Evaluation Question 1

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

Once we had completed our music video, we decided to upload it onto YouTube: a popular website in which the public can access videos 24/7 freely. We thought that this would be good idea as it means that anyone is able to access it. This would then allows for honest feedback from a variety of people, allowing us to promote our artist. Further promoting is also available from YouTube onto other social media platforms via a share button at the bottom of the video. This then means that our video is able to be shared by not just us but other people also. Furthermore, with YouTube said to be worth between $26 billion and $40 billion, it would make it one of the biggest and most worthy networks for promotion.

For our advert, we wanted to develop real media products by posting it onto social network. Although this is stereotypical, we feel that our music would appeal the most to younger people that are more likely to go on social media than read a magazine or newspaper. Our advert then, using bold colours and our artist as a forefront, allows the audiences attention to be grabbed instantly. Furthermore, with a lot of adverts being posted onto social media, there is always the problem of our advert being ignored. This is then why we felt that bold colours would not only go with our genre and style, but it also is helps us to grab attention and gain popularity within our target audience of younger people. Further aspects of our poster that help to gain our target audiences attention is the ‘grungy’ style that we have created throughout. For example, the light to dark contrast on the background of the poster catches the attention for being brightly coloured, but also the darker fade on it attracts a different type of audience rather that people that would consider themselves as ‘girly’. We have chosen the colours of pink, purple, blue and black within our advert and digipak because it creates synergy between that and the original music video and music promotion done by the original artist Kehlani. Considerations into using just blue, purple and pink did take place, however we decided that having a black fade on the poster, not only appeals to our target audience, but also leaves a shadow over what is to come next for our artist. It also allows our target audience to see that we aren’t completely girl, but also aren’t ‘gothic’. Creating a poster that has collaborative and contrasting colours on gains us more popularity and appeal into not only our target audience, but also to other type of people that would normally tend to look at this sort of thing.  as you can see, we have also advertised our social media pages of our artist. Due our poster attracting a variety of audiences as well as our target audience, this would allow us to gain popularity and to have our own means of promotion for our artist. Popularity within a variety of people and to have our artist and our advert shared and promoted across the different social media platforms. Due to our target audience being the age of people where social media is a very popular form of communication, we will be connecting out advert and artist to them directly.

Within our genre, R&B, women are commonly depicted as being rather sexual and promiscuous. This is something that we wanted to challenge within our music video, and rather have our artist as a powerful figure instead of the typical, erotic type. We challenged this throughout our music video and our ancillary texts in many ways, one of the ways that we done this was through the costume choices. We decided that wanted Mikah to wear clothes that didn’t seem sexual which is why we dressed her in a jumper and jeans for most the music video and ancillary texts. Although they made Mikah seem modest, it also allowed her to be stylish and continue to appeal to our target audience. On the other hand, some of the clothing did conform to the typical R&B genre conventions. This was through both Mikah and Chrissy wearing a cropped hoodie that showed off the midriff. Although it isn’t a large portion of their bodies, it is enough for them to be portrayed as sexualised. This isn’t something that we wanted to do but due to it being a stylish outfit for them both to wear we decided to stick to the decision. We also looked at it in a positive light because it is something that people are used to seeing in an R&B music video so it wasn’t something that would deter the target audience. Through this we then were able to continue to gain popularity and could also portray Mikah and Chrissy as the strong female individuals that we wanted to present them as.

With our camera angles, we decided that we wanted to use a variety of both long shots and close-ups in order to show Mikah as a strong feminine character. We done this through using close-ups of Mikah’s piercings to show off her trademark. This conforms to the typical ideas of a R&B music video because there are normally a lot of close-ups shown of women i.e. Rihanna’s Work video. However, this is usually done to show the female as a sexual object which is something that we subverted because we in fact used it to show her as independent, and as a role model. Although piercings can be seen as deviant, because of the lyrics talking about wanting a ‘gangsta’, we didn’t see the problem of using them as a trademark. This is also similar to Kehlani, the original artist. It can be argued that Kehlani’s trademark is in fact her tattoos, which then shows us subverting the typical R&B stereotype because it is usually the males that have the tattoos, not the females.  We also used long shots to show Mikah as a strong individual. We done this by giving Mikah a baseball bat which can be seen within some shots of our music video and in the images used for our digipak and poster. We chose to give Mikah the baseball bat because not only does it link to the original movie for which the soundtrack was made for Suicide Squad, but it also shows that Mikah can defend herself and that she is a strong female. The use of the baseball bat within the long shots shows a different side to Mikah that the audience wouldn’t see in the other shots. These long shots showing Mikah’s weapon can be linked to Rihanna’s Needed Me music video in which she uses a gun to defend herself and ultimately kills someone. Both this music video and our music video link together because they both have a narrative of a ‘gangsta’ lifestyle either in the lyrics or the video. Both also show some sort of glamorisation around the weapon. For example, we have Mikah posing and holding a bat causally where it could sometime be feared. This is the same as in Rihanna’s music video as she poses in a luxurious gown on an apartment balcony with a gun which again could sometimes be feared. They also link because in one scene Rihanna can be seen dragging the gun across the window. This is similar to our shot of Mikah dragging the bat along the wall in Leake Street. Although it seems as though Mikah conforms to the typical R&B genre because of the similarities between our music video and Rihanna's, it also subverts because this isn't the typical thing that you would see within a female's R&B music video.

In terms of editing, we decided that we would use quick cuts and longer cuts to create ‘thought beats’ and put Goodwin’s theory in practice. We done this is scenes where we made the shot ‘jump’ so it repeated on itself. This was then followed by a longer shot which was slowed down. We used a lot of slow motion shots within our music video to create perfect thought beats which we thought were really effective. This then subverts from the typical R&B music video because the tempo of the typical R&B song isn’t normally as slow as ours. We liked that this subverted the typical R&B conventions because it means we get to create something unique.

Due to our low budget, we weren’t able to film in a studio like the typical music video. This meant that we had to go out and find places that we thought would fit our theme well. This was quite hard as there aren’t many easily accessible places that contain graffiti that is either safe to go or are open to the public. This was a similar situation to the setting/location of a dilapidated building or warehouse. Fortunately, after extensive research, we were able to find a few places that would make the perfect location for our music video. These locations did in fact subvert the stereotype of a typical R&B music video because R&B videos are typically romanticised which ours isn’t, meaning they aren’t the typical locations which would be featured.

For our digipak, we wanted to completely subvert the typical stereotypes of a typical R&B digipak. Normally, for a female artist, close ups of their face with a sexual gaze into the camera, typically photoshopped or airbrushed to make their face look flawless. This can be seen in digipaks such as Rihanna and Katy Perry. We didn’t want our artist to be represented like this because we wanted her to be a aspirational role model to our target audience of females aged 16-22. We did this through presenting her as a strong female that can be independent and is able to defend herself.

Overall, I feel that our ancillary texts have been successful in creating our own unique stamp on the R&B genre by subverting a lot of the typical conventions in order to appeal to our 16-22 year old target audience even though in some element, we didn't conform to the expectations.