Devon Thomas

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

I was given a task to create a music video for a song of my choice, me and my group decided to chose the song 'Only Love Can Hurt Like This' by Paloma Faith, which is from the soul genre. Music videos are a visual form of listening/viewing a song are are primarily either performance, narrative or concept based. Music videos became increasingly popular within the 1980's and hey are used as a tactic to promote the artists singing the songs, as they build relationships with the audience through exploiting and revealing their lifestyles and image. Artists aim their music videos towards specific target audiences and use conventions as a technique to appeal to them. For example within the soul genre, artists tend to give off a very oppressive and bleak atmosphere to represent their life experiences in order to attract and appeal to a more mature and conservative audience. Music videos also help the audience become aware of the genre of the artist, this is useful as it can encourage viewers to carry on watching if they associate themselves with this genre. For example soul artists are normally shown to the audience in many high angle shots, this portrays the artists vulnerability to the audience, which allows the to figure out the genre.

Throughout my music video I ensured that there were many conventional soul elements, through using mise-en-scene our artist had numerous costumes that reflected our genre. She wore vintage, quirky clothing including; A big floppy hat, a black leather jacket, black boots and a light pink fluffy coat. The light pink fluffy coat was chose to portray my artists femininity and innocence, which encourages the audience to develop feelings such as pity for her. These pieces of clothing represent the individuality of my artist, as she stands out from the crowd and remains classy, this is stereotypical for the soul genre as most soul artists are old fashioned and creative with their appearance. They do this to represent themselves as independent as they subvert from the mainstream, this is effective as my target audience are not mainstream but of a similar culture to my artist.

My artist also has conventional makeup, she wore bright red lipstick throughout the music video and thick black eyeliner to bold-en her eyes. This is typical makeup for the women within the soul genre as it draws attention to the artists face and makes her look pretty and desirable but subtlety, I chose this as it causes the audience to remember my artist and be aware of her image.

Within the music video the settings I used were also conventional to the genre, the bathroom and bedroom scene allowed the audience to have an insight into the artists personal life, this is because they are very intimate areas within someones home. Using these rooms and showing how the artists reacts within these settings causes a relationship to be built between the artist and audience as they can relate to them. This also makes her seem more vulnerable, due to the revealing nature of where you sleep and wash is very divulging.

Within my music video the theme that I used was conventional to the soul genre, this theme was Heartbreak. The theme was evident throughout my music video in the scenes when my artist is crying into the camera, drinking alcohol to drown her sorrows and looking through pictures of her and her boyfriend while on her bed. These scenes are conventional to the soul genre as they promote the false need of love, they show how depressed and hurt she is now that she has separated from her boyfriend by capturing her upset on screen. This is a very common convention used within soul music videos by portraying the personal and emotional nature of soul music, as soul artists write songs based on their own experiences. This builds a relationship with the audience as they can relate to heartbreak through their own individual experiences as heartbreak is a very common thing to go through within life.

The cinematography within my music video is also conventional to the soul genre as I used many high angles and closeups. High angles were used when my artist is smoking out of the window, in the bath and laying on her bed looking through pictures. These scenes were captured using a high angle as it portrays my artist as weak and vulnerable due to her heartbreak, it shows her to be inferior as she is being looked down on by the audience. Closeups were used when she is crying and when she is singing into the camera during the performance scenes, this camera angle was chosen to capture my artist while she looking sad and emotional as it allows her to connect with the audience because they are aware of how she is feeling. Both angles are conventional to the soul genre as they focus on building a relationship between the visuals and lyrics.

I believe my music video does not challenge or subvert from the soul genre as it follows the stereotypical conventions used within a production from the soul genre. I decided to follow conventions as I believe songs from the soul genre can mainly only be appropriately represented in this way due to the low variety of tempo within most songs and the strong independence of the genre. I called my artist Sophie Mae as the first name of the artist normally remains and I added the 'Mae' to feminise her image and make her seem more relatable because of the common use of this double barrel/middle name. However this could be considered to subvert from the conventions as many existing soul artists only have one name selected to represent their image i.e; Adele, Duffy.

Devon Thomas

Wednesday, 18 February 2015

Question 4

Question 3

Question 2

Monday, 16 February 2015

Question 1

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