G325 June 2010 39/50 Section A
1a)
I feel that my production skills from foundation to Advanced have greatly improved.
My thriller opening sequence was about two men who prey on suicidal teenage girls
on the internet, titled “Caught in the Web.” The men rape and murder their victims
but frame it as a suicide, using the suicide support website (where they preyed on
them) as evidence of this suicide. It is a dark enigmatic and gripping film which
captivates the audience (according to my feedback). My music video (Advanced
Portfolio) is to the song “Voodoo Child” originally by Rogue Traders, but our
girlband uses the name The Vixens. We used 4 girls and our video transports the
audience to the mind of the main girl, where her alter-egos (dressed as the deadly
sins) corrupt her. It is a racy funky video that creates a strong band image.
My research for both projects included researching genre conventions (horror/thriller
opening sequences such as “Se7ev”, and electropop-rock/dance/glam music videos
such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry) and was expanded to include components that
didn’t specifically relate to genre. For my thriller I researched films where they have
internet conversations (as in our opening sequence, the girl is talking to who she
thinks is an agony aunt over an internet forum) which led me to films including “The
Holiday” and “Something’s Gotta Give”, showing me how to successfully change
from filming the person typing the words on the screen and then reading their
message aloud. I developed this skill in my music video research by looking at other
media texts, not just other music videos. I started with trying to be inspired by original
music video concepts such as Radiohead’s video for “Just” in which a man lies down
in the street and the audience can’t hear what he’s saying to explain himself to passers
by. This inspired me to create ambiguity in my video which differs from standard pop
videos where a lot of the visuals illustrate the lyrics. I expanded my research to
fashion magazines and photographs of different eras, since a major concept in this
video was the power of women as confident, independent, sexual beings. Our costume
was very important in constructing meaning and without in-depth research into the 7
deadly sins the audience would not have grasped why we had girls dressed in bold
outfits to symbolise the sins; red, velvet leotard and back combed hair for “wrath”, a
Marie Antoiinette inspred look of a pale blue and pink corset, white face make-up, an
[cannot read text] with one long curled piece of hair, and a chunk of chocolate cake
that signified “Greed”, a black corset with leather leggings to signify “Lust”, and a
green dress, heavy green eye make up and glittery diamond jewellery connoting
“Envy”.
I think that without doing research into character types, character costume, and genre
conventions for my thriller I wouldn’t have known what to look for when researching
for my music video because they can be so abstract and there aren’t many constraints.
I also learned to be open minded.
Since I was one of the performers in our music video, it pushed me to think more
practically – our ideas had to be creative yet do-able on our small budget and time
constraints. After watching several videos on YouTube of thriller opening sequences
and music videos I realised that it is good to have layered meaning a production
because it makes it more interesting for the audience as it challenges them to come up
with their own interpretations and gives the production playability. In the Thriller
project, after researching storylines and narrative themes, my group and I had a strong
idea of what our film was about. Despite the fact we created enigma, we still wanted
the audience to understand our dominant reading, however in my music video, I
realised that it is better to- people to have different interpretations as I found that the
most popular current music videos are those that are quirky, different and weird, like
Lady GaGa.
In conclusion my foundation portfolio greatly aided my advanced portfolio because
my skills were refined and I have produced an ever better end product.
EAA 8
EG 8
T 4
(20)
1b)
Genre is often used as a way of distinguishing one style from another; it categorises
works so that the audience can more easily choose what they want to experience. For
my music video, the genre of our music was a hybrid of electropop/rock/dance, which
come mostly from the original song and from our personal tastes. Since our genre is
modern and not common, we drew conventions from artists that had similar styles to
ours. The conventions we found for music video for our genre are; editing often cuts
to the beat; for female artists – costumes are bold, they wear high heels, ands the
performances are strong and full of attitude. Examples of artists’ videos that do this
are Beyonce (through her powerful dance routines and sexy costumes) and Lady
GaGa (who wears extreme hair, costume and makeup).
My music video consisted of my group members (4 girls) giving powerful
performances with sections of dance routine. We stuck to these conventions because
we wanted the audience to recognise it as belonging to a genre and looking back at it
now I think we succeeded. The genre has postmodern influences as does our video. It
starts with a short narrative to no music, where a girl looks at a picture in a locket of
her and a guy, slams it shut and looks in a mirror – which transports her into
‘subconscious mind’. We filmed the bulk of our video in an all-white studio and with
our powerful costumes that intertextually referenced the deadly sins and Marie
Antoinette the audience can quite clearly see that it is not reality.
You can see that our video promotes strong women by their feisty performance and
this is emphasised by the use of a male, white headless, mannequin with a ‘perfect’
torso. In the video the sins are corrupting the girl (but they are all just facets of her
personality) and they dominate the mannequin. This is in contrast with Laura
Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ whereby media is predominantly made with a
male or masculine audience in mind. Our target audience is 14-25 year old women,
and this is obvious because the audience immediately identify with the main girl since
she is the focus of the narrative and on the mannequin’s torso is a kiss mark, showing
the women ‘marking their territory’ on him. If we were targeting men we would’ve
used a real man, but by our production decisions the target audience and genre is
clear.
We followed the convention of cutting shots to the beat, however we challenged the
convention of keeping lines of the song in one shot. We cut midway through words
and phrases in order to quicken the pace, which is often fast for this genre. An aspect
of the genre which we developed is comedy. In some of the music videos artists take
themselves very seriously, however we combined the sexy performances with the
comic editing and cut aways to five the characters a ‘human feel’ in the make believe
world. For example we used what was originally going to be an outtake, where one
girl shakes her bum from side to side, and we matched it to the beat, giving it a comic
edge.
You can apply Lyotard’s theory of mete-narratives to our video since it blurs the lines
between reality and fantasy using the key signifier of a mirror in the opening
narrative.
I think the my music video successfully conveys its genre while still maintaining
enigma. The Reception Theory can be applied, since from feedback, many people had
different interpretations, which is what this genre is all about. Looking at it
objectively I would say that it is a fun, interesting video that invites playability and
successfully promotes the song, which is the aim of a music video.
EAA 7
EG 8
T 4
(19)
Total for Section A 39/50
