In this question on genre, I will be assessing my Advanced portfolio which was to create a music video for The Pussycat Dolls song, “Hate This Part”. The main concept of a genre is to enable the audience to differentiate a style of music to another through the use of conventions such as visual imagery. For example, the R&B genre consists of the emphasis of a woman’s sexuality. The theorist Neale, examined how the genre theory involves circulations of expectations between media texts and audiences. Neale states that genres are not systems they are processes, this is due to the fact they evolve overtime, after reviewing our product we establish that this is in fact true. We incorporated the R&B and pop within our video.
Yasmin and I began our research by analyzing real media texts, this was to ensure the acknowledgement of the conventions of the R&B genre. Firstly, we began by analyzing Keri Hilso’s video “Knock You Down” ft Kanye West and Ne-Yo as it demonstrates a couples relationship coming to an end, we used Goodwin’s theory when analyzing this product. The product was a narrative based video, that navigated us towards creating a product that consisted a narrative. We considered wireframing to capture a reaction of both characters but decided against this in the end as it may have looked as if there was too much appearing on the screen.
We chose to create a video which adopted the R&B genre, therefore we chose “Hate This Part” by The Pussycat Dolls. The selection of this song created a variety of different paths and ideas in terms of special effects and visual imagery as the song begins quite calmly and the chorus enforces a more upbeat atmosphere, which enabled a fast pace edit.
Additionally, choosing this song enabled me to incorporate a narrative to demonstrate how the female protagonist was tired of her relationship, and beginning to realize it was coming to an end due to the constant arguing between one another. We decided that a narrative would amplify the emotions of sadness and heartbreak that the couple felt as they were going through the intense break-up. We analyzed the video, “Takin’ Back my Love” by Ciara consisting of a narrative of the aftermath of a break-up to identify how they expressed themselves in order to ensure that we were really capturing the emotions and conventions of the power ballad. From this text, we incorporated the body language to convey the feelings of the break up, for example towards the end of our video the female artist aggressively pushes the artist away from her deeply expresses her feelings towards him. When creating the product, I had to ensure that the audience was able to empathise with the characters. I highlighted the separateness of the couple even though they were together in the vehicle by creating a distance between both characters in order for the audiences to establish the relationship of the couple coming to an end. I used close ups and high angled shots to exaggerate the emotions conveyed on the artists face.
Yasmin and I wanted to add a narrative and performance concept to our music video to ensure that we engaged both the younger and older generation and provide them with exactly what they would like to see in a music video aimed at their age group.
Yasmin and I wanted to add a narrative and performance concept to our music video to ensure that we engaged both the younger and older generation and provide them with exactly what they would like to see in a music video aimed at their age group.
Furthermore, we decided to incorporate sections of the artist performing in choreographed dance scenes, as the genre of our video is R&B we thought closely about what costumes, locations, lighting and mise-en-scene should consist of and how we could mimic these traits in an R&B music video. We had to investigate how we could shoot the dance sequence, which meant that we did further research on real media texts by identifying how Pixie Lott’s video, “All About Tonight” was shot as it involved a very effective dance sequence. We decided to incorporate shots from this video in our product and it enabled us to create test shots. This video inspired us to take shots on the London Eye, we also began to play with effects from this video and incorporate this within our video. Close-ups were used which emphasized the emotion that the artist experiences.
Additionally, a problem we may have been faced with, is the fact that because sections of the song are fairly slow and the beat of the song isn’t very fast paced, I would have needed to ensure that the shots depicting the emotion between the couple appeared interesting rather than boring, resulting in losing our audiences attention. Our aim was to engage the audience’s full attention with an aspect of exploring the emotional sides of the song as well as incorporating a fun and enjoyable performance to watch as well and I would like to think we pulled this off well.
Nichole Scherzinger's video, "Don't Hold Your Breathe" inspired us with the location of our video as we were influenced by the back of the car scenes and the emphasis of the close-ups that highlight the expressions within the product. The video really presents the concepts which we were attempting to deliver in terms of the artists feelings and expressions which are presented within the main lyrics of the song. Goodwin states the main features which are included within a music video, he states that there may be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals which is what is clearly seen within our media product.
In addition, when researching videos that fit the same conventions as our music video, that is, R&B I established the representations of women through the lyrics and main footage in their videos. Women are portrayed in a negative light - as sexual objects by dressing semi-naked as they move and dance in a seductive manner, flaunting their body to their audiences. This is seen in Rihanna’s video, “Rudeboy”. Therefore, we decided that we didn’t want to be another group that exploits woman in music videos in order to draw in our audiences. We decided that our artist would act as a role model for young girls and be seen as a respectable and highly regarded singer and not for the exploitation of their sexuality.
My advanced portfolio, consisted a clear and fluent narrative that could be dinstinguished by all audiences, illustrating an everyday life issue faced by many fans. The final product and it could not have been achieved without acknowledging the conventions and main features which consist of real media texts fitting the genre of R&B. We decided to move away from the general R&B portrayal of women being seen as sex objects, we were mainly focusing on the artists talents.
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