Conventions used in our music video

In order to adhere to the brief set for us in A2 media, it was vital that we used and conformed to the conventions from real media texts. Through the research of real media texts, such as films and music videos, we were able to complete the two briefs successfully.

Research

We have researched music videos such as The Kooks’ ‘Naïve’ and Metro Station’s ‘Control’. As our music video for ‘Happiness’ was a party scene, it was important that we broaden our perception of the conventions of such a scene. We did this by researching further into other types of media texts; watching the ‘Skins’ promotion and the house party scene in ‘American Pie’.


Costumes

Costumes for the production were carefully picked out and we used ellipses editing to remove anything that would hinder the representation we wanted to create. To give an example of this, we cut out takes of people who did not conform to the Indie representation. In general, the cast of our house-party style music video wore clothes that fit the Indie scene, i.e. cute dresses as opposed to the sexy dressed one would expect in an R&B video. The central protagonist was styled as an archetypal ‘Indie-Cindy’ of the moment: with a checked shirt, high-waist shorts, a crop top, long blonde hair. Additionally, there is a recent trend of wearing masks to parties (demonstrated in Metro Station’s video and also in the TV advertisement for Smirnoff) that we adhered to. We designed a bunny mask for her to wear as this would highlight the fact that she is the protagonist and would fit with the song’s title: ‘Look At That Rabbit Go!’. It was also important to reinforce the fact that the bunny (ie. Girl) was being chased by the fox (ie. Boy), and so included a male character adorning a fox mask.


Location

The location of the promotional music video was fitting to conventions of a young, indie party scene. It was obvious that we had to use a house as a set, to adhere to conventions shown in Metro Station and You and Me at Six’s videos ‘Control’ and ‘Kiss and Tell’. These two videos show familiar settings, like a living room, to hold the scene of a house-party. We took influence for the dim lighting from the promotional advertisement for ‘Skins’, but mainly from The Kooks’ video for ‘Naïve’. These media texts were researched via Youtube.com as well as via the television. This meant that we were adhering to conventions recognisable to a range of the Indie genre’s target audiences.


Gender Representation

Our approach towards gender representation in ‘Happiness’s video was influenced by real media texts. Our research showed that the female was more powerful in music videos, but still retained the use of the male gaze. An example of this is Little Boots’ ‘New in Town’. Thus, we have represented her as the central protagonist. She is young, fun-loving, in the male gaze and the centre of attention. This was represented through her costume and via camera and editing techniques.

Male Gaze

It is interesting to me how we have adopted the 'male-gaze' in our video despite the face that we are female music-video makers. The idea proposed by Laura Mulvey, in 1975,was that women in films were there for display purposes only as the filmmakers were predominantly male.
We have adopted the male gaze as we felt that it would attract male viewers to have a voyeuristic response to this 'display'.Although we as females feel objectified and passive because of the representation, we felt it necessary to adhere to this convention as it appeals to the male part of the target audience. We counter-acted this partly in ordered to attract the female audience. Nowadays, women are more powerful and independent, so we have included an element of this by not being explicit, not featuring sexual content, and by subtly representing men as lusting but not having.
This un-provocative, un-sexual representation of women is evident in real media texts from the Indie/Alternative genre: for example in Little Boots and Ellie Goulding's music videos.They are pretty and attractive but not slutty.

Note:-
Powerful independent female artists (like Madonna) have changed things by being sexually provocative and 'in control' of the sexualised gaze.

Music

Upbeat to fit the indie lifestyle and representation
*used Jamendo.com
Influences:

Editing

*Bloc Party = editing cuts
*Ellie Goulding = overlaying of two takes
*Influences: Bloc Party, Ellie Goulding