I think our final music video uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real music videos; following the rules of music video editing, and with inspiration from real music videos, tv programmes and films.
The notion of feminism in our video:
The first real media product we could compare our product to was the original music video for the song Stripper by Soho Dolls. As we can see from the real music video, we have completely changed the concept of the video, with the male being the stripper instead of the females. Here we have shown how we have challenged conventions of music videos, as it is usually females which are viewed in a sexualised way, wearing skimpy clothes which bare a lot of skin (as mentioned in this previous post). We promoted a feministic view, with our narrative connoting the storyline of 'don't stare at us as if we are sexual objects, or we will get you back'.
There have also been a few music videos in the industry which promote feminism, such as Stupid Girls - Pink and Misery - Maroon 5, which we could draw inspiration from.
We also drew inspiration from this clip from Charlie's Angles: Full Throttle, where the girls use their sexuality and use the man in the situation. Our video was not as raunchy and over-sexualised as this clip, but the idea is similar; with our video showing the three girls painting and flirting with the man who is staring at them, and getting him back at the end:
Analysing our video according to Goodwin:
Our video completely follows the rules and conventions of Goodwin's music video analysis, with our strong notion of looking and voyeurism. The song itself has the line 'You like me to stare? I am a voyeur', and we played off this theme. Our video shows the male staring at the girls and then rubbing his hands, and we deliberately placed these shots during the second half of the first verse, where it matches the lyrics of the song: 'Don't touch the girls, Don't kiss the girls, I have the right to pull the girls... But I wanna touch, And I wanna kiss, And if you say no then I will persist'. This also shows that we followed Goodwin's convention of illustrating the relationship between the lyrics and visuals.
We also have many close up 'beauty shots' and 'money shots' of the band, during both the performance and narrative. These shots would be parts of the demands of the record label if this video were real, as the label would insist on visual hooks and motifs to show the artist identity. In our video we have a lot of close ups on the bands' faces, and also on their hands while they play the guitar. All the close ups were brightly lit and the girls all wore a lot of make up to connote the perfection of girlbands, and make their audience almost want to be them. The close ups on the guitar playing also show the artist identity; The XYZs are not just a stereotypical girlband; they rock and are 'girls with guitars'. This image has also been used across all platforms, with our album cover and website gallery also including pictures showing the guitar playing.
Our video also comes under the categories of both performance and narrative, with it being split almost half/half according to screentime. This follows the convention of many music videos, with split performance/narrative music videos, again following Goodwin's analysis.
There are also quite a few intertextual references to films, TV programmes and other music videos. As stated above, we took inspiration and referenced Charlie's Angels, but also the music video for Bitch - Plasticines, and also Gossip Girl. We looked at the band Plasticines a lot for inspiration as they are not the most conventional pop girl group but are more of a cooler all-girl band, something we wanted The XYZs to be. In their video for Bitch we see the girls writing the word 'Bitch' on the floor, advertising and promoting their single, and in our video we paint 'The XYZs' on the wall, advertising and promoting our band.
We also slightly reference Gossip Girl, with a dance move at the beginning of the video. As stated in a previous post, we first heard the song Stripper from an episode of Gossip Girl, where the character Blair Waldorf dances in a strip club. So to give a small recognition and salute, I took a small dance move from the episode and put it in our video.
Analysing our video according to Vernallis:
Our video also fits with Vernallis's conventions, especially in the editing of our video. Vernallis states that the editing in a music video breaks all rules of continuity editing, which we used in our video. We edited breaking the 30 degree rule and used jump cuts, and we also cut two extreme shots together on many occassions.
Our editing also matched musical phrases and the beat, and editing was also foregrounded at points, especially when we made some of the shots black and white.
However we slightly challenge Vernallis's narrative conventions, following a more filmic form. Vernallis states that the narrative doesn't normally have a clear resolution or ending, but in our video however, we do. Our video ends with the girls running out and leaving the male alone in his underwear and socks, showing a clear ending the audience should be able to understand.
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Our album cover:
The album cover for The XYZ's 'Exhibit A' also follows all the forms and conventions as real album covers, with all the essential points. The front of the cover is a large picture of the band, with the band logo and album cover written in large. The image on the front shows the girls holding a guitar, bass and microphone, again showing the 'girls with guitars' look, further emphasising that we are not you average girl group like The Saturdays or Girls Aloud as we play our instruments. This makes our album cover similar to the album covers shown below: Miley Cyrus - Time Of Our Lives, Plastiscines - Plastiscines, Orianthi - Believe, as these album covers all have the artist with their microphone/guitar.
As our cover shows a lot about our band, this follows the conventions of album covers, as the image on the front of an album cover should be striking and show the artist identity.
The back also follows all the rules and conventions too, with all the essential information: track listing, barcodes, institutional information and websites.
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Our website:
The website we made for The XYZs also followed all the forms and conventions of real music websites. We made all the appropriate pages; home, the band, gallery, tour, listen, watch, win and merch. As we previously saw on websites, the home generally was set up in columns with news, a twitter feed, facebook links, opportunities to join the mailing list and buy the music. All the websites also had links to other sites on the bottom or top of all the pages, which we also did, with links to YouTube, Spotify, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and a mobile site we also created.
Every page had the navigation bar, logo, links at the bottom and information on the label, similar to real websites. We also kept a constant black/white/pink colour scheme running throughout, as well as only the same few different fonts used for every page.
However, we did challenge the conventions by using Wix, a flash site generator. After looking at many different websites online, we couldn't find any flash websites which were fixed at the same size on every page like ours; all the websites we could find were scroll. The closest website we could find was Rihanna's website which had flash on the front page, where the images and links changed every few seconds:
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