Past Paper - January 2013

Genre Essay

In Year 13, we created music video. We had to create the music video from scratch – this involved choosing a song and then researching into the genre we had chosen. We choose the song Spinning Wheel by Black Honey. The genre of the song was Indie Rock. We liked this genre because it was different from all the current popular music we had listened to and immediately gave us plenty of ideas which we implemented in our video.

The main conventions of an Indie Rock video are: Chaotic, psychedelic, use of bright colours with a confrontational/aggressive attitude. We were able to highlight our genre through camera work, costumes and editing. We also were able to make our genre clear and recognisable by using the colour pink within the majority of our video and we were able to use the colour pink in our cross media products such as our website and digipak. The colour pink became the foundation theme running through all our products therefore making the brand and styles/genre of the band recognisable.

Through our research we learnt about two theorists – Carol Vernallis and Andrew Goodwin. We were able to implement some of their conventions of music videos in ours. Some of their conventions were applicable to our genre of Indie Rock such as Vernallis’s theory on editing. We used Vernallis’s theory on editing – which involves adding cuts to the beat. We implemented this by adding in split second black scenes that coincided with the beat of the song. These cuts reinforce the beat of the song and adds to the crazy atmosphere needed within an Indie Rock video.

Goodwin’s conventions became a prominent theme within our music video, with us using multiple conventions of his. The main one was used was the use of camera angles. One of Goodwin’s conventions is the use of close up camera shots to create a star profile for the main artist. We wanted to highlight our main artist’s personality clearly and present the confrontational manner of the characters so Goodwin’s convention really benefited our video and allowed us to highlight our genre well. We also implemented Goodwin’s ideas of iconography. Throughout the video and other ancillary products such as the website, we used the colour pink. The prominent use of the colour pink allows the band to be more recognisable to their target audience. It will ensure that if any of their products are seen, for example posters, the bright pink colours will allow viewers to link the band to that product and therefore make the band’s popularity and recognisability increase significantly.

Whilst we did conform to some of Goodwin’s conventions, we did challenge one. We challenged Goodwin’s convention of using voyeuristic angles to sexualize, stereotypically, female artists. We decided we wanted to challenge this because we wanted to portray positive and strong female role models to our target audience. We want our video to empower women and show them that they can be just as strong as men and encourage girls to look, speak, act and dress exactly how they want and not have to conform to stereotypical rules of society. The rejection of voyeuristic angles and the use of close up shots highlights our opposition to sexualising women and enforces our strength. Within the Indie Rock genre there are many strong female artists who do not rely on their sexuality to promote themselves but instead their talent and strength. This is another reason we choose Indie Rock as a genre and conformed to this convention of the genre.

Overall it’s clear that these genre and music video conventions make a good, well finished, multifaceted music video. The use and layering of different conventions can make music videos very poignant and allows the audience to pick up on these messages easily. These conventions also allowed us to put a personal twist on the video and allow for good ancillary texts to be created from it.

Media Language Essay

In media this year we created a music video. We had to choose our own song within our groups and create a music video that will attract and engage our target audience. We had to engage our audience through our camera work, sound, editing and mise en scene.

Camera angles and shots are very important within a music production because it can convey multiple messages, and really highlight the artist in different ways. A theorist called Andrew Goodwin states that a convention of a music video is close up camera angles to create a star profile around the main artist. We used this convention within our music video for two reasons. Conforming to Goodwin’s convention we used close up shots of our main artist to make it clear to the audience who our star artist is. These close up allows the audience to see and connect with the main artist, therefore making the music video more attractive. We also used close up shots to fulfil the conventions of a stereotypical Indie Rock video. The main themes of an Indie Rock video are: psycadellic, chaotic with a confrontational attitude. We achieved these themes through the use of camera angles such as close ups and tracking shots. The close up shots allow the characters within the video to portray their confrontational attitude to the audiences, while the tracking shots create a chaotic and ‘trippy’ feel to the video, which conforms with the conventions of an Indie Rock video.

Mise-En-Scene also played a vital part in our music video. The costumes that the characters in the music video wore are funky and different to today’s fashion. The main artist is wearing a faux fur coat with heart shaped, blue sunglasses, whilst the other character is wearing ripped jeans with fishnets, and an extremely oversized denim jacket with embroidery on the back. These clothes further highlight and cement the theme of chaos within our music video. The outfits make the characters stand out but it also makes them relatable to the audience because they are still portrayed as ‘normal’ women. The brazen fashion choices can possibly influence the target audience and give them fashion ideas – this idea will boost our band’s popularity because just through their fashion they are able to connect and inspire teenage girls. One of the settings used within the video is a very messy living room. Within the set there are clothes, food, lighters, shoes, alcohol bottles strewn about across the room. The stereotypical teenage messy room, again makes the band more relatable to the audience and allows the audience to connect with the characters because the video reflects their lives and situations but in a more exaggerated, chaotic way.

Once we had finished creating and filming our video, we moved onto editing. Using Adobe Premier Pro CS6, we were able to add a vintage effect over the footage we had. We liked this vintage look because it made the video stand out as different. It also made the colours more vibrant, which confirms with the convention of the use of bright colours in Indie Rock videos.  We also applied Goodwin’s theory about the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals of the music video. In the song there is a verse which sings “Television won’t you say my name”. On this part of the song, we had the main artist shown on a TV screen. This link amplifies the lyrics and allows the audience to have a greater understanding of what is happening in the video.

Sound obviously plays a key part in the music video. The song we choose was chaotic, psycadellic and aggressive. Within the song there was a lot of screaming which we amplified in our video by having the main artist scream dramatically with the song. The craziness of the song was clearly reflected in our set (Messy living room, bright crazy pink sequined set with cut out magazine heads), our character’s funky outfits, and the character’s actions within the video. The characters are constantly either dancing or interacting with the camera (singing into the camera lens). These action reflect the chaotic beat to the song well.

Overall the use of these four media language techniques – Camera, Mise-En-Scene, Editing and Sound – alongside the use of Goodwin’s conventions, really benefitted the music video and allowed us to create a high standard finish and create a product that will attract and interest our target audience.

Research and Planning Essay

Narrative Essay

A narrative is a spoken or written account of connected events. A narrative tells a story. The narrative of our film opening was of a teenage girl going missing and her friends search for her. We created the narrative through a montage of clips of the friends together and then skipping to a plea for the missing girl to come home. We also incorporated shots of photos of the friends being burnt to add more mystery to our narrative.

Within our narrative we created we implemented a few conventions created by different theorists such as Strouse, Propp, Barthes and Todorov. These four theorists have different ideas of narratives and how narratives work. Strouse’s theory focuses on binary opposites (good vs. evil, rich vs. poor). We were able to involve this convention within the narrative for our film opening. Within the film opening there are multiple clips of three teenage girls having fun, messing around at arcades, going to school. They portray a close knit trio of friends and the audience are able to pick up on their happiness and care free atmosphere. But the clip switches between photographs of the friends being set on fire and then shows two of the girls filming a ‘come home’ plea. It is made clear that one of the girls has gone missing. This sudden seriousness of the film creates the binary opposites. It begins with a happy care free attitude but rapidly changes to serious, mature potentially scary atmosphere. It shows the friends broken up, which is a contrast to the closeness that was portrayed at the beginning.

This switching of the opposites can link to Todorov’s theory of narrative structure. Todorov’s theory is that all narratives start with equilibrium. Further on in the narrative there is a disruption to the equilibrium and then the narrative finishes with restoration of the equilibrium. The start of the film opening highlights the equilibrium of the narrative – the girls all together having fun as close friends. The disruption of this is one of them going missing. Since we have only created a film opening we can not expand on this disruption and we can not finish the structure by restoring it.

Another theorist that is relevant in our film opening narrative is Propp. Propp states that within every narrative there are the same characters: the hero, the villain, the damsel in distress, etc. Again this theory can be seen in our film opening, with the three characters presented. Dissimilar to the idea of having one hero in a narrative, our narrative contains two heroes – the two girls searching for their missing friend. The damsel in distress character is the missing girl. But the introduction of our narrative does leave the audience with questions such as “Why has the girl gone missing?”, “Are those two girls really heroes? or do they have something to do with her disappearance?”. This questioning of the narrative and the characters presented lead onto Barthes theory of enigma codes. Enigma codes are a key feature in any narrative as they keep the audience guessing and engaged in the narrative. In our film opening there are multiple clips of someone burning photographs of the three friends. This destructive act brings mystery to the audience because they want to know why the photographs of the friends are being burnt and who is burning them?

Overall, narrative is extremely important to a production and the theories and conventions that can be used within a narrative improve it significantly as they not only bring a safe well thought out structure, but they can also bring twists and add mystery to the narrative which keeps the audience engaged, which is why we used them in our film opening because we want our film opening to be a success.

Audience Essay

An audience is a spectator or listener at a public event such as a play, film or concert. Our audience is people watching our music video ‘TUMBLEWEED’ by can’t sleep. They are also spectators of our website, digipak and other ancillary texts we have created for our music video.  Our target audience for our music video is teenage girls. Our target audience is teenage girls because at that age, teenagers are listening to different types of music and finding their own type of music they love. It is also aimed at girls because its main focus is on two female characters. These female characters are not shown through voyeuristic angles, but rather as strong women.

Within the research we carried out before we begun creating our music video, we learnt a lot about conventions and in particular the theorist Andrew Goodwin. Goodwin states that there are six different conventions within a music video. We implemented some of these conventions within our music video. One of the conventions we used was the amplification of the lyrics. This is when the relationship between the lyrics and the visuals are shown in the video. For example, at the point in the song when the lyrics sing “Television won’t you say my name”, on the screen there is an old fashioned TV with the main artist on it. The TV is in the centre frame of screen and is therefore the main focus of that screen. The visual of the TV matching the words of the song, amplify the lyrics and gives the audience a greater understanding of what they are watching.  Another convention we used was the use of iconography. Iconography is presenting a prop, or costume within the video and using this as a way to represent the band/artist. In our video, we used the colour pink a lot – one of the settings was a room with the walls covered in pink sequined fabric. We carried on the use of the colour pink from our set, onto our website, digipak, magazine cover and posters. This use of the colour allowed us to represent a theme and the band simply through a prop, therefore making the band more recognisable to the audience outside the music video.  The genre of our music video was Indie Rock. The main conventions of an Indie Rock music video are psycadellic and confrontational. We used Goodwin’s idea of creating a star image through camera work. By using multiple close up shots of the artist, we were able to portray the character clearly and allow the audience to know that that character is the ‘star’ of the video.  Whilst we conformed to some of Goodwin’s conventions, we also subverted some of his conventions such as voyeurism. Voyeurism often plays a major part in videos, especially in relation to females. Stereotypically women are sexualised in music videos, but we decided that we did not want to conform to this convention but rather keep the women in the video fully clothed and kept up the confrontational persona that is relevant to an Indie Rock video.

As stated before our target audience is teenage girls. Teenager girls can be harder to attract because they are looking for music to relate to and they can enjoy any day of the week and whatever mood they are in. To attract our target audience we decided that Indie Rock is a less popular genre that Pop, therefore it provides a different spin on everyday music. This can attract our audience because they are at the point in their lives when they are discovering their own music and do not want to follow everyone else, therefore our music provides this ‘escape’ for them. The video’s main themes are the colour pink – a stereotypical favourite colour of girls-, a confrontational manner and slightly psycadellic. These main themes will attract our target audience because it portrays women as just as strong as men in their personalities. It highlights that men are not the only ones who can be aggressive and get what they want. The video is empowering to women and girls because it shows what they can achieve and this message in today’s society it is really important to get across. The fact that our video contains this message will attract teenage girls even more because it shows a good, strong role model for them to believe in.

Our video was released on YouTube and the song was released on iTunes. We used these two platforms because they are the most common and easily accessible platforms today. Millions of people watch YouTube everyday (including our target audience), therefore not only is it easily accessed by our audience but it is a great way of marketing because it can be advertised to people outside our target audience as well, therefore potentially gaining more interest.

As well as creating a music video, we also created a website, digipak, magazine cover and posters for our band. This cross media branding will ensure our band is promoted significantly in multiple areas of media. The use of the colour pink and the theme of the psyacadellic/confrontational manner are present across all these media products, therefore making the band easily recognised by multiple audiences. By making the band easily recognisable it will involve the audience more because again they can then relate to the band on a personal level because they have become a part of the audiences daily lives.

Representation Plan

Choose 1 or more of the following categories and discuss how your product represents them:


INTRO-
Explain what media product you will be analysing and which social group you will be analysing

MAIN-

Disability
Race
Class
Age
Gender
Ethnicity
Sexuality

- Consider costumes, props, locations, body language, facial expression, camera, sound, editing
- Have you included/challenged stereotypes and why

CONCLUSION-
Why did you create these specific representations?
What effect might they have on the audience?



Camera
Editing
Sound
Mise - En- Scene