A2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

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Both my music video and ancillary texts intertwine so well due to the fact that I kept it stylistically very similar. Using my key themes of vivid colours juxtaposed to black / dark backgrounds (see below) is a main house style I kept with my digipak and poster.

I keep ambiguity a consistent theme in both of my products as adds an enigma to the entirety of the product. With the digipak, I chose to take a 360 degree perspective of the girl I chose to have on my album artwork - the left and right sides of her face, hidden under low key lighting and then her face as the CD; representing the fact the face holds a story with everybody, it's your identity and very personal to you...Exactly what an album is like for an artist - that's why I chose that for the CD cover. However with the music video, the way I kept the enigma is with keeping the male character ambiguous (see below). I also kept the personal / intimacy by using close ups of the actress that appears on my album artwork:

I also used both of the same effects in both my media products. The noise tool enabled me to reach that vintage / 80's feel as it looks like the poor quality of VHS cameras. Using bright and unique typography in both my media products also reinforces my consistency with how both of them combine; I took inspiration from this after researching album artwork from the 80's such as Wham and Michael Jackson.

Ultimately, I believe both of my products weave very closely with each other as I made it a priority to stay consistent as an artist. If I could do it again, I would rather keeping the appearance of the girl's identity a bit later in the music video.

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

Our media products use the idea of Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze, since our song is called "Girl" and the music video is based around an obsession with a girl; we use close ups of areas like her cleavage, her lips, panning up her leg whilst she puts tights on and playing with chewing gum;' this adds a sexual vibe to the music video. It's typical for music videos that contain women to do this as it's a way of voyeurism for the audience to consume; as well, we understand our audience is sixteen to twenty-eight year old, so love / sex is a typical place of interest. We adapt Goodwin's theory of nation of looking and voyeuristic behaviour within a music video, the close ups and panning of the actresses' body is very alluring and seductive, as well to add to it, the eye-contact she has with the camera breaks the fourth wall with the audience.

The only lyrics in the song are, "I want your love" "Give me your love" these are all imperative sentences showing a need for sexual / romantic gratification, a similar way to the understanding of voyeuristic behaviour. In the music video, we use pop-up graphics that type out the lyrics - doing so, follows Goodwin's theory of relationship between lyric and visuals. We also use a lot of POV camera angles, this along with close ups, add an intimacy to the music video; it's almost like the audience is playing the role of the boy that's obsessed with this girl as this is a relatable situation. With understanding Goodwin's music video theory, we follow the idea of the relationship between music and visuals on screen. We adapting this in post-production as we used jump cuts, short / long takes and transitions that suit the beat of the song.

Using a lot of low-key lighting juxtaposed to bright vivid neon lights is following the typical genre convention, since you'd most likely hear this song in places like parties / clubs, they would be using lights and other equipment, so this is why we developed this idea. As well as implementing scenes from within a club, this would be an easily recognisable place for some of our audience. To conform to our genre convention, we use settings like the club, skateparks, bedroom, public transport and a diner as these all represent and connote the idea of youth.

Another way we challenge the conventions of real media product, as our genre is electronic garage, the artist doesn't rely on their appearance to sell their music. They take a abstract / contemporary take on the music video. We imitate this ambiguity about who the artist is by using over-the-shoulder camera angles from behind the artist's head; this creates a curiosity about who this man is, making you want to find out. This wouldn't follow the typical need from a record label as they would want the artist's appearance to be the epicentre of the music video, therefore we don't follow the conventions of a music video analysed by Goodwin. Our record label, Young Turks, all have very similar artists in their roster who who adopt the same route we took with our music video; artists like The XX, SBTRKT and FKA Twigs all take a very artistic composure with their music videos. That is why we chose Young Turks as our record label, enabling us the freedom of artistry we wanted in a very creative and innovative way.

Since the genre of our song is considered a hybrid, it contains a lot of different genres within just one song; for example, the lyrics are from a pop song sampled from the 1980's - this is why we took an 80's adaptation of our music video - luckily with having different genres merged into one, we was able to take different conventions from each genre and combine them into one. For example, the teenage romanticism of pop, the garage / r&b vibe from the nightclub and then all the lights from electronic. This would be considered the future of music, taking different facets from each and combining.

Below are artists of a similar genre (The XX is also on the same label as spctrm). Their music videos do not / rarely contain the face of the artist, instead they take a creative way to market their music within a video. A narrative or a montage of clip is the main function of their music video. They do not contain any wacky in-your-face stardom attributes music videos of other genres would contain, this is because they have a completely different target audience.