EVALUATION QUESTION 1: In what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

There are a number of music video conventions that make up what we see on the screen. At the beginning of the year we were asked to research about Andrew Goodwin, Carol Vernallis and Laura Mulvey. Andrew Goodwin discussed the different types of videos and some of the rules they followed. Carol Vernallis talks of the editing and camera work in videos very closely and Laura Mulvey speaks of the 'male gaze' and the fact that women are used as sexual objects in many music videos to attract the male gender. 

After carefully analysing our video, I noticed that we followed some of the conventions explored by these three individuals. The first convention we slightly followed was Laura Mulvey's theory of woman being presented as sexual objects in music videos as as a way to get men's attention. 




These screenshot of our video show the artist's body and there is no part of her face shown at all. We definitely followed Laura Mulvey's theory here as this shot may receive more male attention as opposed to female attention. This would be due-to the fact that this panning shot of the artist shows off some of her assests. 

How did we use Laura Mulvey, Carol Vernallis and Andrew Goodwin's theories?

Although we did not use Carol Vernallis' idea of jump cuts, we did have effects to simulate a jump cut. We used the same clip however we drew it closer several times and cut between the closer version of the clip and the normal version of the clip to make it look as if there was a jump cut, we also done this to the beat of the song. The screenshots below show both shows that we merged together to create this jump cut effect. We edited between these two in time to the beat and we achieved our aim. 

We also had slow motion which I did not mention in the camtasia as well as having discontinuous editing. We broke her theory in the way we edited, since we have many edits that interfere with the possible continuous editing. This is one of the examples in our music video:

A video that we looked into was Beyonce's 'Broken Hearted Girl' music video. It really influenced us on alot of the choices we made. One idea we took was the use of the black and white effect, which Carol Vernallis would say is quite common in music videos. As well as that, we noticed her use of fast motion in one of the sections of the video, and we decided that we would show some parts down instead. Another inspiration I got from this video was the rose idea. This was the first video where I saw an object being such an important part of the song and adding that much more meaning.

     

ANCILLARY PRODUCTS:

The outside panels of my digipak has followed many conventions and challenged some. One convention that I developed was Carol Vernallis' idea of editing. I used effects to enhance my pictures and I also used an effect to outline her lips, which is a key aspect of all the ancillary products.

In the digipak and the advertisement I did however challenge Laura Mulvey's idea of women being portrayed as sexual objects. None of my body parts are exposed and I am in fact quite covered up.


                                                           

In my advertisement I followed some conventions that are quite obvious. I placed a big picture of the artist taking over most of the advertisement as most would do. I also placed the actual CD cover on the advertisement in order to advertise it and make it more known to the public. The 'OUT NOW' is also found in a few advertisements that include information about the albums. The website is also quite conventional and the layout of the advertisement it also conventional. The artist's name is at the top and is the biggest writing on the page as are most advertisements. I again challenged the convention that women are seen as sexual objects in the music industry.

The Rita Ora Advertisement and Album cover were a very big inspiration for me when I was creating my ancillary work because they really reflected the type of artist I wanted Karma to be seen as. I wanted her to really challenge some conventions but then again develop them in a way that would make her unique and unlike other artists.