In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We wanted to challenge common forms of real media products by advertising our artist in a newspaper advert. Recently, as it is the age of social media, most artists use sites such as Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram to promote their music. We wanted to go back to the oldest form of media and use newspaper adverts; as we felt this would reach our target audience more concisely. We wanted to target people who read newspapers often, usually those who live and work in the city and therefore live a busy life; we wanted to capture their attention with the variation of bright purple shades. We felt that these people who live hectic lives are more likely to enjoy calming music. Our target audience is referenced in the title of the digipak, 'The Kids Aren't Alright' as it alludes to the inner child in us all and how perhaps the stressed, or most determined people of us all, aren't alright, they might need uplifting, which is what our album intends to do.
We decided to both conform and challenge the conventions of our music genre: R&B, Soul and Trip Hop, which is seen in these blog posts: R&B, Neo Soul, Trip Hop. Conforming to the 'trip' element of the musical genre trip hop was important for Milly and I, as we knew this was something The Internet conformed to and based their music on. We felt if we stuck to this convention then overall our music video would work well with the song we had chosen and we'd be able to create synergy between the two. Wanting to create the reoccurring calming, relaxing feeling that is associated with trip hop we decided to create a conceptual music video, rather than a narrative or metaphorical one. We actively chose to challenge the stereotypical conventions of the R&B musical genre by straying away from what is usually seen such as minimal clothing and extensive jewellery because for us, our music video was based on displaying how much wealth our artist has, especially as a new and upcoming artist, they wouldn't have much. We wanted to focus on the feeling of the song and create a music video that matched.
Conforming to small elements of the R&B genre, we edited the beginning of our music in greyscale. We decided to do this after gaining inspiration from Anderson.Paak, an R&B musician, seen in this blog post. We felt that not only did this stand out from the rest of the music video in terms of colour, but the introduction would become an iconic part of our music video and remain memorable. This fits with part of the contemporary R&B conventions in terms of slow songs and how they're portrayed in music videos. The greyscale helped show the deep feelings of emotion that is referenced in the lyrics of Under Control and it also showcases various shots, include close ups and medium shots of our artist, which helps us establish them from the start. Something Andrew Goodwin states is crucial in his theory of music videos. The expressions of our artist show her in various emotions ranging from pensive to elation which conform to the genre of R&B. The setting we chose, such as a beach and a canal, conform to the dramatic settings that are displayed in contemporary R&B music videos as they act as a metaphor as to how the artist is feeling. The greyscale also conforms to the soul genre of music as music videos that fit in that category often feature monotone colours and schemes.
Wanting to include an intertexual reference, as it's often seen in the Neo Soul genre, when The Internet released their music video to Get Away, it felt right to me to include shots of the video almost as a tribute to the group that inspired so many of our ideas. Originally wanting to have the projection of the video cast on my face, we realised this had been done so many times before and wanting to consciously challenge the convention, Milly and I decided to film myself as the artist dancing in front of the video projection. Once we edited it on iMovie, this created a lovely silhouette with vivid colours that match the conceptual theme of our music video and ancillary texts.
We consciously decided to challenge the conventions of R&B in terms of how women are portrayed. Both male and female R&B artists utilise the well known phrase 'sex sells' and so they use extreme amounts of sexuality to sell their music. Whether that includes having scantily clad women seen in the background of music videos or female R&B artists wearing promiscuous clothing. Often this leads to the objectification of women in music videos, which was something we wanted to stray away from. We wanted to show a female R&B artist as an dominant ethnic representative without resorting to objectifying the artist and I think we did this well. We purposefully chose clothing that was both feminine, through the use of mini A line skirts and knee high socks, and masculine, through the use of heavy denim jackets and baseball caps.
When choosing a media platform to present our ancillary texts I would chose the platform of social media. It's a platform that has exploded in the past decade as many people predominantly in our target audience of teenagers and young audiences make up the main demographic of people using sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. With the pros being that anyone, everyone, anywhere all over the world can access these sites; news and information can spread incredibly quickly, which would help promote our artist incredibly well. It is also a place where celebrities can directly communicate with fans and therefore music labels can directly see what their consumers want and how best to cater to those needs.
I think overall our media product has proven to be successful in terms of the conventions that we have challenged, as because of this we've also shown that such a well known and iconic music genre such as R&B can be developed. Many female artists are similarly challenging these conventions as society realises that women don't have to be objectified to sell music.
When looking at the conventions of digipaks, its abundantly clear that there's a running theme throughout that ties the whole piece together. This convention was something we wanted to focus on, so that our target audience would recognise our artist based on the media products that they release; simply because they can see the relationship between the digipak and music video. One convention we consciously decided to challenge was the use of using the artist's face on the front cover. Although this does establish the artist, we decided to break away from this convention by placing our artist's face on the back cover, as we wanted to reflect the conceptual music video in our digipak. We wanted to show our artist's stylistic growth, which is why we took the outline of the picture and used it on the front cover, as this links to the lyrical content of the song Under Control - which was a Neo Soul convention. We wanted the artist to seem empty, hollow, as if they were missing something and as the consumer would read through the digipak, they would see all these elements coming back together to create the final, complete picture of the artist. If we were to make a music video for every song on the album, we would show this growth in detail as we felt when creating a concept, it was crucial, not only to the convention, but to our target audience as reflected in our feedback, that we continue the concept and reflect it back into both our music video and ancillary texts.
I think our ancillary texts were successful as they are distinguishable from most media products that fall into the same music genres we focused on. The eye catching colour scheme is consistent which links the digipak, poster and newspaper together, which means that our target audience can become familiar with our artist and has something to relate back to our artist - whenever they see those pink and purple colours they'll think of our artist, which is often how music labels create an artist that can be branded and therefore noticed.
Being a fan of Neo Soul music, I felt that we would able to create a successful media product if we chose a genre we were both familiar with as we would be familiar with the conventions and enter the research and planning with an idea of what we wanted to conform to and challenge. I was inspired by the sound of The Internet, their music being something that both Milly and I frequently listen to and when they released their newest album, Ego Death, we both felt inspired by the songs with Under Control standing out amongst them all.
When approaching the topic of our music video, we decided we
would upload our final product on YouTube - a well known video sharing website
that allows anybody to access it for free. Due to this, it means that anyone is
able to view our music video, which will only further promote and help market
our audience. Founded in 2005, YouTube has helped create many careers for once
ordinary people. Musicians such as Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen and The
Weeknd simply uploaded videos of themselves singing which allowed record scouts, managers and producers to be able to find and quickly sign them. We knew
that by posting our music video on a website that generates billions of dollars
annually, it's clear that it would be an effective platform to promote our
artist.
We decided to both conform and challenge the conventions of our music genre: R&B, Soul and Trip Hop, which is seen in these blog posts: R&B, Neo Soul, Trip Hop. Conforming to the 'trip' element of the musical genre trip hop was important for Milly and I, as we knew this was something The Internet conformed to and based their music on. We felt if we stuck to this convention then overall our music video would work well with the song we had chosen and we'd be able to create synergy between the two. Wanting to create the reoccurring calming, relaxing feeling that is associated with trip hop we decided to create a conceptual music video, rather than a narrative or metaphorical one. We actively chose to challenge the stereotypical conventions of the R&B musical genre by straying away from what is usually seen such as minimal clothing and extensive jewellery because for us, our music video was based on displaying how much wealth our artist has, especially as a new and upcoming artist, they wouldn't have much. We wanted to focus on the feeling of the song and create a music video that matched.
Conforming to small elements of the R&B genre, we edited the beginning of our music in greyscale. We decided to do this after gaining inspiration from Anderson.Paak, an R&B musician, seen in this blog post. We felt that not only did this stand out from the rest of the music video in terms of colour, but the introduction would become an iconic part of our music video and remain memorable. This fits with part of the contemporary R&B conventions in terms of slow songs and how they're portrayed in music videos. The greyscale helped show the deep feelings of emotion that is referenced in the lyrics of Under Control and it also showcases various shots, include close ups and medium shots of our artist, which helps us establish them from the start. Something Andrew Goodwin states is crucial in his theory of music videos. The expressions of our artist show her in various emotions ranging from pensive to elation which conform to the genre of R&B. The setting we chose, such as a beach and a canal, conform to the dramatic settings that are displayed in contemporary R&B music videos as they act as a metaphor as to how the artist is feeling. The greyscale also conforms to the soul genre of music as music videos that fit in that category often feature monotone colours and schemes.Wanting to include an intertexual reference, as it's often seen in the Neo Soul genre, when The Internet released their music video to Get Away, it felt right to me to include shots of the video almost as a tribute to the group that inspired so many of our ideas. Originally wanting to have the projection of the video cast on my face, we realised this had been done so many times before and wanting to consciously challenge the convention, Milly and I decided to film myself as the artist dancing in front of the video projection. Once we edited it on iMovie, this created a lovely silhouette with vivid colours that match the conceptual theme of our music video and ancillary texts.
We consciously decided to challenge the conventions of R&B in terms of how women are portrayed. Both male and female R&B artists utilise the well known phrase 'sex sells' and so they use extreme amounts of sexuality to sell their music. Whether that includes having scantily clad women seen in the background of music videos or female R&B artists wearing promiscuous clothing. Often this leads to the objectification of women in music videos, which was something we wanted to stray away from. We wanted to show a female R&B artist as an dominant ethnic representative without resorting to objectifying the artist and I think we did this well. We purposefully chose clothing that was both feminine, through the use of mini A line skirts and knee high socks, and masculine, through the use of heavy denim jackets and baseball caps.
When choosing a media platform to present our ancillary texts I would chose the platform of social media. It's a platform that has exploded in the past decade as many people predominantly in our target audience of teenagers and young audiences make up the main demographic of people using sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. With the pros being that anyone, everyone, anywhere all over the world can access these sites; news and information can spread incredibly quickly, which would help promote our artist incredibly well. It is also a place where celebrities can directly communicate with fans and therefore music labels can directly see what their consumers want and how best to cater to those needs.
I think overall our media product has proven to be successful in terms of the conventions that we have challenged, as because of this we've also shown that such a well known and iconic music genre such as R&B can be developed. Many female artists are similarly challenging these conventions as society realises that women don't have to be objectified to sell music.
When looking at the conventions of digipaks, its abundantly clear that there's a running theme throughout that ties the whole piece together. This convention was something we wanted to focus on, so that our target audience would recognise our artist based on the media products that they release; simply because they can see the relationship between the digipak and music video. One convention we consciously decided to challenge was the use of using the artist's face on the front cover. Although this does establish the artist, we decided to break away from this convention by placing our artist's face on the back cover, as we wanted to reflect the conceptual music video in our digipak. We wanted to show our artist's stylistic growth, which is why we took the outline of the picture and used it on the front cover, as this links to the lyrical content of the song Under Control - which was a Neo Soul convention. We wanted the artist to seem empty, hollow, as if they were missing something and as the consumer would read through the digipak, they would see all these elements coming back together to create the final, complete picture of the artist. If we were to make a music video for every song on the album, we would show this growth in detail as we felt when creating a concept, it was crucial, not only to the convention, but to our target audience as reflected in our feedback, that we continue the concept and reflect it back into both our music video and ancillary texts.
Being a fan of Neo Soul music, I felt that we would able to create a successful media product if we chose a genre we were both familiar with as we would be familiar with the conventions and enter the research and planning with an idea of what we wanted to conform to and challenge. I was inspired by the sound of The Internet, their music being something that both Milly and I frequently listen to and when they released their newest album, Ego Death, we both felt inspired by the songs with Under Control standing out amongst them all.
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