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

RnB Genre Conventions: Challenged

Generally, the artist in most RnB videos, particularly if they are female, are dressed in provocative and suggestive clothing. From our video, it is evident that we did not conform to this convention and have chosen to keep the artist fully dressed at all times. We decided to do this as the narrative of the video was best explained in this way and using nudity or partial nudity throughout the video would not allow us to gain this effect as the meaning of the song would change. We interpreted the song to be a romance in which the male and female are in love. With nudity included, the video would appear to be more of a lust rather than a love which is not the idea that we were going for. Also, the use of provocative clothing would make the female seem very objectified and less sophisticated thus connoting that the male is the dominant partner. However, her full clothing enables us to realise that she does in fact have dignity and having the video based around her, shows that she has power in the relationship and also has a dominant side. This is because she is the full focus for most of the video and most of the attention is based on her.

RnB Genre Conventions: Conformed

Most RnB music videos are based around the topic of lust/love/relationships. Our video conforms to this as we have used a narrative in which the male and the female character are in a relationship and are in love. This can be seen through various scenes within the video, particularly this one where she kisses him on the cheek. We conformed to this topic for our video as the song heavily implied that there was a love story unfolding. If another type of video or another topic was used, it would be very likely that the song and the video would not match and would therefore look weird or inappropriate. Although there was not a high level of intimacy, it was still clear what the aim of the narrative was and what the relationship between the two characters was. This is what we aimed to achieve through out video.

Music Video Conventions: Conformed

Stereotypically, music videos will have their artist displayed within the video. Our music video revolves around the artist and is a narrative based upon her life or at least what appears to be her life. We decided to keep the actual artist as the main character for the video as it adds a sense of realm to the video in the idea that she is singing the song along with acting out what her lyrics are saying. It is also common for the artist to be the main focus of the music video and again this is something that we have conformed to. The artist is singing about her relationship and the video then follows her story about the relationship therefore highlighting that she is the main character and she is the one that the audience must pay attention to. Having the artist as the main focus in a music video helps them to be promoted and gain fame. We took this into consideration and used our artist as the main character so that we could generate a feel of promotion. This becomes particularly apparent when looking at the website and digipak as she dominates most of the images.

RnB Genre Conventions: Conformed

Many RnB videos will feature bright lights as they are generally happy and upbeat songs. In our video, we used a lot of natural lighting like this shot here to emphasise the happiness within the video. Using bright lights helps the audience to empathise with the characters on a deeper level as they can begin to understand and appreciate just how each person is feeling. Seeing as the video is mainly focused on the female character, the lighting allows the audience to understand that she feels happy and even excited about her partner and using the natural light of the day can connote that the day is good and ‘bright’. We conformed to using bright lighting as we want the audience to understand the video is supposed to be romantic and in a sense uplifting and not a gloomy, sad video which does not resemble the essence of the song.

RnB Genre Conventions: Challenged

Many RnB videos have a dance sequence or routine included in the video however our video does not have this element. This image shows a performance by the artist however, she does not dance, only makes facial expressions or facial movements, hence why she is looking up. Our music video is mainly a narrative piece with only a subtle addition of performance. We did not feel that a dance routine was appropriate for our video as the nature of the song was based more around the love between the two characters rather than performing for the actual song. We felt that using a narrative would be more effective for the song as it would enable us to bring out the meaning of the lyrics more to the audience, especially as many of the scenes are reflective of what the lyrics are actually saying.

Music Video Conventions: Conform

Music videos have lots of close ups of the artist throughout the video. This allows the audience to recognise emotions and also identify important lyrics within the song. This particular close up shows how the artist is feeling at the time and by the expression on her face, it is clear that she is happy/excited about something. The use of close ups also help the story to progress as it gives the audience a way of identifying how someone feels and why they could possibly feel this way. It was important for us to use close ups as we wanted to clearly highlight who the main character/artist was and also improve the way in which the audience empathise with the characters. It is important for empathy to be achieved through the video as it makes it easier to understand and also makes the video more relatable, just as Dyer’s star theory would suggest. The audience want something in which they can relate to. This gives the video and artist a better rating and also a better fan base, making them more popular.

Narrative Video Conventions: Conform

Narrative videos have a relationship between the lyrics and the footage. Most of the music video itself is a narrative and this particular shot shows how this works. The character is typing the words onto her phone as a text message exactly how they are appearing in the song at that point. This shows that we have thought about how we are going to connect the lyrics with our video and have carefully thought about how a narrative would fit in with the song. We decided to use this as a way of relating the lyrics and the visuals as it is more of a modern way of connecting with the audience, especially given our target audience for the song. This way of linking the narrative and lyrics adds more diversity into the video, making it more enjoyable to watch and not the same sequence over and over again.

RnB Genre Conventions: Challenged

Our music video does not conform to the conventions of wealthy and rich artists within the RnB genre. From this shot, it is clear that the artist lives in an average house and does not have luxury items which most RnB artists tend to have. However, it could be argued that the artist does in fact display wealth within the video as her phone is an iPhone 5, an expensive phone on the market. Nevertheless, in terms of cars, houses and appearance (jewellery/make up etc), the artist does not have anything special/expensive and so does not conform to the stereotype. We felt that this would work better as a video seeing as the lyrics are focused on love for a person, not for a possession. The phrase ‘money cant buy love’ is particularly important here as it explains exactly how we felt when we were thinking about how to design the video. In my opinion, wealth and love do not match and so having a wealthy female singing about her love would seem out of the ordinary. The focus of the song was not about how rich the person could be and so it was not necessary for such images to be included. This is why we sided for a more average look with a strong focus on the relationship rather than luxuries.

Music Video Conventions: Conformed

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2012697

Our music video has a clear element of editing to the beat which is a convention of music videos in general. Whenever the beat dropped, the camera would switch between the male and the female character until they finally met in the middle. Doing this helped with the flow of the video and made it all piece together smoothly. It also helps to keep with the pace of the song and, seeing as our song was very slow, we needed to make sure that the pace of our video was not too fast for the speed of the song. Editing to the beat allowed us to keep the rhythm of the song, just as most other videos would do and also allowed the story to progress at the speed of the song and not at another pace that would look out of time or incorrect.