This document summarizes how the media product uses and challenges conventions of real pop music videos. It models the artist after pop stars like Beyonce, Pink, and Taylor Swift. It includes intertextual references to movies like "Love Actually" and "The Notebook" that are popular with the target audience. It contrasts fantasy and reality by editing fantasy shots in color and reality shots in black and white, challenging conventions. While some elements like using a mask to signify the relationship were not well received, the producers believe it added a concept style and left room for interpretation. Costume choices were selective to appeal to the target audience.

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

2. Once we had decided on our song choice we began researching the ‘Pop Ballad’ genre of music. We
modelled our artist on other similar artists such as Beyonce, Pink and Taylor Swift; all women who give
across the strong independent image to their target audience; young women. We studied many pop
music videos that shared the same target audience and then began drafting ideas to make our video
look realistic and comply with the conventions of this style of music video but we also wanted to
challenge some of them to make our video memorable and slightly different to all the rest.
P!NK Taylor Swift
Beyonce

3. We found that most pop videos follow a narrative and have aspects of performance in them so we were keen
on sticking with this convention. When studying the lyrics of the song there were obvious chances for
intertextual references ‘He put it on me I put it on’ Cinderella shoe, for example. This gave us the idea to
include some intertextual references but we chose more modern classic love films that proved more popular
with our target audience – Love Actually and The Notebook. I think we were successful in adding in these
references as our audience who had seen the films (the majority) picked up on them and recognised what we
were trying to recreate.
Our Media Product Intertextual Olly Murs – Dance with me Tonight.
Reference to ‘Love Actually’. Intertextual Reference to ‘Say Anything’.

4. From listening to the song we interpreted from it that it was all about fantasy and the ‘fairy-tale’ version of a
love story. We decided to contrast this with reality similar to how Beyonce does in ‘If I were a boy’ but in her
video it’s about role reversal. By doing this I think we reached out to our target audience as every girl has the
same dream of the fairy-tale like happy relationship, and in reality its not always like that. To make this obvious
we decided to edit all our ‘reality’ shots in black and white and the fantasy in colour. We were happy with our
reality shots being in black and white and our fantasy in colour as we thought it really signified the difference
and made it clear to our audience even though the use of the mask wasn't that clear.
Reality shots in Beyonce’s ‘If I Were A Boy’ & Our Media Product.

5. Reverse Role Shot in Beyonce’s
‘If I Were A Boy’.
Fantasy Shot in Our Media Product;
Intertextual Reference to ‘The
Notebook’.

6. Originally we were going to use two different boys but we
then decided to incorporate using a mask, so that we
could just use the one boy to signify what her
relationship with him is really like and what she wants it
to be, by wearing the mask we felt this really made it a
fantasy as using another boy would have been realistic
and simply symbolic of a new relationship. Although it
wasn’t received very well by our audiences who watched
it we still stick by our choice and a few people offered
new interpretations to it including the idea that we used
the mask to symbolise that ‘Love is blind’.
By using the mask we went against the Pop conventions and
made our video darker and gave it more of a ‘gothic’ effect.
By using the mask we added in more of a concept style to
the music video as our intention for its use was slightly
unclear and left it to our audience to interpret what they
thought it meant.
The mask wasn't accepted well with our audience, I think
perhaps this was the reason as they did not expect this to be
in a Pop music video.

7. We chose to add in close-up shots of our fictional artist ‘Imogen Fall’ singing in a simplistic setting, this we
felt helped focus the video on her more than just focusing on the relationship storyline. This is a Pop
convention and is featured in many music videos, including Lana Del Ray’s ‘Video Games’. These shots were
quite neutral in our audience response, with many commenting on how good Paris’s acting is, which pleased
her very much!

8. With our target audience in mind we were very selective in our costume choices; we chose a party dress for the
dinner scenes as many other pop videos feature the artist in party wear. Only for one of our slight twists we
contrasted the party style dress with the dreary reality of the relationship. The artist wore the dress during the
argument with her fiancé and when crying at her dressing table.