Music Video forms and conventions, How to be a heartbreaker

1. In what ways do your media
products use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
11TH JANUARY 2016
SCARLETT MURPHY

2. What are forms and conventions?
The form of a media text is the structure of a product, the end shaping.
This is made up through elements known as conventions.
To make up the form, conventions are elements which are easily
recognisable to similar texts. They are the ‘norm’ of how something is
done or made up of. The reason we have used similar conventions in our
music video is because it means that our target audience will find it easier
to recognise the genre of our product.
In music videos especially our genre of Indie- Pop important conventions
we looked for and found included the set, rhythmic editing, conspicuous
use of lighting and the close ups.

3. Form 1:
Performance
The use of this form gave a structure to our video In my music video performance was
used to showcase the new artist Flora. We wanted to show her as a strong sassy female
who has a connection with her fans and feels like they do. Our target audience were
females aged 14 to 20 who are going through their first heartbreak and love. To reach
these girls one technique used by our artist was direct address to her audience, to make
the gap between the product and the audience seem smaller and closer. We shot this in
close ups and mid shots. This worked really well with the song as the song was an
explanation of ‘How to be a Heartbreaker’ and having our artist look directly into the
camera lens and use both her hands and face as a way of explanation made a strong
connection with the audience as it looked as if she were talking exactly to you making you
feel closer to her and understand her more. This furthermore made our artist more
recognisable to the audience, this is particularly important as it is her first music video and
therefore is not a huge star already but needs to make her place in the music world. This
therefore showed Flora to be strong, new, exciting and relevant to today’s wants and
making a gap in the market for her.
This helped to create a marketable star image for Flora as she comes across as a young
normal, middle class pretty blonde girl but with an attitude. As a result of this we can see
how this fits in with the media theorist Richard Dyer’s paradox which concludes that the
star show be both ordinary however with an extraordinary talent to connect with their
audience, she is a new and fresh on the music scene and songs are very relatable to
teenage girls going through heartbreak making it easier for audience to idolise her and
therefore buy her products.
Iggy Azalea, Fancy

4. Form 1 [Continued]
We adhered to indie-pop conventions through the performance style of Flora. We
showed her to be dancing at points both individually whilst also in a group. This helped
to demonstrate her abilities and talent, as well as singing also dancing.
This was a convention which we saw in many music videos of indie-pop including Eliza
Doolittle’s Skinny Genes. One thing we noticed in more indie-pop videos we that the
dancing want precise routines choreographed and then worked on like in many pop
videos like Rita Ora’s I Will Never Let You Down. The dancing we had was more
naturalistic, joking around and having fun. We made extra rehearsals to work on this and
make it look to fit this style. We found that this could also potentially help us in cross
promotion as the audience would see Flora as an all-round performer and then want to
buy her concert tickets to see her perform live. Due to our artist being from a big record
company like Parlophone Record who cater for both big artists like Kylie Minogue and
more ‘indie’ artists like Becky Hill and Flora is a cross between the two of them. This
made us want to adhere to the stereotypes of pop music videos as they know that they
work and therefore appeal to our target audience.
This helped our video to be more aesthetically pleasing whilst we complied to many pop
videos having shots of arms, legs and shots of butts as it sexualises the artist showing her
as a sexual symbol of youthful and creativity of Andrew Goodwin’s values of music
stardom which we decided we wanted to portray in our initial pitch.
Eliza Doolittle, Skinny Genes

5. Form 2:
The Length
Most songs have a length of 3 to 4 minutes in length. Now to help combat piracy problems in music videos this
can be even longer as it can include a pre-roll which potentially can dissuade audiences from illegally
downloading the song. (This was a technique used by Taylor Swift in her song ‘Trouble’).
The song ‘How To Be A Heartbreaker’ before we cut it was 3.44 minutes, which one can see is just under a
minute longer than our version. The reason we cut this song down was because after looking at artists like
Marina and the Diamonds which included Charli XCX and Sky Ferreira who are both Indie-Pop/Rock/Punk
female artists we found that many of their songs were the length of 3 to 3 and a half minutes:
After watching these videos we could see how it is hard to keep an audience interested and involved in a music
video, and therefore we shortened the length of the song. Therefore we feel that after showing target groups
that it was the right length as they didn’t drop off or click off the screen.

6. Convention 1:
Use of Lighting
Christina Aguilera, Bound to you
We used bright colourful lighting to follow many other indie-pop artists. In
our music video the most important lighting element was the Fluro, which
enhanced our artists beauty, it glamorised her through defining her
cheekbones, purifying her skin and making her to look bright, awake and
omnipresent. Christina Aguilera’s music video Bound to you became
important in inspiring us these shots. It showed us how using blue light in a
slow part of a helps to create a melancholy tone and to make the video feel
more emotional and easier to connect therefore to the emotions of the
artist. We understood before our shoot day that the lighting should be
conspicuous and not to draw attention away from the artist whilst working
with them to improve the overall video therefore we worked with using
gobos in the background and the speed that they swirled around to stop
them from distracting from Flora. If one stares right into Flora’s eye in these
shots we can see the reflection of the fluro triangle which helps to add to
the star quality of our artist by literally visualising almost as star and
something special about the girl.

7. Convention 2:
Close Ups
The importance of close ups is a convention of all music videos, but especially
with new artists this is because it critical to emphasise and establish who the
artist is to the audience. This is because this is who is being sold and in a world
centred around aesthetics is important to explore their aesthetics
and therefore make them as animatic as possible due to it helps to
show their personality on camera which helps the audience to ‘like’
her as an artist. This is important to our target audience as they
are more likely to feel connected to her and as a result of this will
want to buy more of her records to see where else she can relate to
teenage girls, who are often emotionally vulnerable and their life experiences.
Because Flora is a new artist we straightaway showed her in a close
up in the first shot in our music video (right image) so that it was clear who the
artist is and she was therefore the main focus in our music video. The use of lots
of close up were due to helping for our artist have more of a connection with the
audience and therefore increase her fan base.
We deliberately chose to put the colour pink as our background, we picked a
brighter more girly pink than Katy Perry in This is How We Do as we wanted to
appeal to a girlier and younger audience.
Katy Perry, This Is How We Do

8. Convention 3:
Rhythmic Editing
Editing puts all the different footage which looks as if it has no relationship
together to make it all link, potentially into a narrative. In all music videos a
hugely important convention whilst editing is to cut on the beat because it
subconsciously makes the music look more aesthetically pleasingly.
Rhythmic editing makes the visual elements match with the aural element
(the track). How to be a Heartbreaker was therefore edited to cut on the
beat and not on the lyrics.
One element of our video which worked really well with this was the
gymnastics element which was something that was inspired from Eliza
Doolittle’s video Big When I Was Little this was because we choreographed
the moves to be on the beat and therefore it was easier to cut to this and it
looked really cool as a result of this! This therefore stuck to the convention
of music videos and shows our artist to be more mainstream which also
connotes that she is popular.
Eliza Doolittle, Big When I Was Little

9. Convention 4:
Costume
In most pop videos especially those made for a female artist or group show females to be highly sexualised and this can be
shown through the mise en scene of their costume. This is very clear in Nicki Minaj’s videos (above) and Flora does not take it
this far however throughout the video we see more suggestive imagery, this is because of her target audience of teenagers
who would not necessarily want to be shown as much nor would parents like it. However you can see (above) how we have
shown areas like the thighs, midriff and cleavage. Therefore here we have adhered to pop conventions however to a lesser
extent than some conventions due to wanting to make it family friendly and also by thinking about what our target audience
want.
Clothing changes throughout a music video is a common convention and can also be seen in both Anaconda and Black Magic
(by Minaj and Little Mix.) In the preproduction stage and whilst casting we decided to give all the girls in our music video
completely different styles which would hopefully physicalize their characteristics. This is something that can be seen in Little
Mix’s video. It helps to identify with lots of different people with different personalities and quirks therefore making Flora
appeal to a wider audience of girls.
Our artist, Flora wore many different costumes throughout this music video, these ranged from a gym kit to a dress amongst
others. This helps to explore the star image around Flora because it starts to create an image which institutions can build
upon and market. This therefore creates a result of two different main responses, for teenage females (primary target
audience) to idolise her and try and copy her this can be further utilised by selling one of her costumes in merchandise
making more money. However it also can be used to entice a secondary audience, teenage males, and through her costume
they potentially could be sexualising Flora to worship her. This all works with Dyer’s paradox that ‘the star should be ordinary
but extraordinary at the same time’. It helps the audience to connect and relate to the artist (Flora) which Dyer constantly
stressed as if they could replicate her style they would feel closer to the artist and therefore increasing her popularity which
in turn increases the profit she makes. Another benefit of using lots of different outfits in a music video is that it can help to
make Flora into a fashion icon which again can help to generate more popularity, attention and money around her.
Little Mix, Black Magic
Nicki Minaj, Anaconda