Laura Coggin produced a music video for the song "Royals" by Billie Smart. She aimed to challenge conventions of indie pop music videos by creating a narrative with two opposing characters - a glamorous, rich and famous girl and an average, happy girl. For costumes, she dressed one character as a down-to-earth indie pop artist and the other as Marilyn Monroe to contrast how image can change perception. She chose contrasting filming locations like a park for the down-to-earth character and a studio for the Marilyn Monroe character to amplify lyrics visually. While some elements were indie, she used pop conventions for the Marilyn Monroe scenes to depict her as a mainstream star

1. A2 Media Product Evaluation
Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
My name is Laura Coggin and I am the producer of the music video Royals by
Billie Smart.
When creating my video, the first thing I kept in my mind was the genre of my
music video- indie pop. I have tried to keep to the codes and conventions,
however due to the genre being ‘indie’ this gave me some flexibility to be
more creative with my work.
When thinking of a narrative, I decided to challenge the conventions of an
indie pop music video. I completed a detailed analysis for Lana Del Rey’s
‘Summertime Sadness video and also Ellie Goulding’s ‘Beating Heart’ video.
One thing I had discovered was that both narratives were about a loved one
whereas when I analysed the lyrics of my chosen track, they were nothing
along the lines of this type of narrative. I went through each and every line of
the track and worked out an over all meaning of the song. The initial meaning
is how the world desires to be rich and famous, but the reality is that it is a big
goal to look up to. This gave me my narrative idea, which was to portray two
opposing characters, one glamorous rich and famous girl and the other being
an average, happy and carefree girl.
Due to my narrative, choosing costumes was one of the easiest parts of
production. I wanted to show the contrast between two very different stars
played by the same person to show how image can change an audience’s
perspective on an artist. The first and most real side of the character is the
down to earth indie pop girl, wearing a slouchy top, wavy hair and wearing a
flower head band which looked very much like a crown- basically mocking
‘Royals’.
As oppose to that character, we
have a modern Marilyn Monroe,
dressed in a similar famous dress
in the colour black. We went to
the detail of curling her hair and
pinning it to look like Marilyn
Monroe’s and even added the
beauty spot above her lip!

2. For the filming locations, it was obvious that a few very contrasting settings
were to be used because of my two extremely opposing characters. For the
down to earth, carefree girl, I chose the location of ‘summer hill’ park. The
reasoning for this is because when I think of something laid back or an earthy
personality, fields and forests come into mind as it is a 100% natural
environment and can be very relaxing and peaceful at times. The reason I had
chosen quite a scruffy area to shoot some parts is because the lyrics say, “I’m
not proud of my address, in a torn up town, no post code envy”. At this point I
have used Andrew Goodwin’s theory by amplifying the lyrics through the
visuals. Again, I used Goodwin’s theory to think of my Marilyn Monroe
location, which was a studio and the stage, standing under a bright spotlight.
Here the lyrics were contradicted through the visuals as she sings the words
“And we’ll never be royals”. Marilyn Monroe was, in her day, looked at as a
role model, and somewhat seen, as royalty due to the way people would
praise at her feet.
Although a lot of the video is indie when you see the down to earth girl,
singing in a field, I had to use many pop genre conventions when trying to
create my two contrasts. Marilyn Monroe was a big star, very much alike the
mainstream pop artists of today which is why the codes and conventions of
pop had to play a small majority of the music video. However, in some way
these codes and conventions are being mocked when you look at the
narrative of the music video as the audience are swayed towards the down to
earth, bright, bubbly girl, instead of a fake image in which the media creates.
When you look back on my music video, I have used Andrew Goodwin’s
theory of thought beats. I didn’t add this characteristic until my second rough
cut as I used dissolving transitions between my cuts. However when I watched
back, there was something missing. I discovered that because the beats in the
song are so heavy the actual music video wasn’t fitting. But when I cut each
clip to the strong beats of the song it became ten times more effective.