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

Conventions of music videos in general include lots of close ups of artists. This is to ensure that all audiences know exactly who the artist is. It also suits record label demands. The editing of most music videos usually flows to the beat of the song and the music; fast paced music usually warrants faster and quicker cuts. Music videos also combine narrative shots with performance shots of the artist. Goodwin’s Theory encompasses all of these points and sets a precedent for nearly all music videos to follow. Goodwin’s Theory also states that most music videos will conform to their genre’s characteristics. For example, a rock video would have a stage or band performance and a hip hop video would have a nightclub or party scene.

Conventions of Hip Hop videosThe portrayal of wealth is a central figure to hip hop music videos. This could come in the form of actual money, expensive clothes, cars or mansions. Power is another convention of hip hop videos. In most hip hop videos there will often be a lot of low angle shots of the artist to make them look more powerful and important than the audience. This goes hand in hand with the portrayal of wealth and the lifestyle of most hip hop artists. Finally, party or club scenes are very conventional of hip hop videos. This again goes hand in hand with the idea of wealth and enjoying life.

How our video conforms to hip hop conventionsFirstly, our video conforms to the idea of wealth. We identified this as a key element of hip hop videos and decided we would make the main artist (King J) wear expensive designer clothing and jewellery. We had originally decided that we wanted King J to wear more urban clothing such as tracksuits however we quickly realised it looked too much like a grime video. This is why we decided to have King J looking richer with his choice of clothing.

In order to make King J look powerful we combined expensive clothing with lots of low angle shots of him. This makes the audience look up at him, almost making them subordinate or less powerful than him. It could also be said that the hip hop scene is dominated by male artists, so this convention of low angle shots reinforces the patriarchal society we live in.

Our music video also featured a party scene. We re-created this scene by using party lights and a smoke machine in a dark room. We also used party like props such as plastic cups, cans and glass bottles to make it look more realistic. This scene was important for our video as it both conformed to convention and challenged convention. Just including this scene was conventional in itself, however the way King J is clearly not enjoying himself is a challenge to the conventions of hip hop videos as these scenes are normally used to emphasise the enjoyable lifestyle of hip hop artists. These scenes are usually used to essentially make audiences jealous, however the fact that King J isn’t enjoying himself tells a different story. We wanted it to be like this way as it follows the narrative we have of King J attempting to fit in with different people but failing to as his past can’t escape him.

Relationship with music and visualsAs the song is fairly slow in some places and a bit quicker in others, we decided to use a mixture of longer shots and shorter shots, combined with slower and quicker cuts. The chorus is predominantly the faster paced bit so we decided to have more shots combined in these areas.

The pace of the music is also reflected in the way that the artist mimes the lyrics. For example, in the slower parts King J’s energy is noticeably used less. However, towards the end of the song after the bridge King J appears more energetic and lively, particularly in the parts where he isn’t singing and is purely just acting to the camera. We again took our narrative into consideration when we were filming and directing this.

Relationship between lyrics and visualsWe constructed a narrative based around the lyrics of the song and the original intention of the song. We decided as it was a fairly slow song we would create a more sad and melancholy narrative. The narrative comprised of King J attempting to escape from his past life of being in a gang in order to pursue his dreams of becoming a famous hip hop artist. The video essentially follows his journey from “rags to riches”.To do this we included shots of King J in different settings and backgrounds in order to pursue it as some sort of journey. For example, the video progresses from King J going from a normal living area to a recording studio and ending on shots of him looking at the city around him. This was almost like he was on top of the world and as the city was very urban looking in the background it showed how he did indeed go from “rags to riches”.