This document discusses how the media product challenges conventions of real media products like music videos. It uses forms such as passionate lyrics about love, use of the color red, and portraying the male as vulnerable. It aims to break conventions like overly sexual portrayals of women and unrealistic representations of men. Shots are carefully edited to match lyrics, beats, and emphasize themes like lost love. Overall, it strives to develop genre conventions while also challenging stereotypes through more balanced gender representations and a focus on the narrative over provocative displays.

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

2. Men:
 Jeans Drake – Find Your
 Sweater Love -
 Glasses www.youtube.com/w
 Hat atch?v=Xyv4Bjja8yc
 Jacket
 Jewellery
Women
 Minimal Clothing
 Heels
 Make Up
 Jewellery
In this genre, it presents itself as very passionate , usually about a love interest and passionate love. The
way in which this music video for example Drake’s “Find Your Love” there is the constant use of red to
connote love and romance. The use of colour is to aid the audience into the narrative and emphasize the
lyrics performed in the song. The way in which this song challenges the codes and conventions of
contemporary Hip Hop/ R&B is that it portrays the male actor(Drake) as vulnerable through the use of
camera angles, lighting and colour. This was an inspiration for our music video in which we wanted to break
the convention and challenge it while still developing and keeping the original concept

3.  Women – Similar to the male representation, female artist tend to have
a huge amount of emphasizes on sexuality. The way in which they present
this is through the minimal use of clothing as I mentioned in the previous
slide , the representation conforms to the (one could argue) general
stereotype of women and how they are viewed by society this
representation conforms to Laura Mulvey’s “Male Gaze” in which women
are seen as voyeuristic in the video rather than fetishtic. Recently there has
been a rising movement in breaking away from the convention, music
videos such as Beyonce’s “If I Were A Boy”, this video’s sees women
performing what seems to be a man’s stereotypical role.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWpsOqh8q0M. Our music video tends to
break away from the stereotypical women portrayal and not present the
love interest in a provocative manner.
 Men – Similar to the female representation, male artist are often
topless and is very sexual to highlight the theme of sexual promiscuity. The
use of black/white adds to the sensual imagery of the video and adds a
sexual tone to the music video. An example would be Trey Songz “I
Invented Sex” www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zI3OeNsnvI .
 There are artist’s that break away from the codes and conventions such as
Drake’s Marvin’s Room, in which the artist is actually reminiscing on a past
lover, which also inspired our music video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwyjxsOYnys

4.  Our music video uses various different forms and conventions of real media
products in a variety of ways there are some examples of real media products in
comparison to ours below.
Our Media Product Real Media Product
While our media product is primarily a combination of various Hip Hop/R&B, the video that inspired us
the most was Lupe Fiasco “Out Of My Head” featuring Trey Songz, the way in which it was able to
challenge the stereotype whilst retaining the overall codes and conventions.

5. Our Media Product Real Media Product
As you can see there is similarities between both products , there are elements in our media product which would speak to
our target audience. The lighting in the first panel is very concentrated to show that the attire is completely opposite to
the background placed, this is for effect . Whilst developing on real media products, we feel that it is necessary to
challenge it for creative purposes.

6. We used final cut pro to edit our music video, it proved to be effective in creating
background for the green screen footage. The way in which we edited the video
we had to keep in mind that the rapping and the singing have to be different to
represent a clash in genre. The video that inspired the colourful background was
Chris Brown’s “Forever”, this was used to aid the audience into differentiating
between both genres.

7. The use of camera angles, was helpful in extending the narratives, like the above shots of the
singer in front of a skyscraper was used to connote the arrogance and boastful nature of
contemporary music videos, it is a reference to Jay-Z “Empire State of Mind”.
This is an over the shoulder shot to show
the actor walking by to hand her flowers
The scenery is romantic emphasizing the
narrative and the general concept of lost
love.

8. In order to intricately relate our media product to our target audience.
We cut and placed our footage over key sections of the song. Not only
did this allow for very tight lip syncing but it allowed us to used
different editing techniques, such as cross cuts and continuity editing.
Which is a feature that is prominent in the production of real media
products (music videos)
This is an examples where cuts are used to match the beat as well as
used for lip syncing, this video was key in terms of influencing how and
where we cut and placed our scenes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liZm1im2erU

9. This scene is of our actress
wearing red heels and the
connotation behind this is
love and lust which is a key
concept of the R&B music
genre. This is to lure our
audience into thinking about
the stereotype and whether
or not we implemented that
into our project. Using Roland
Barthes Enigma Code it is
there to signify key plot
points

10.  The following conventions were listed by
Goodwin as attributes which make a successful
music video.
 Demands of the record label(representation of
Artist)
 Link between Lyrical and Visual Content
 Music video Style and Iconography reflects
music genre
 Relationship between the music and the visuals
 Intertextual references
 Star Iconography
 Reference to Voyeurism

11.  Goodwin states that visuals can contradict, amplify and
illustrate the lyrics and music. This states that voyeurism is
clear use within music videos, to frequently objectify the
female performers/actress for display purposes, through the
use of camera angles and editing to show a sexualised image
for the female in the video.
 When analyzing contemporary music videos this was a
recurring theme.
 The way in which we used Andrew Goodwin’s theory in our
music video was to illustrate the lyrics and amplify it showing
key scenes. We put in abstract footage such as the sky to
reflect the lyrics.

12.  Todorov proposed that all narratives(whether
that be plays, books, music videos etc) contain
these five fundamental stages in this order:
 1 – A State of equilibrium (all is as it should be)
 2 – A disruption of that order by an event.
 3- A recognition that the disorder has occurred.
 4 – An attempt to repair the damage of the
disruption.
 5- A return or restoration of a NEW
equilibrium(it does not have to be the same old
system)

13. This is a disruption in
the equilibrium, with
the ex-lover , setting This is the equilibrium – the
in things in motion main artist has not meet his
for the flashback to ex lover, the tone remains
follow. neutral at this point in the
narrative
This is following the
disequilibrium, which shows
This is the new
equilibrium, which
the state of the artist, with
reflects what state the the colours reflecting his
narrative is set in, this is state of mind.
not the same
equilibrium from the
beginning this is the
equilibrium caused by
the events that
occurred

14. We used natural lighting in this shot as a way to show love between boy and
girl together denotes love and affection in particular when both are smiling at
each other. The natural lighting gives the connotation of affectionate love
and compassion.
This is an ode to Lupe Fiasco’s
song which, utilised this to
create a natural glow
emphasizing the naturalistic
approach, which we have used
in our music video

15. Not only did we edit to the
beat but we also edited to the
lyrics as well we done several
things such as add text to
physically display the words of
the song in key places we feel
this was one of our more
creative techniques we used in
order to have a closer
relationship with the genre, we
also used abstract footage in
places such as the sky to
match the lyrics.
The significance of “Heart
Robbed” we presented it to
have two distinct themes.

16. The representation of women in our music
video challenges the forms and conventions of
most Hip Hop and R&B videos by our actresses
not dressed in provocative manner this is to
highlight the fact that she is integral to the
narrative and we wanted a positive
representation of our actress.
In our music video, we tried not to follow the
conventions of the “Male Gaze” when
portraying the female in our video. We dressed
her in casual clothes so that her body(especially
shoulders and legs) is covered. This music video
is about lost love, if we were to have the female
dressed provocatively the storyline would not
fit as it would just seem as if she is flaunting
herself to the male. We tried to keep the
male/female roles balanced to make them
equal entities.

17.  To make this link we edited the majority of
the shots to follow the slow 4/4 beat of the
song.
 In the chorus’ we cut to shots of both the
main artist reminiscing, to show reaction and
evoke emotion.
 We made a strong link between the music
video and the lyrics when the main artist raps
“When I reminisce about you, my god”. In this
case we cut shots of the past and
present, showing the effect of the lost love.

18.  Our music video in essence is a Hip Hop/R&B video, the way in which we went
about it was different. Instead of going with the original concept of the song and
have a sensual tone to our video, we decided to make it a narrative and break the
conventions seen in most Hip Hop/R&B videos. The way in which we used
conventions from media products is that, we had an urban setting, and a variety
of camera angles to display dominance, wealth and competitive nature of Hip
Hop, which is present in majority of Hip Hop videos. We used different
backgrounds to highlight and differentiate between the different genres and
have backgrounds that suits their respective fields, and clothing that suits their
genre of music. The way in which we challenged the conventions was our female
actress, and the way in which she was portrayed was not provocative and did not
have any sexual overtones, we wanted for her to be seen as a former lover
without having to resort to anything sensual.