Evaluation Post 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video and marketing campaign follows many forms and conventions of real pop, street and rnb media products. To best connote our genre and image we closely followed the examples of real music videos that strongly reflected the urban street genre.

MUSIC VIDEO
For our music video conventions we followed many theories one of which was Simon Frith's.
Simon Frith believed that music videos came in three types:

Our music video fits into the performance category as it features a girl group who sing and dance. We take up most of the screen time. Most scenes are performance based shots such as our dance routine, singing to the audience, playing around and performing with male actors. We decided to do something interesting and not just conform to one category of music video but to make a hybrid music video. Our video displays aspects of the narrative genre as the lyrics and scenes with our partners convey small individual stories of how each of our relationships are like with our guys. This is similar to real media texts such as Fifth Harmony's Worth It and Little Mix's Move and even with Misery Business by Paramore (our prelim project). We included male actors to widen our audience appeal as they are for our viewers to gaze at and/or aspire to become like.

Goodwin also states that there is a "clear relationship between lyrics and visuals" which can be amplification, illustrative or contradictory. Our music video both amplifies and illustrates. Our song is called Red Planet and that line is sung quite a few times in the actual song. Therefore we wanted to use a red colour scheme as it signifies love and passion which fits perfectly with our song. Below you can see that in a few short seconds of our video, most scenes have a red colour scheme.

One convention of real media products we use and challenge is the the representation of females and the female body. Andrew Goodwin states that: "There is likely to be voyeurism, particularly in the treatment of women" in music videos. This has been a feature of  a lot of mainstream music videos driven by the idea that women's bodies sell. Music videos which sexualise women include Katy Perry's California Girls and Can't Remember to Forget You by Shakira ft. Rihanna. (right)

We've followed Goodwin's theory to target mass audiences but have also tried to challenge this by not over-sexualising ourselves as female stars and also by sexualising the boys more. This comes across in our lyrics which are quite sexual, but commanding and not submissive. For example lines such as "Give me all of your love tonight". We are also seen pushing away our guys and being playful with them but are never involved in sexual activity on screen.

Another theory we use and challenge is Mulvey's theory on the male gaze. She believes that audiences have to view characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male. The camera lingers on the curves of a female body and relegates women to the status of objects. Thus female viewers must experience the narrative secondarily by identification with the male. The male gaze theory applies to many music videos. We've used it by adding conventional beauty shots of each member of the girl group.

Our music video conforms very much to pop and rnb music video conventions. The sound of our song and and the beat are very pop - it includes the guitar, electronic beats and vocals. Our band identity is very street- this is portrayed by our outfits and the way we act and perform in our music video. Monica has a rapper's swag, her movements are tomboyish and explosive. Her facial expressions are fierce. Gift has a Beyonce-like sass and is very outgoing and confident. She smiles brightly and laughs a lot. Thakshana is girly as she plays with her hair and gets up close and personal with her guy but also very hip and cool as she uses a lot of hand gestures inspired by many rappers. Her facial expressions are casual but confident. I come across as a casual girly type as I also like to play around with my hair and dance in a more feminine style. Me and Thakshana try to create a more sexualised image with the way we dance and look at our guys and also the camera.

We are seen dancing, singing and performing with guys in our video which is very conventional. Our relationships with our guys come across as cute because we're doing random things such as Monica putting a hat on Will. Other times we create a more deeper sexual aspect as Thakshana's face comes really close to Aaron's. This gives our audience a varied experience with fun visual hooks as well as more mature visual hooks. We tried to create visual hooks with editing effects and content such as beauty shots of the girls and narrative shots of a girl and guy getting really close. Each visual hook grabs the audiences attention and also appeals to specific audiences in our target audience group.

CAMERWORK & FRAMING
Our camerawork is rarely static as we like the extra movement our shots create especially when we are dancing, the camera movement keeps the visuals more interesting and dynamic.
We tried to create visual hooks with editing effects and content such as beauty shots of the girls and narrative shots of a girl and guy getting really close. Each visual hook grabs the audiences attention and also appeals to specific audiences in our target audience group.