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1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
Music videos generally conform this idea that they abide by particular
conventions for audience purposes – for example those who listen to Blink 182
would most likely listen to Sum 41, and you would find that their style and music
videos follow the same conventions – High school, partying and skating.
However the music choice Girl originally by Jamie XX of which we chose, is a
very authentic song alike other songs produced by Jamie XX as he integrates
funk, electric and garage music into one. This meant the genre was ambiguous;
therefore the conventions were ambiguous also.
The Uses & Gratifications Model
Bulmer and Katz (1974)
• The audience is active
• The audience uses the text and is not used by it
• The audience uses the text for its own gratification
or pleasure
• The audience is free to reject, use or play with
media meanings.

2. We researched into other Jamie XX songs, and similar music artists such as James Blake,
concluding that this kind of music generally fitted an ‘arty’ style and depicted the artists
culture. We decided that SPCTRM’s audience would be 16-21, as his music could be heard in
clubs, gigs and festivals, which would appeal to this age range. They would be heavily
associated in social media such as Tumblr, which is the style we decided to execute in our
music video.

3. Girl has no lyrics except from ‘I want your love’ and ‘Give me your love’. Using this as a
guideline, we decided a montage would be appropriate to this style of music and would narrate
a some-what love story. The idea of a relationship in our music video was completely relevant
to our target audience, as we wanted to show exactly what the audience seek such as
relationships that they see on Tumblr. Our music video challenges Adorno and Horkheimers’
theory that music videos follow standards for distribution purposes – the fact that Girl is quite
authentic suggests it would be more challenging to have a
target audience, however the record label Young
Turks produces similar material therefore there
must be an audience (as before mentioned). Our
music video has a very cinematic style to it
influenced by director Gaspar Noe which
particularly shows an original style with in convent-
ions of music videos.

4. Although the genre conventions of our media product was fairly random, we still
researched into genres such as electronic which Girl could fit into. During our research,
we found out that Girl was originally produced in the 80s by another artist, therefore we
began researching music in the 80s and found electronic music was popular because of
the increase of technology. I came across Go West – We Close Our Eyes (1985) which
used these random elements and use of colours which is linked to this era. We decided
our theme/style would be colour, concluding in our artist’s name SPCTRM, and our music
video would include colours and lights.