Hayley Cook - Evaluation: Question 1

Question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our adaptation of “Famous” by Scouting For Girls largely conforms to typical genre conventions of both comic ideals as well as music videos belonging to the pop genre. In our music video we have incorporated a combination of performance and narrative as a way in which we have conformed to typical pop genre conventions, as they are commonly in possession of some form of tale amongst scattered performances of the song. This then reflects Andrew Goodwin's six point theory in regards demonstrating genre characteristics. 


Pop videos are usually in possession of simplistic themes, such as love and hate. However, ours dwells upon the incorporation of comic aspects in which the notion of humour can be achieved. Aspects such as the increased speed are used largely in the video as a means of conformation to comic conventions. These largely involve humorously exaggerated situations as well as the parodying of other works. However, in this case the “works” are that of popular panellist shows such as “The X Factor” and “Britain’s Got Talent.” This was then used for creation of entertainment for the audience, once again highlighted in the high speed aspects of the video, designed to provoke amusement from the audience. Corresponding to these aspects then convey a sense of loyalty towards the genres and so our music video was aimed to successfully depict them.

Comic conventions can be reliant upon slapstick, gags or sharp-edged satire. This then means that in order to incorporate these, we made heavy reliance upon the high speed of clips, despite some of which possessing a natural ability to bring about senses of amusement without first being edited. These narrative aspects of the music video are largely what dwell upon this concept, as the inclusion of the audition sequences fills over half of the entire music video. Similarly the music video “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5 conforms to the same basic concepts of performance and narrative, as well as possessing the aspect of the auditions for “Jagger”. The success of this video then inspired us with the creation of our music video as by viewing an accomplished video with similar aspects,  it allowed us to gain the realisation that the idea we had in hand held great potential.   
   

Another music video which acted as inspiration for us was Paradise by Coldplay. Similarly to ours, this video dwells upon the use of costumes, specifically that of animal costumes. This then means that the use of the elephants travelling to paradise is similar to the use of the gorilla and banana costumes in our video as they bring an animalist element to the video, and so deducing a sense of comedy through the use of the “chase”. Through the viewing of professional works which hold focus upon costume to such a degree, our production team were able to achieve a sense of inspiration. This video holds other similarities to ours as it doesn’t draw obvious links between audio and visuals and so we found that these types of music videos can be immensely successful, providing us with both hope and inspiration that we too could produce something of sorts.

The Lazy Song by Bruno Mars is another area to which our music video divulges: The use of the gorilla and monkey costumes. This music video was then found to have explicit similarities with ours as it also focussed largely on costumes, and although did not focus on acts, it had a great deal of reliance on this comic element, which was clearly and successfully used. Inspiration was then uncovered in the notion of this music video and it was found that by viewing others successes it motivated us to strive for a similar rate of success. 


The above aspects of the "Famous" music video then convey ideas of representation and intertextuality, a notion present within Andrew Goodwin's six point analysis. By incorporating these elements we then found that they held popular appeal and could be deemed successful applicable elements which reflected the pop genre. However, the lack of links between visuals and music and lyrics contrasts with this theory, highlighting a deviation from the generic marks of the pop genre.  

 

The term “pop song” basically means to have popular appeal, therefore pop targets the mass market rather than specific sub-cultures and reflects existing trends, and so providing us with our target audience: Mass market. This also meant that the elements included within our video needed to appeal to a wide audience, meaning that the aspects shown were in need of holding a great deal of humor. Our music video is also aimed at the youths and young adults, i.e. those who are more likely to find the pop genre appealing. 






THE BELOW IS A LINK TO THIS ON MY WIX WEBSITE. PLEASE TAKE A LOOK:
http://editor.wix.com/editor/5793c360-fe0f-0e0e-6234-64e0648f7051/5793c360-fe0f-0e0e-6234-64e0648f7051?requesterAppOpGuid=9D415034-FCE1-4AF7-BE51-A140E8E82BD3