Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 1:

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

In my music video I have included many examples of conventions that have been used in real media products.


Where you use conventions of music videos of the same genre of your song:

When we looked at conventions of our song we realised that the genre of our music video is Pop and R&B which has the stereotypical conventions of teenagers, over sexualised women, more realistic settings and women wearing provocative clothing. An example of a pop music video that meets these conventions stereotypes is Rihanna as she wears very provocative clothing in her music videos. In particular the music video that stands out to me as being the most provocative is Only Girl in The World as she wears short, shorts and a relieving top. Rihanna is a very well know female artist who has sold millions of singles and albums all around the world meaning she uses this platform as a place to show women have power and to try to create change. Now the conventions of women in music videos are different to how they used to be as women now are seen to be more powerful and have control over the men. Unlike, in the past men have been the centre of music videos having control over women and controlling what they wear and how they act. 

Where you have taken conventions, and developed them in some way:

We looked at the conventions when making our music video and decided that the main ones were gender, ethnicity, class and age. We looked at the conventions of the Pop and RnB genre of ethnicity and decided to use this as the main factor and theme running through our music video. We decided to take the convention of ethnicity and use this to create an overall meaning to our music video, which we did by using both ethnicities throughout to show that they has been a divide between ethnicities over time and only recently they're being treated as equals. We decided that this would be a good convention to use as it is a broad subject that relates to the meaning behind the song. Furthermore, in the music video we used the convention of age as we felt that this was a very significant factor that linked to ethnicity. For example, by using the younger generation with the topic of ethnicity it reinforces that equality has only recently been accepted in today’s society. Furthermore, in our music video we made sure that the female was stood slightly in front of the male to show that there isn't just ethnic equality but there is also gender equality which is starting to be accepted in today's society also. At the end of the music video we show a mid-shot where they're both standing next to each other to suggest that they're both equals. This confronts the stereotype of the convention as it shows we have gone against it to make both genders and ethnicities to be equal.

Another way in which we developed the conventions is through the use of the poster that we created as we could promote the song through our social media platforms which will get the message around to a wider target audience and also by having the posters in a busy place it will attract more of an audience from a diverse background who wouldn't normally listen to this type of music.



Where you have challenged conventions, or subvert conventions of a music video:

For our music video, we decided to challenge the conventions of a stereotypical RnB, Pop genre. Stereotypically, in a music video of this genre they either had just males or females in the music video with one particular race. Therefore, in our music video we decided to challenge this convention and make sure that we used both races and genders in our music video to show how now a day’s times have changed and these conventions are beginning to be challenged in today’s society. Furthermore, the name of the song that we have chosen played a large role in why we decided to challenge these conventions. We also took inspiration from the Black Eyed Peas as when we looked at in depth analysis of the band and the song we realised that there was one female artist in the band who became very powerful over the women, through the way she was placed on poster and magazines. This was significant as it shows that women are starting to have a lot more power over men and gender equality is accepted in today’s society. Furthermore, on the Black Eyed Peas it supports the stereotypical conventions of the genre as the woman is wearing provocative clothes and the men are wearing clothing that makes them look powerful. However, like our music video it also subverts the genre as the women is stood at the front which reinforces the fact that genders are seen to be more equal now a days.

Furthermore, the races in The Black Eyed Peas are both white and black which we wanted to make sure we used to challenge the conventions further to show that times have changed.

The pictures below show how we used both ethnicities and genders throughout our music video to reinforce that both genders are equal. You will notice that in picture 1 and 2 both the genders take it in turn to stand in front of each other. We decided to do this as it reinforces that both genders are equal and not one gender has more power over the other.

In the final picture, we decided to have both of the genders stand next to one another to again show they're both equal and how time has changed. 

Relation to the representations of different groups in society:

 Where you adhere to stereotypes of different representational groups

They're many ways in which we have adhered to the conventions stereotypes during our music video. Throughout our music video we tried hard to not use stereotypical gender conventions that you normally see as we wanted to make sure that our music video was original and presented how times have changed with regards to gender equality. An example, however, of when we conformed to a stereotype is that Matthew wears a blue shirt and Alicia wears a pink shirt. These are the stereotypical colours that both females and males are stereotyped to wear.