In the planning and preparation stage of the entire process, we did a lot of research into our genre, music videos, Kelly Clarkson and our audience. We felt that there were many preconceptions that our audience would have about the type of video they should expect. The audience would be young, mainly females who are into pop music, and would therefore expect to see that stereotypical pop video. Slightly cheesy, artist focused, perfect on the surface approach. Our research showed us no alternative to work around this pop image as it is such a strong genre it would be very difficult to challenge it and still create a good video. therefore we decided that for the most part of our video, we would conform to the current forms and conventions of real media products.
We did this by making our video very artist focused. I would say that around 70% of the video features the artist, alone. This was one way to conform to the pop industry. With pop music its all about the idol rather than the music, the artist is the star and seen as an inspirational character and is therefore appreciated greatly by fans. The audience for this type of music are more interested in the artist than the quality of the song. If they are already a fan of Kelly Clarkson, then they will immediately like this song. They are very much swayed by the medias intervention and promotion of the artists perceived appearance and become taken with this. This means that they want to see her in the video, she is there inspiration. So, not only did we ensure that she was featured in much of the video, we also ensured that many of the camera angles were close ups, to really focus in on Kelly. She would always be in the middle of the shot and would therefore be "centre of attention". This is seen in many other music videos of the pop genres, such as Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and Cheryl Cole videos. A variety of different kind of pop artists who each take on the lead role on their videos, in the same way that Kelly does in ours.
Below are three links that will take you to three different videos from these artist where you will see the artist is the main focus of the video.
Britney Spears- Sometimes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpo9lb6TGgk
Cheryl Cole- Fight For This Love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMiy_UsrPDs
Jennifer Lopez- Get Right
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WIsnC-h1d0
The ethnicity of the couple (black) could also be seen as a stereotype given the circumstances of the storyline. Although this was not an intentional move made by us as a group, it was later bought to our attention by our teacher. These fight scenes could be seen as even more of a controversial subject due to the ethnicity of the couple. This may even be seen as prejudice. This could be a way in which we are conforming or challenging real media products. It could be seen as conforming in that we are playing on a stereotype, however it could be seen as a challenge as it is a very contentious subject that maybe is too outrageous for any real professional media distributors to produce because of the scrutiny they would come under if they did.
The video developed forms and conventions of real media products as in the original Kelly Clarkson video, Kelly portrays the vulnerable character as well as the artist. In our video we had completely separate actors to play out the narrative of the song. We did this because we wanted to develop the storyline further than the original video had. It was very basic and understated and we wanted to intensify this greatly. We wanted to make the abuse intense and scary. We wanted our audience to sympathise with the character, however we did not want to disturb them. We felt that if we had used Kelly Clarkson to lay the role of the abused wife, this would have taken it too far and, rather than the audience feeling sympathy and empathising with the character, they would be shocked and horrified to see their favourite artist in such n awful state. It would not be enjoyable for them as they would be seeing someone they love and admire so much being derogatively treated. We knew our scenes would be quite intense and dramatic, and our audience would not want to see this if the artist was the one facing the abuse. Because we wanted to develop the storyline further than the original video, we knew that the only way we could do this was to get in new characters to play this role.
Pop videos are often very quick and fast paced. It is something that can often be associated with the fast paced lifestyles of its young audience. we wanted to conform to this and so I ensured that when editing, clips lasted no longer than around 5 seconds or less. Even though the song was relatively slow, I still wanted to capture the interest on my audience and I did this by keeping the pace fast. The audience would expect this subtle convention, however it would probably go unnoticed. If clips were very long, this would bore the viewer and the song would begin to drag on and on. Scenes must be transitory in a pop video as long scenes just do not work. They become monotonous and extensive and leaves the audience just waiting and anticipating the next scene, which is never good. They should be able to watch it comfortably without ever thinking "this scene is lasting too long".
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