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

The use of forms and conventions of real media products:

As my music video is of the indie pop genre, it immediately conforms to the conventions of a solo female indie pop video. The first shot shows an element of stop frame animation through the letters being spelled out on the record. This shows the artists quirky and youthful image, as the letters are in bright colours and the stop frame animation looks unusual. We looked at similar artists music videos, for example Kate Nash, who is also an solo female indie pop artist. We looked at her video for the song Foundations, and there were elements of stop frame animation also in this, for example when a pair of socks untangle themselves. In Nashs video this symbolises how the relationship depicted is no longer working out. We used symbolism in our video as the colourful letters signify Rubys youth and childhood.

For Rubys branding and image, we looked at other female artists who are very image-focused, like Jessie J. Jessie J has a very strong image, as she always has the same iconic hairstyle, often with large hoop earrings, and she always wears bright or bold colours on her lips. While we didnt think that having such a strong brand image was necessary for our indie pop genre, we felt that the idea of having a focus on Rubys lips would make her stand out. We decided to use red lipstick, as it is relevant to her name and works well with the bright colour scheme of the video. Instead of keeping the make up perfect, however, we decided to smudge the lipstick a bit, as usually indie pop stars do not look too polished. We also did this to symbolise Rubys youth, as the untidy lipstick resembles when a child tries on lipstick and it is not perfect. The bold red also looks quite iconic, especially with the close up shot. This shot also shows that we have conformed to Laura Mulveys theory, which states that media conforms to the idea of the male gaze, or what the man wants to see. This use of a close up can be seen in videos such as Duran Durans Rio, which shows close ups of parts of the female body.

While we used some elements of conforming to Mulveys theory of the male gaze, we countered this in our video with lots of examples of subverting the expectations. We used a Ken doll instead of a man in the narrative of the video, which shows the man being objectified instead of the woman. An example of a woman being objectified in a similar way would be Olly Murs video for his song Busy. The female role in the video is replaced with a mannequin, which shows that a womans role is to simply be there for decoration. We used a similar idea for our video, as Ken is incapable of doing much himself, so Ruby is able to control him. We also show Ruby as being superior to Ken, as in many shots she is looking down at him. There are also many shots where she is without him in the video, while there are very few of him without her, which shows that she does not rely on him to make her happy, but he cannot really function without her. This subverts the viewers expectations, as Ruby is shown as being powerful and independent.

For my Digipak I looked at Marina and the Diamondss digipak for her album The Family Jewels. The digipak featured lots of photos of Marina, mostly from the same photoshoot, with similar editing. She had less formal photos inside the cover opposite where the disc is. I decided to conform to the typical solo female genre conventions, so I followed a similar format to this for my Digipak. I took several pictures of Alice, some formal and some more informal and used my knowledge of photography to create a good, eye catching image. I also used a handwriting style font like the font used for Marinas album, as the handwriting style makes the album look more personal, as if it has been signed by the artist themselves. It also adds to Rubys quirky image. One thing that is done on Marinas album however, is the colours have been muted. As our brand image for Ruby Reigns is very bright and colourful, instead of muting the colours, I boosted the saturation, to make it much brighter and to appeal to the target market.

For my magazine advert I looked again at an example of Marina and the Diamonds. As for Marinas album it uses the same image that is on the digipak, I did something similar, making the image A4 sized. The same font is also used, which shows that the artists name in that font is the logo, so I did something similar. On Marinas advert I also noticed that there are different colour fonts, for example the pink logo for her song Shampain. For the words used on the poster, I looked at Jessie Js magazine advert, and it used language such as #1 International Smash and Debut Album. This creates more hype around the artist, and make the audience feel more excited to buy the album. Therefore, I used similar Language on my poster. I also used The idea of promoting the album on iTunes, as it is more likely that the target market would buy music on iTunes than in a shop.

When researching into conventions of indie pop music videos we looked at Kate Nash as an example, as she has a similar quirky style that we wanted to achieve in our music video. We found that they are often narrative driven with some elements of performance. We also found that they use quite lingering shots when it comes to the performance element, and much more fast paced shots for the narrative, so we included that in our video as well. Kate Nash also uses lots of stop frame animation in her music videos, so that is where we got the idea for using that in the video too. The colours used are also quite bright and happy, which we also applied to our video as it fits in with our quirky, youthful theme.

We also looked at the video for Daniel Powters Bad Day, as we liked the use of split screen and thought it was appropriate for the meaning of the video. We used Final Cut Express to make the screen. We felt it worked really well as it shows the contrast between the two situations, which shows how Ken and Rubys relationship has ups and downs, and also shows the conflict going on in the narrative. This is the opposite of how Bad Day uses split screen, as it uses it to show how similar the two peoples lives are, and how they are meant for each other. We decided to use this differently as it is more relevant to our narrative, however we still wanted the split screen as it is effective and is often used in indie pop music videos, meaning our video conforms to the genre.

How it Challenged Conventions

We used the video for Olly Murs song Busy to form our initial idea, but we felt that the female representation in the video was quite negative as the female role in the video is represented by a mannequin. This shows a negative view as the woman is unable to move of think for herself, and she exists purely for decoration. We decided to subvert this convention, as it is a convention of music videos to show women as inferior to men, by showing the male role as subordinate to the female music artist. Instead of a mannequin, we used a Ken doll, which has connotations of youth, but is also quite small. We used this to our advanteage, aving several shots of Ruby looking down at Ken, which shows that she is dominant, the total opposite of the Olly Murs video.