Evaluation Script - Q1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products
Inspiration from videos
Compare and contrast your video to others, costumes and editing etc

When producing our music video we looked into the genre of pop and r&b and the conventions in which came with it. We found that in a stereotypical female video there was a use of emotions to carry a certain meaning as seen in our video the actress comes across as quite an aggressive frustrated character, it is this use of emotion in which allows us to portray the underlying idea of the actress being fed up of hiding who she is and furthermore linking in the frustration of her being embarrassed of being herself. Another convention was the use of males throughout a video and the negative reflection they tend to give off, we decided in our video to use the males in order to show the female as the dominating sex, we did this by having the actress controlling the males and their every movement as if they were helpless against her, it is here were we can furthermore link in the expression of feelings that the actress has towards male and the idea that she is fed up of them being in control and abusing her so she is getting her revenge. The feminist theory can be found from this as it is showing the diversity of the female actress and how she is standing up to the male and is no longer an inferior sex, which goes against the usual representation of woman in media as the ‘weaker sex’. Appearances in a female r&b video are important as the visuals should match the lyrics but a use of fashionable/explicit clothing is also required, it is here where our video can be directly linked as we focused on the lyrical use in order to block the video, for example in the first verse the lyrics ‘I get so hungry when you say you love me’ are represented by the actress circling the male character and gradually making her posture straight directly in front of him, from this blocking you are able to recognize the actress as an animal and the idea of her being hungry so circling her prey before she attacks. The clothing used throughout contributes a great deal to the video as it represents the actress in her different forms, for example in the second verse we dressed the actress in a leopard print leotard, this allowed us to show her as the animal she was being represented as. When dressing the character in her casual clothing we focused on other r&b/pop singers and the clothing that can be found from that genre, an example of this can be the use of the high waisted shorts as the pop artist pixie lott wears these and the r&b artist nicki minaj, this shows that we have took into consideration what is fashionable in the genre so that it matches our video continuity. The clothing which we chose for the actress was explicit across the chest area, we decided on this as we felt that it was this body feature which caught the males attention the most, it is here that Laura Mulvey can be linked and the theory of the male gaze as the notion of looking is directed towards the females body parts.
Inspiration for our video came from various media products; we focused on videos within the genre but also looked into how certain videos managed to create an uneasy atmosphere. In Rihanna’s disturbia you see the use of jolted head movements, we included this in our music video as it gave the illusion that the actress was not stable or in the correct frame of mind, super imposing of two scenes is also included in both the videos, in Rihanna’s video it is used to represent the singers mind and show her as a trapped individual who cannot get away, we took inspiration from this idea but altered it slightly so that the super imposing in our video was of the male actor running in slow motion and the female laughing, it was here that we gave the illusion the male actor cannot get away from the female and it is almost like a game in which humors her showing furthermore the twisted mind of the actress. Fast pace editing is included throughout Rihanna’s video and our own, Rihannas video uses the editing in order to represent the singer as distorted and unlifelike, however in our video we used the editing when the actress was behind bars in order to shake them vigorously, this allowed the audience to see that the actress in our video is trapped and frustrated and wished to escape. The dance sequence, which is included within our video, has numerous inspirations. Rihanna’s distrubia has the dancers walk into position with jolted body movements, similarly in our video we had the dancers walk into their positions acting weak and distorted as if they had just rose from the dead this allowed the slight genre of horror in which we wanted to include to be found as the idea of people rising from the dead is unnatural, another video which inspired us for the dance routine was Beatfreakz Somebodys watching me, the video contains humor alongside the horror through the use of representing well known singers such as the pussycat dolls in a different way, the pussycorpse trolls, we decided to use this idea but rather than change the actors we used the well known dance routine the Macarena, it is here where the humor can be found as the audience will recognize the dance in the video so it will therefore stand out to them but alongside this in relation to the rest of the video it is quite random so will therefore be an entertaining surprise for them.
Another video in which inspired us was Lady gaga’s paparazzi, throughout her video she uses still images of actors who appear to be dead, this too can be found in our video as we felt that this allowed the horror of the video to really stand out through the idea that the actress has murdered these people and is now showing the audience openly and willingly, this then furthermore links in with the underlying emotion of the video and the idea that the actress is no longer afraid to say this is me and I’m not afraid to show anyone.
The final video that we took inspiration from was Jessi J’s Nobody’s perfect. A tea party scene was shot of the singer having a miserable time whilst the other actors around the table were enjoying themselves, we used the idea of a tea party but altered it so that the actors around the table were the people who she had killed in prior scenes and the actress in our video was the one enjoying herself. This gave the illusion that the actress was playing with dead body’s and again linked in the theme of horror. We felt that by including this scene the audience would see the twisted side to the actress and see that she is not a female to be messed with.
When linking in theorists to our video Carol Vernallis can be brought in through our narrative, editing, camera movements and framing and diegesis. Carol says that in narrative the video is a visual response to the music, this can be seen with the narrative in our video as the footage we created was based around a female attacking the male species like a cannibal, for example when the lyrics 'now I'm gonna eat you fool' are used a clip of the female actress going to attack the male actor is used to demonstrate that she is about to feast upon him. Carol furthermore goes on to say that in the narrative a theme/narrative may be run through the video but in a montage style, again this can be found within our video as we wished to show the underlying stages of what the actress goes through and how she gradually becomes more open with her true self. We did this by beginning with the female actress attacking only one male allowing us to represent that she is just beginning to stand her ground and find her feet, we then continued to use footage including various other male actors in which the actress had attached which allowed us to represent that the actress is beginning to feel confident about her true self, we then further more used a scene in which all the male actors are based around a table and are being controlled by the actress representing that she has come even further and is now not afraid to stand her ground and show who she truly is. When it comes to editing Carol said that editing may match the musical phrase or beat, it is this specific point which can be found continuously throughout our music video as through the strong beats constantly used and also the creepy storyline that comes with the song we felt that this would be most effective as it gives the audience the idea that there is a lot going on and things aren't simple. A further point that Carol said with editing is that it may become foregrounded – the edits may be really obvious, to draw attention to themselves as opposed to invisible, continuity editing, in our music video the editing techniques such as super imposing, fast pace editing and filters stand out clearly in the video this is due to the context of what is going on in the scene and it allows that certain section of footage to stand out for a particular meaning, for example the super imposing is used to show the actress as an insecure person and although the 'evil laugh' is silent we are still able to recognize that there is evil in her giving us an uneasy attitude towards her. We felt that through allowing the editing techniques to stand out more clearly it would be most effective as it allows the audience to understand the comparison between the actress to an animal in her behavioral ways behind bars but also allows them to understand the actress and her emotions more and also allows the video to link more freely into the horror genre. Camera Movements and Framing Carol says that When it comes to shot types, extremes are very common and also The camera may move in time with the music. These two points are contained in our music video however our music video challenges point one. We decided that a variety of different length shots would come across as more professional however we focused on mainly medium shots, medium close ups and meat shots. Although we did use long shots in footage, such as when the male actor is running along a path way to get away from the actress, we found that the more frequent shot in our video was medium close up. This length of shot allowed us to focus on the actress's facial expressions but through the shot being not too close to her face gave the idea of that she does not want her space invading so is keeping a distance. As for the second point of the camera moving in time with the music we used the zoom in and out at various parts within the video in order to create the illusion that the audience is creeping towards the actress but is then frighted away from her, allowing the actress to again have a uneasy attitude and create the idea that she is not safe. We ensured that on each beat of the song the camera was zoomed in and out in time in order to match the music and be of a professional standard. The final concept that Carol talks about is Diegesis and she states that Actions are not necessarily completed – they may be disrupted or interrupted in someway. Our music video contained the genre horror and it is from this that we included scenes of the actress 'attacking males' however we do not directly show the actress attacking them this is cause we had to bare in mind the audience and also the storyline of our piece as if we had included scenes of the actress biting the males it would have become too graphic for people of younger ages and also the underlying storyline of the actress becoming free and not scared to show what she is would be lost amongst the scenes as they would have no true relevance. It is from this that we only hinted the actress was attacking the males and therefore the actions of what she was doing were not completed and the next scene stepped in, for example on the lyrics 'now I'm gunna eat you fool' the actress pulls the male actors head back and leans in as if to bite his neck creating the illusion that she has attacked him but without showing the audience anything.