In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?The music video produced, it can be argued,

several steps of all three theorists, Laura Mulvey, Andrew Goodwin and Carrol Vernallis, although all to different extents.

Laura Mulvey

According to Laura Mulvey and her beliefs, females are used for the mere purpose of male fantasies an satisfactions within the media industry.

However, the genre is also significant for this theory, and a song by Robin Thicke ‘Blurred Lines’ applies to this theory as it clearly involves the ‘male gaze’ theoretically

and physically. Although that is true, the convention is fundamental for some music videos. For example. In this music vide the females are all dressed or ‘under-dressed’ in the same outfits and are also equal to one another. Constantly in the background to look

better whilst dancing, or simply stand and be ‘appealing to the eye of the audience’ or for the most part ‘male audience’

However, Prototype can be ignored in this theory, as the focus of the lyrics and video for the most part, is the artist himself and him ‘getting better’…

Andrew Goodwin

0…proposed that music videos contain traditional narrative styles, and therefore Todorov’s ideas do not apply to pop videos. Merely because it relates more to movies through presenting the equilibrium, disruption, recognition, attempt to restore normality/equilibrium and finally, back to normality. Clearly, this is long-winded and usually would not fit into a music video, especially with the average of a 3 minute song. Therefore, Goodwin had responded with a simpler version for music videos, proposing that there are three types of videos…

3 types of videos

1. Illustration – video tells the story and has a meaning2. Amplification – video presents new meanings and ideas that

only add to the song and also relate to the lyrics3. Disjuncture – little or no connection between the lyrics and

the music video

An example of illustration would be ‘Pap don’t preach’ by Madonna, and ‘Telephone’ by Lady Gaga (link below in the blog post incase you’d like a listen!)

additionally..

0Goodwin also proposed that Pop videos rely on repetition as the majority use the same images also with the chorus in the video. Therefore the audience may begin to associate certain mise-en-scene with a particular genre. An example of that may be Indie rock (Arctic Monkeys, The Killers and Franz Ferdinand) who all have similar conventions of camera movement, such as panning, also the instruments being the prop and the stage as the location..

on the other hand..0 Carrol Vernallis proposes that edits are more frequent in music videos, the majority

is disjuncture and involves base track editing as the rhythm is usually connected to the song. Including editing such as CGI to draw attention, split screens and wipes. The base-track is usually used to give the music video some composition and the camera can also move along with the music.

0 An example that has a clear base-track is Burn by Ellie Goulding. It also includes manipulation of time, meaning there had been slow motion shots, usually of the singer.

0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGyEd0aKWZE (Burn – Ellie Goulding)

Prototype – The Evolution of ManIn terms of a base track, we as a group opened up Final Cut Pro and attempted to lay the base-track, which we did, but found it difficult to edit in such a way.

The main reason for the fact that we didn’t use a base-track is because we did not have enough base-tracks filmed from start to finish…

continued..

0 ..all base-tracks started from random points within the song, therefore laying out the base-tracks and editing align with the song.

0 We also found it easier to add sequences filmed as we went along, because we have a story to create.

Develop or Challenge?The Evolution of Man by Prototype definitely challenges Vernallis theory on editing in terms of base-tracks. What is does develop is the use of panels and CGI (black and white)

Split Screen used Black and White

Develop or Challenge?

0 Develop a media convention that our video also follows is that the artist is taking on the role of a character. Our artist is seen as both the performer and character in the music video.

0 Challenging the proposition by Goodwin that videos rely on repetition. That is because our video does not contain any repetitive shots and is always at a new angle, even if the same location is re-used.

0 Developing Goodwin’s proposition on illustration and amplification. That is because the video adds to the lyrics by creating this story of a break-up and ‘getting better’. Challenging disjuncture and not applying it to our music video.