Evaluation Question 1

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

When choosing which media platform we wanted to upload our final product to, we chose YouTube- an easily accessible website that allows people to view videos for free. Choosing a website that enables anyone to watch the product means that we would be available to a mass audience, which is inevitably good for marketing. Founded in 2005, YouTube quickly became one of the most used media platforms, along with Facebook and Twitter. Many popular artists used the website before their fame, and would often get recognised and scouted by record producers. One artist that's particularly known for being found on this site is Justin Bieber, who is now a world known star in the eyes of the media. Thus, the successful YouTube site is clearly an effective website to promote our artist.

Instead of cohering to the typical forms of real media products in the 21st century, we decided that we would advertise our artist in a tour poster. One factor to why we chose a tour poster, is because of the people it attracts. Tour posters can easily be uploaded as an image (as shown here) onto social media. Individuals that are more likely to use social media are males and females between the ages of 15 and 25. However, it also attracts a larger proportion of age groups as more and more people join social media everyday. Within this varied age group is our own target audience that we initially wanted to appeal to (16-22), therefore making it a significant and effective way of promoting our product. As well as this, our tour poster can be put into a magazine. Magazine's are usually a colourful and eye catching product that appeals to the eyes of the readers, which is similar to what we were trying to achieve for our advert/poster. Although most of the individuals within our target audience use social media to get their daily news, magazines are the next best resource as they provide gossip stories and fashion icons that would entice our target audience to read and come across our advert. Our title 'Gangsta' would fit in well with the magazine advert as the individuals in our target audience age group would most likely be going through their rebellious adolescent years, meaning this would catch their attention as they would be able to relate to the edgy term and would be intrigued to research the artist and her products. 

 How we subverted to and conformed to the R&B genre

Nikki, Libby and I decided to conform to and challenge the typical conventions of the R&B and R&B Soul genre. Usually, R&B artists are male figures that possess all of the dominant features of an alpha male. Women, on the other hand, are seen as submissive and sexual figures that appeal to the eye of male viewers, due to their revealing costumes and seductive makeup. We decided to challenge this by switching the roles of the genders. Mikah, our actress, is portrayed as an independent and edgy character that would easily be able to adopt the characteristics of a typical male figure. 

We decided to challenge these conventions due to the development of our modern-day society; women are now seen as more independent than ever, meaning our music video is a realistic reflection of 21st century music. For us, creating this independent image meant a lot, we eventually decided that we did not want Mikah to look seductive and weak, as this does not mirror the theme of the lyrics. The artist, Kehlani, did this too, by portraying herself as a 'gangsta' We decided to recreate this to form synergy between the music video and the song. Although it looks as if Mikah is independent, the lyrics do express how she need's a 'gangsta' meaning we do, in some aspects, conform to the R&B genre, by creating a conceptual video whereby Mikah travels to various location to find her ideal man that will protect and love her. Thus, a male figure is still significant in our music video. Andrew Goodwin identified the relationship between the narrative and the performance as being one of the five key elements of a music video that the audience's would want to see. We wanted to make ours conceptual as it is not abundantly clear that Mikah is searching for her ideal man, instead, it is metaphorical.

Location & challenging the genre

In terms of location, we decided to challenge the genre. Originally thinking about filming in different rooms of one location (such as a house party), we came to a unanimous decision to go with something more unique. R. Kelly's Ignition and The Weeknd's I Can't Feel My Face were both filmed in one specific location,  a house and a night club. This made it significantly convenient to incorporate artificial lighting, in order to create the 'party' atmosphere that R&B music video's so commonly have. We made a conscious decision to use artificial lighting, by utilising a projector to create the typical party R&B convention, as we did want to conform in some ways. Both Mikah and Chrissy (our dancer that played a minor, yet significant role in our music video, by acting as a filler and aiding in forming a connection between the actress and the audience through her dancing) were subject to standing in front of the projector, which enabled them to become a silhouette of bright and colourful light. This inevitably created the 'party theme' with dancing and bright colours being one of the main aspects of the genre, which is part of Andrew Goodwin's 'technical aspect' theory. Therefore, in some aspects, we did conform to the genre. Instead of artificial lighting to create vibrant colours, we decided to use locations such as Leak Street and Embankment skate park, which are covered in eye-catching graffiti that brings its own vibrancy and colours without the use of artificial lighting. You could suggest that we still did use artificial lighting though, as we used the projector to bring light to the shot.

Furthermore, we wanted to include a shot from the movie 'Suicide Squad', where it shows a clip of The joker and Harley Quinn driving around, it's clear they are crazy in love. Kehlani wrote this song for the movie, to show how Harley's gangster, The Joker, adhere's to all the qualities she wishes her man possessed. This small clip was of important significance, as it creates a connection between Mikah and the famous Joker's girlfriend, by sending a message to the audience that this is the kind of love she aspires to find. This inevitably stimulates a connection with the audience too. To do this we used a close-up shot, as it was one of the five key elements Andrew Goodwin used to describe a successful music video. Myself, Libby and Nikki agreed that these vibrant colours worked well with the conceptual theme of our music video and ancillary texts, due to the frequent use of colourful graffiti.

Getting inspiration from female R&B artist, Beyonce, we chose to include a variety of close-up shots of Mikah's face. Andrew Goodwin stresses the importance of close-up shots in relation to forming a connection between the audience and the artist. Additionally, these close-up shots also aided in repetitively displaying Mikah's many piercings on her ears and neck, this was also a key element within Andrew Goodwin's theory by stating that many successful artists have a 'trademark', this helps the audience identify them. We inevitably decided that exaggerating Mikah's piercings would make her memorable and would aid in the marketing of our music video. 

Costume

Our costume choice was one of the most difficult decisions we made within the making of our music video. Libby, Nikki and I were conflicted on how to dress Mikah. Considering we had already challenged the R&B genre by having a female, instead of a male, artist, we didn't know whether to rebel completely and not dress Mikah in promiscuous clothing. Typically in R&B music video's, as mentioned in my previous blogs, women wear minimal clothing to appeal to mainly a male audience. This frequently leads to the objectification of women in music video's and this was ultimately something we wanted to avoid. Instead, Mikah wore clothing that was modest, i.e. hoodies, bomber jacket and jeans. However we did bring an aspect of femininity to her clothing through mise-en-scene, by her always wearing subtle make-up. She also wore ripped jeans that showed minimal parts of her legs, and her piercings also portrayed her as a dominant ethnic representative of R&B music.

Editing

Watching Beyonce's R&B song Party also gave us some inspiration for our editing. We noticed a pattern of slow motion shots that was usually adopted to stress the expression of people's faces. I.e. happiness, sadness and more. This was a good technique as it sets the atmosphere for the music video and aids the audience to feel the same way and relate t it. Therefore we adopted many shots that were in slow-motion, often showing Mikah looking directly at the camera in a seductive, yet edgy, way. This made her look feminine but also independent and bossy. We also made a connection between the slow-motion shots, often making Mikah look directly into the camera (and thus the audience's eye's) on lyrics such as 'I need someone' and 'You', inevitably making the audience feel as if they are being personally addressed by the artist and makes them feel part of the music video. We also noticed that the slow-motion shots brought a dramatic effect that made the audience want to follow the narrative further.

Ancillary texts

In terms of our ancillary texts, I think that we have both challenged and conformed to the forms and conventions of real media products. For our digipak, we decided to make it conventional by doing the following: Firstly, when listing our track-list on the back of the digipak, we decided to number them. This is a subtle similarity and we decided to incorporate this because it makes it look more professional and realistic to other real media products. It would also help our audience choose which song they would like to hear easily, due to it being in chronological order. This would be good for marketing our digipak as the consumers would know it's easy to use. Another aspect of our digipak that conformed to the conventions was our use of a bar code, record label logo and copy right information. We decided to use the record label logo as this would be memorable to the audience, it's quite eye-catching and is good for marketing due to people then knowing it's a good record label.  

Secondly, we incorporated a bar code and copy right information as this makes it look professional and realistic. Therefore making it more appealing to the consumer. Secondly, we utilized bright and vibrant colours through graffiti, this is something we wanted to do from the start as I noticed this was a common technique used in most R&B digipak colours, especially in Kehlani's and Rhianna's. Using bright colours also aided in the synergy between the music video and ancillary texts as they are used throughout both products. When thinking about the mise-en-scene in terms of costume, we decided that we wanted Mikah to wear subtly revealing clothing, we did this by making Mikah wear a grey cropped hoodie, this exposed her midriff. We got the inspiration of Mikah's clothing from artists such as Rhianna and Kehlani as making women look seductive is a typical convention of R&B music. We thought we would only utilize minimal clothing for this one occasion to attract a larger audience and aid in the digipaks marketing. Lastly, we made sure that we used bold titles for both the artist's name, and the name of the digipak. We did this because it's a common theme/aspect of the digipak cover, often aiding in the success of marketing and advertising the product as it would catch their attention.

One way that we subverted from the typical conventions of real media products is shown on the back cover of our digipak. Instead of placing our track-list in the middle of the page, we decided to include another image of Mikah on the right-hand-side and put the track-list on the right. We wanted to make Mikah a large part of the digipak as she is of course our artist and this would make her memorable for the audience. Therefore promoting her as an artist. Additionally, we chose to put images of Chrissy (our dancer), who played a minor role within the music video. On the left hand side of the inside cover, we put in action shots of Chirssy dancing in the music video, this isn't common and we felt very confident about incorporate g her into the digipak, even though her role in the music video was only minor. My group felt that an action shot of the music video would be effective as it would entice the audience to watch it. Another way in which we went against the conventions is how we incorporated the lyrics of the song, next to the images of Chrissy. We decided to insert the lyrics as we felt it would aid in making the audience understand our conceptual narrative, due to the lyrics playing a big part in this. 

Lastly, many female R&B artists utilize a close-up shot of their face to exaggerate their femininity by wearing flawless makeup and pulling seductive facial expressions. We went against this by using a long-shot of Mikah. We wanted to challenge this convention of women in R&B, as this is not the image we wanted to create for our artist. Instead, we wanted the audience to see Mikah's prop, which was a bat, and her minimal, yet edgy, costume and also make her a good role model for young girls. Ultimately giving our digipak a unique aspect that would appeal to our audience.

In terms of genre and media conventions, I feel as if my group and I have met their aspects in a professional way. Following the typical conventions was important to us as it meant our audience would not be displeased. Additionally, following famous artist's footsteps meant that we would be doing things that have obviously been effective and attracted a large audience to make our artist successful. Although we often subverted from the conventions, it worked well as we were able to bring a new unique quality for our artist and her products.