why it becomes so critical to raise awareness.
Locations play an important role in telling the narrative. After looking at the videos we decided that our video would be
shot at a home as the narrative demands it and it gave the audience a more sense of reality.
With the help of the narrative and the concepts in our music video we wanted to highlight an issue targeting a specific
social group in Pakistan; Child Abuse and Gender Identity/ Being transgender. In our society transgenders are those
people who enjoy the least amount of respect or rights in Pakistan, due to the controversial Nature and typical mindset
of people. Transgenders are not considered a part of the community. 2% of Pakistan’s population is affected by
transgenderism. Many Pakistani families become aggressive towards them therefore resulting in child abuse which is
another issue highlighted in this video through placing a pinwheel (symbol for child abuse).
Our male protagonist brings these issues forward as he is shown confused about his own gender. But we showed that
the mother is completely fine with him being a transgender. This eliminates the stereotypical factor from the mothers
nature and shows that she cares about her child no matter what his gender is. However the father is against it and beats
the kid and is shown dominant which most men in Pakistan tend to be as that is what the society demands from them.
