Alice Piner Evaluation Question One

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

Our productions created a music video for the artist Dizzee Racal for the song titled ‘Bonkers’ produced by Armand Van Helden. Dizzee Rascal is a grime and rap artist however ‘Bonkers’ has more of an electro/house edge making it upbeat which still includes rap. We began by researching other artists videos and looking at how certain genres where portrayed and whether it was successfully and if we would like to incorporate some of the ideas in our video. We looked at a range of different directors such as Mark Romanek. A long side this we studied theories based on reasons behind certain conventions happen during music videos such as Andrew Goodwin’s and Laura Mulvey’s star theory. This help us as a group understand the history of music videos and what we need to include and gave us more of an understanding as to how they work. While researching I wrote three different essays on music videos using Goodwin’s theory to help analyse them, these where on Hype William’s videos, Christina Aguilera and Griminal who is a grime artist. I also analysed one CD cover and one poster on Rihanna to gain an understanding of the conventions of music products how they link with the videos. I also researched into Grime music video conventions which helped us understand what is expected of that genre of music.

Our music video for ‘Bonkers’ is mainly concept driven and includes performance and narrative by the video following the four characters showing their ‘Bonkers’ lifestyle. Which links to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of the lyrics matching the visuals. Although most Grime music video include women in a sexual way we deviated  away from this as we didnt feel it fitted in well with the concept of the song.By using narrative, conceptual and performance our music video deviates from other grime music videos as it includes all three when usually grime videos include performance and narrative. By including all three our music video can appeal to a range of audiences as well as our target audience. Through studying the songs lyrics there is a story behind the lyrics about how someone wakes up and there life is bonkers and how that’s normal for them but insane for others who aren’t living that lifestyle. This is typical of Grime music as its usually written from the artists point of view and about how they are dealing with fame and comparing where they are now to where they grew up. Therefore from looking at Goodwins theory we created a narrative from the relationship between the lyrics and visuals. When the lyrics read ‘ I wake up everyday’ it shows the four characters waking up which is effective in the typical conventions of a music videos of relating lyrics to visuals. 

There is also a relationship between music and visuals as when the music gets faster we used quick cuts of photographs to build up suspense for the beat and also when the music becomes slower we used slow motion shots of the characters running around. By editing the footage in slow motion to relate to the music tempo it follows music video conventions of matching the music with visuals and follows conventions of electro house videos. We used performance throughout the video of the main artist as well as the four characters as we felt it gave our video a base and related more to our target audience rather than it being all conceptual and not making any sense.

We decided to include a ‘look alike’ male character of Dizzee Rascal as having the artist present is what attracts the audience and also relates to Goodwin’s theory of star power. Our whole style of our music video deviates from other music videos as it doesn’t include a main location as lots of different locations are used which don’t relate to each other. This is effective for our music video as its suppose to be crazy and different so by repeating the same locations it would become boring. Therefore to make our video interesting and exciting we edited it by using quick cuts to cut in time with the music like Goodwin’s theory of relationship between visuals and music which looks effective. Our style is presented as comedy which challenges music conventions as comedy isn’t used when portraying a grime artist as they are usually represented as ‘hard’. When creating a bonkers and wild style and editing the footage it was shown as humorous by people wearing different costumes and pulling funny faces which makes our music video unique and interesting.

We included intertexuality from looking at videos such as ‘Barbara Streisand’ and ‘Rockstar’ by Nickelback that we found humorous were different people would sing a line of the song. 

We included this in our video and also asked the people to dance as well as sing to relate to the concept of ‘bonkers’ which made it more interesting and funny.  We took inspiration from Kanye West ‘All of the lights’ where at the beginning of the video the background is plain black and neon words light up on the screen reading the lyrics. We felt this was effective and related to the type of music which would be played in a club and the flashing lights related to disco balls and lighting in clubs.

 We also mainly took inspiration from Mr Basista’s music video ‘Basista Skank’ the music was the same upbeat tempo as ours and included a bedroom scene at the beginning which we felt would work well with our song. By using intertextuality we were able to take inspiration and create our own spin on an idea and make it work for us rather than completely copying.

Please Look at my Multi Media Evaluation on Wix

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