1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms or conventions of real media products?
Our Music video contains a mixture of narrative, performance and concept. It harbours elements of performance as it features the dancing from our actors in a various shots and clips throughout the video. Many R&B videos feature such a performance technique, take for instance Dru Hill’s song In My Bed – a mainly performance based video - which features its artists as backup singers as well as dancers. The artist in this video seems to have direct interaction with the camera through the use of close-up shots of him singing. This is to suggest he is singing to the audience and keeping them closely engaged throughout as a means of direct address. This is also a performance technique we used with our music video. Therefore you could argue that our music video is conforming to the conventional R&B videos.
Ways in which our video incorporates narrative is through the vast array of locations we filmed and the interaction our two main characters had and the settings they were in together. Our narrative can be summarised as basically consisting of our two main character’s Jamal and Sarai going out to a party together – as friends to start off with but within the party their relationship deepens and they start to develop feelings for each. Setting out to incorporate the themes of love our narrative portrays this well. We explore this with a variety of different camera angles; Close-ups for facial expressions and mid-shots of the couple together during the party scene.
Take Ne-Yo’s - Because Of You for instance which displays a similar style of narrative to ours. It doesn’t break any boundaries and again conforms to your traditional R&B style of music video which is direction we wanted our music video to take.
One way we subverted the R&B genre is by the way we represented our performers Jamal and Sarai. Both of them seem to be very equal in the relationship (shown at the beginning with the split screen effect we used) Not only through editing but in the way they interact with each other. They are very mutual and understanding of each other and no-one really tries to take a lead in the relationship showing the equality they share and thus subverting the typical R&B music video style which usually tends to show the dominant character being played by the male. 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P is a good example of this showing scenes of the several women in his room massaging him which shows the dominance he has over them which also a reference to the title of the song P.I.M.P. pimps usually described as men who objectify and treat woman disrespectfully.
Another way in which our music subverts conventional music videos is the stance it takes on its running motif. The title of our music is called “Right on Time” therefore we wanted the theme of time to somehow be placed within the video. Therefore we have superimposed images of time-lapsing clocks over the first chorus/verse and before the club scene as way of keeping with the narrative from the start of the video -> “I’ll be there right on time” a key line our main performer Jamal says to Sarai on the phone before he leaves for the party. This is definitely a feature we thought we contribute to our music video branching off your traditional R&B style.
Another way in which we feel we subverted the R&B genre is the choice of placing text in and around our video. This we believed was a tool for referencing Post-modernist ideals thanks to the many textual analysis we did during our research and planning stage. Videos such as Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi used this technique as homage to classic Hollywood films and making her video beginning seem almost like a film opening with the incorporation of credits in the beginning therefore blurring the lines between film and music video creating the now known cinema verite effect. Examples of R&B videos using such a technique can be seen in the song ‘You’ by Raheem DeVaughn. It may not be to the same style as Lady Gaga’s but still uses the technique of intertextuality in the music video which is something most R&B music videos do not use therefore this was a brilliant way for us to branch the boundaries in our music video with these references to work from.
The green screen footage is a big part of our music video and it was an essential part in bringing our music video together. All of the green screen footage we incorporate into the video is performance based. It isn’t common to see green screen effects in R&B music videos but it certainly isn’t non-existant either. We used it to break-up our music video, show off our editing skills and to coincide with the music’s catchy beat. Take for example For My People by Missy Elliot. This music video is entirely shot under green screen and becomes classified as a performance music video because of this. These are the types of performance shots our music video adhered towards. I still consider this a form of subversion however as it is very rare to see R&B music videos with green screen performance footage these days as it is mostly shot on location now.
Clothing is also another important feature that our team had to work on. We didn’t want to branch too off track and be completely subversive. It was necessary to keep at least much of the mise-en-scene within conventions. The clothing picked for our music video is very stylish and very casual. We don’t want them to over-dress to a party. Our target audience is generally around 14-25 so being a fairly young target audience range it’s necessary to keep at least the clothes casual so the audience can relate and not be deterred. Audiences see it all the time in magazines with their favourite celebrity wearing stylish and fashionable clothing. Without going too overboard we wanted to stay in that line of thought making the character look stylish and be still believable and not too rich looking that they become unrelatable. With Sarai however it was different story. We wanted at least a running trend to reoccur throughout the video. One of the ways we do this is by having her wear a red dress. Red is colour signifying love and/or lust. It’s one of the key themes we truly wanted to establish within our video and we do this with her costume.
Setting is also another key area we wanted to keep within the R&B convention. The majority of our music video is shot in a club/ party atmosphere setting. This is definitely a trend seen in a lot of R&B music videos. I mean take for example Usher’s Yeah. This entire club setting is exactly the type of style we were going for with our own music video. Dark room, lots of people, strobe lights, backlighting, loud music, close-ups of dancing, long shots of entire crowds dancing – are the sort of things you’d generally see in a club and R&B music videos such as these love to re-enacted these clubs as a way of glorifying them and making them seem like a fun place to be. Our narrative doesn’t deter from this ideology of basic fun and having a good time and is definitely a method in which we conformed to your traditional conventions of R&B music videos.
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