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For our music video, throughout the production I have been taking inspiration from previous music videos of the genre of music in which I have been studying, which is Pop Music. Alongside the genre of music in which I have been studying, I have also been looking into detail at the rise-en-scene, costumes, actors, props and lighting, as well as transitions and editing. From researching the genre of Pop Music videos in great detail, to the production of my music video 'Places', I feel as though me and Billie have mostly conformed to the conventions of a Pop genre music video; however, in some ways I feel we have majorly challenged conventions of the Pop Music genre with the representation of our actress, and artist - Nina Rae. The costumes we decided to use, I feel completely challenge the genre of Pop music, down to the way that Nina Rae represents herself throughout the music video. Aside from the representation of my artist, I feel that I have I have targeted our audience in a way of creating a media product that will appeal to them and fit the conventions of a modern, Pop music video. I looked at many Pop Artists, such as Jorja Smith, RAYE, and Sinead Harnett, whom represent themselves differently to artists such as Miley Cyrus, Arianna Grande and Katy Perry. The difference between these groups of artists is that even though each of them create music following conventions of the Pop genre, Jorja Smith, RAYE and Sinead Harnett do not seem to follow the Male Gaze Theory in their music videos, in a way that they dress provocatively and exist for the purpose of a male, whereas the other three artists seem to do that more so. We liked the way that artists such as Jorja Smith represented herself, therefore we decided to take inspiration from her cool, laid back character, and incorporate that personality into that of Nina Rae's, who we named our artist. From doing this, I also wanted to add elements of individuality and show creativity to ensure that our artist was original and not like any other already in the music artist world, which allowed us to challenge aspects in some ways.

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From my research, I learnt the codes and conventions of music videos from camera shots, where I have tried to include a variety of shots from long shots to close ups, especially the use of unique close ups, to create and emphasise emotion throughout the music video, and also to really capture the lip syncing which was an essential factor in the music video. Also, conventions of music videos are shots of the artist’s close up, as this is a main generic convention of music videos which creates emphasis on the artist and shows their emotion, reflecting the words of the song with lip syncing. I have incorporated generic music video shots of my artists and locations meeting conventions of real music videos seen in some examples of my music video; an example of this is the very opening to my music video, whereby a short clip of the sea is displayed as a background to the opening credits to set the scene for our music video, but to also connote 'places' as the sea is a means of travel that can take you all over the world, and the sea is also linked to beaches which people would link with different foreign countries. This adds iconography as it symbolises a culture and gives off a Mediterranean feel, alongside linking with the title of our music video. I learnt that camera movement is another convention of a music video and I included this within my music video to follow the artist, creating tracking shots in order to create the artists journey throughout my music video, visiting different places with her boyfriend and friends. I felt it was essential to use this convention within my music video, so that it created a Pop Music genre feel to my music video by having different speeds and playing around with the actual tracking shots, as these are all conventional to a Pop music video.

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After researching into real Pop music videos, it became apparent that mine-en-scene is a key feature referring to the arrangement of performances, props, locations and costume, conveying the genre through these. Miss-en-scene is used to express the artists style and star image, as the actors portray themselves to the target audience. I included miss-en-scene as costume is a way to express my artist’s genre as seen within the simple black top that is worn within the lip syncing part of the music video and the rest of the outfits are simple throughout the footage of the different places filmed, however, when Billie is wearing a bikini it is not in a way to represent as provocative or seductive, as the Male Gaze would suggest, but as attire that would be conventional to wear on holiday or at a beach. As for props, we had one main prop that could also be seen as an accessory, the red flower in Billie's hair. This flower throughout the video gave connotations of love as the colour red gives iconography of romance, love and relationships, which we have conveyed throughout the music video. I feel this gave more of an emphasis on what we were trying to achieve in the music video, and also, fit with the colour theme that we decided to go with, which was red, for the same reasons as mentioned about the flower. Setting can show the genre, for example a stage or concert hall will be linked to rock genre, I found out through my research that location is a clear convention of real music videos as it identifies to the audience of what genre the video is, therefore this was an aspect I included by using a range of locations in different countries and places. Therefore, miss-en-scene made up of a combination of props, costume, location and lighting to create and convey the theme of the music video which is vital convention of music videos to target specifically each genre.

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Editing is the process of which all music videos go through to put together the shots of their music video however there are many different styles of editing from jump cuts, fast pace to montage editing. I used a lot of slow paced editing to show a clear narrative and story line, yet still keep the audience engaged and involved through our use of quick and slow cuts and jump cuts, allowing sudden change from one scene to another. Also, transitions are another convention of real music videos as it creates different effects, depending on the genre and therefore for my music video, we used fade and changed opacity levels to create a slight fade in transitions seen in shots of Billie lip syncing over different clips of video.

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Another convention in which I learned about was the lighting within real music videos, this was an aspect I included as it sets the atmosphere and mood of the video, and from researching into real music videos convention examples of how expressive lighting can affect the music video by extreme artificial lighting creates a 'bleaching effect' making the star appear to have flawless skin and look ageless. As we decided to go down the Pop genre route, we decided that this would be a good idea to incorporate this into our music video and have our artist look flawless. With the use of LED lighting whilst filming in front of the green screen, we decided have this effect which proved to have very good end results that we were pleased with. We wanted to maintain high key lighting which is very typical in a Pop music video, as it shows the happiness and positivity spread throughout the video.

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Lastly, another convention is post-production digital effect, however this is an aspect we did not include very much. We did add effected to colour of shots and the pace and opacity, as well as applying filters and adding quirky effects such as split screen (4 different screens) and layering shots.

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7 - Conventions of Pop Music Videos Compared to Mine

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7 - Conventions of Pop Music Videos Compared to Mine

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From researching into Pop artists and music videos, this helped give us inspiration for outfits for our artist to wear, and I feel as though we developed the costume convention for Pop music videos as the word 'Pop' is an abbreviation for 'popular', therefore meaning that the style of clothing we picked was of a popular choice, and one of those that you would see a lot of young teenage girls wearing as the clothing choice is fashionable; therefore, for my artists, me and Billie developed upon this convention to express their character as an artist through their clothing, which I thought was quite a cool, simple yet effective type of look in which we went for.

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In the first picture is an image of a real pop artist named 'Mabel' and she is shown to be wearing a top which is vey covering and not revealing much skin, which represents her character to be less provocative. This is where me and Billie got our inspiration from, from artists such as Mabel and Jorja Smith, as we wanted to keep our artist looking modern and cool, without the idea of the Male Gaze Theory being thought of when our target audience looks at our artist, and I think that we pulled this off very well, as our artist maintains that stylish and edgy look which we desired in the first place. As we decided to use dark clothing such as the colour black, which is unconventional to the Pop genre, as it is more thought of to wear brighter colours, we decided to keep the lighting very high key throughout, in order to ensure that we stuck to the Pop genre in this way, as high key lighting is very conventional to a Pop music video. Challenging upon this aspect is Rita Ora's song 'Anywhere', whereby throughout the video she uses very low key lighting throughout the majority of the film, alongside with wearing very dark clothing. This is very unconventional for a Pop artist to have in their music video, as usually the music videos are full of bright colours, therefore this is an example of a real artist challenging genre conventions. We did not challenge conventions in this way, however we did challenge conventions in a way that we did not dress our artist or represent her to be appealing to the male eye in a sexual way, as some Pop artists do portray themselves with their body language, costumes and facial expressions. We wanted to ensure that our artist was an original character and one that had her own vibe and personality and decided we did not want to represent her as a sex object, which is what The Male Gaze theory would suggest is typical of young, attractive girl, also this was based on the reason that in the music video, Billie evidently has a boyfriend, therefore there is no need to include an behavior that would suggest she is being provocative. Me and Billie wanted our artist to be within colours that connoted enjoyment, love, passion and relationships therefore we decided to put the use of the flower clip into place throughout the lip syncing footage. This is a symbol of these emotions and feelings, which is also good because of the fact that a flower connotes romance, so the flower and the use of colour (being red) fitted together really well. The contrasting black colour that is seen on the top that is worn a lot throughout the music video shows iconography of power, and throughout the music video Nina Rae is shown to look in control and as though she knows what she is doing. This could also be seen as evoking strong emotions, which links to the narrative of the music video whereby Nina Rae is in love with her boyfriend, who is also featured in the music video. When Billie is seen in some shots wearing a bikini, she is not making provocative movements, nor is she intentionally enticing the male audience into the music video in a sexual way, which artists such as Miley Cyrus would do, especially if they had such lack of clothing on. Billie is with her boyfriend in each of these shots and the intentions of this are clearly down to the fact that she is on holiday enjoying herself with her boyfriend and friends, not any other reason.

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For location, I feel we developed our genre conventions as we used a variety of locations throughout the music video to show contrast and to show continuity, the reasoning behind this was to have a connection and link between the song itself and the narrative, solely because of the fact that the song is about 'places', so we thought it would make a lot of sense to include different locations around the world into our music video. For inspiration, we looked at lots of different Pop music videos that are along the same lines as 'Places', we looked at 'How Deep Is Your Love' and others of this sort, but we found our actual inspiration from the music video of  'Places' by Martin Solveig. We decided to change the narrative, however, in order to make it more original and put our own stamp on it; however very much liked the idea of the link between the lyrics and the song. It was very convenient that both me and Billie had specific holidays and events such as festivals coming up in the weeks leading to the filming of our music video, therefore seized that opportunity to get the footage we needed to film our music video. The locations included the Mediterranean Sea, Ibiza, France, London and Croatia. We felt that this was a good amount of different locations and we managed to get enough good footage to put together our music video. Each of these locations created a different setting, and therefore a different feel. The Mediterranean Sea set the scene of the music video and made it evident that it was going to be about different locations and places, as the sea is a means of travel and enables you to get to different places, so we used a long shot of the sea to open our music video. Ibiza was of a party feel, as there is a lot of footage from different events in Ibiza that allowed us to capture the rave and party side to our music video, which clearly in the narrative, Nina Rae and her boyfriend very much enjoyed. France was again more of a chilled location. There was not a lot of footage from here as the holiday was a skiing holiday, however showed the boyfriend and added to our location list. London added to the festivals and gave more footage in this category, mainly to go behind the lip syncing so that we had background footage to underlay; and lastly Croatia was also the more party feel, whereby there is footage of Billie and her boyfriend dancing and singing at the festival in the sun, therefore in swimwear attire which helps to set the scene of that location. By adding extra locations, this engages the audience a lot more as it is very exciting for them to see more than one location, as it differentiates them from others. The fact that all these locations are well known for positive reasons - France, Spain and Croatia, being sunny and bright, and London being extremely buzzy and a fun place to be, this reflected on the emotions that my artist could be feeling. The overall vibe of the music video in general was to come across as joyful and exhilarating, which I personally feel links to each of these locations. The fact that we have used different locations, especially those abroad are very typical of a Pop music genre as many artists decide to film their music videos abroad. However, we challenged conventions by using the green screen to film the lip syncing and then adding a different background to it, to make it look as though Billie was abroad on the beach. This challenges conventions as a real artist would be able to film in any location where they wanted and would not have to pretend there were somewhere by using a green screen to do so.

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For props, we did not use a variety of different props as we did not have something in mind that would for one, raise that much significance to our narrative, and two, link to our narrative and the personality of our character. The only real prop that was used was the flower, which has before been discussed. We felt that this was a nice touch to add, for the reasons being that a flower connotes romance and relationships, and the colour red, which is the colour of the flower has the same meanings. Having props is quite conventional to any music video, especially Pop, as in 'Swalla' by Jason Derulo, the props he uses consist of sweets and lolly pops, and another example is 'New Rules' by Dua Lipa, whereby she uses a lot of inflatables for a swimming pool as props, and also girls accessories such as hairbrushes. In this case, me and Billie have challenged conventions by not using specific props in our music video, however we felt that this was unnecessary, considering the narrative of our music video spoke for itself and the content mostly consisted of festival or rave type scenes that did not need a prop.

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The lighting used throughout was a significant genre convention, however in some aspects, I felt we challenged this. The use of high key lighting is prominent throughout Pop music videos and there are many different examples of this out there. One example of this is 'Rather Be With You' by Sinead Harnett whereby throughout the music video, whenever Sinead is shown to be singing, there is a consistent use of high key lighting which is very typical of a Pop Music genre music video. This shows positivity in the relationship in which she is singing about and connotes that when she is singing about her boyfriend, she is filled with happiness, which is what the high key lighting portrays. In mine and Billie's music video, we have tried to adopt this idea, and this can be shown throughout where, when Billie is shown to be lip syncing the song about her boyfriend, there is defiantly high key lighting shown which conforms to the conventions of a Pop music video genre song. On the other hand, there are elements of my music video that could be said to challenge conventions of Pop genre music videos as there is low key lighting used, however many artists do incorporate low key lighting into their music videos as it does also seem to fit the whole idea of the music in the Pop music videos. An example of this is 'How Deep Is Your Love' by Calvin Harris, whereby, for the most part of the music video, low key lighting is used in the form of a club or rave setting. This does not connote negativity to the idea of the narrative, as the lyrics of the song are about love; but more shows the setting of a rave and party scene, where it is conventional for there to be low key lighting in these sorts of places. We also decided to incorporate an element of this into our music video, and this will be seen in clubs in Ibiza, where the partying scene is incorporated into our music video, and this is purely to set the scene of our music video and give a party vibe to the whole narrative. Throughout these parts of our music video, it is still undeniable that the whole feel of the music video veers towards the more romance side of the spectrum, as oppose to the low key lighting connoting something negative.

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I feel for this convention, we developed our artist to have the more natural, played down look when it came to make-up. The idea of this was to give our artist some originality, as in the modern day, female artists and females in general tend to go all out with heavy eye makeup and strong contouring, which in reality gives that individual an image. We noticed that the more new and upcoming artists such as Jorja Smith and Mabel tend to have a more natural and softer make-up look, which we liked and wanted to go along with this idea. We also feel that this, for our character showed her laid back personality and ensured that our audience knew she is still stylish and edgy, even with a more toned down and softer look. When it comes to genre conventions for Pop music in the make-up section, there is no real 'conforming' convention that an artist sticks to. Therefore we were free to do what we wanted, without exactly conforming to a certain convention of 'heavy' or 'soft' make-up in a sense. Billie is seen with a natural tan which would be expected of a person if they are on holiday, which our artist is throughout our whole music video, and only a red lip throughout the lip syncing to make her lips stand out throughout the close ups of her lips.