BLOG TASK ONE: IN WHAT WAYS DO YOUR MEDIA PRODUCTS USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS

Two things are key for this. The first is to use plasir, the expected conventions, and juissance, the unexpected, according to Barthes. The second is that you subvert to provide the unexpected, and imitate to provide the expected. Using the main conventions of Pop-Videos as Negus explains and as I list them below.

We first looked at various other pop/videos, in order to fully understand the media conventions which are used to establish an artist. We looked at videos by Spike Jonze (Drunk Girls – LCD Soundsystem) and Joseph Kahn (Love the Way You Lie – Eminem feat. Rihanna). From this we saw a number of conventions. Negus lists these on;

The explicit and unashamed promotion of the artist’s “image” (aesthetic/generic/ideological) as a specific product with a brand identity, ready for mass consumption
The featuring of the artist (almost without exception)
A wide and extensive use of shot types, camera angles and movement
Repetition of reoccuring thematic elements and generically specific iconography (one key element often being dominant and providing the skeletal structure for the promo)
A possible narrative structure
A possible performance element
The flexibility to disregard Realism!
Shots cut tightly to the beat of the track
Use of special effects (lighting, annimation, CGIs, in-camera effects)
A carefully constructed Mise en Scene appropriate to the content and tone of the track
High impact instantly! (Don’t forget that competition for airplay on the main music channel outlets is intense)

I wanted to play around with these conventions in order to make our pop/video visually interesting. We decided to imitate some of the in order to give them plaisir (Barthes) from the expected and to subvert some of the convention in order to give them juissance which gives the viewer something new, unexpected in terms of Barthes.

Our Pop-video had two major aims, to convey the meaning of the song and to establish a brand (the singer). The song is about the here (Marie) entertaining herself, making herself happy because something (love) has caused her pain. So therefore we decided that she would watch herself perform in a cinema. We created the illusion that she is in a room with herself by choosing a frontal straight on camera angle. This would reinforce the fact that she is trying to keep herself happy which is also the meaning of the song. The other part was that we had to sell the brand/the image of the artist. We decided to make her look exotic, mysterious, quirky, playful and dangerous at the same time. Because the fact that she is French and also speaks French in her own songs we had to consider that she would not be as appropriate for a mass audience as for example an English speaking singer such as “Rihanna”. So we made her look quite artistic which is also conveyed in our pop-video.

In order to make her appear different we decided first of all to film the whole popvideo quite static (without any tracking or crane shots) however this would be juxtaposed by fast and confusing cuts later in editing. We specifically made her look different in one shot where we let her crawl along the X-axis from right to left. This shows that she does not go along with the corwd. Our eyes are used to see things that go from left to right (due to reading etc.) when we see someone going from right to left it is associated with being unfamiliar, unkown, mysterious. This is what we are trying to achieve here in order to reinforce her mysterious quality.

Another example would be framing we ignore the rule of thirds in this shot and put her not in the first or second hotspot we put her in the middle of the frame which highlights her importance. However by breaking this rule here weirdness is reinforced again and the audience starts to realize that she is different to all the other generic stars out there. We copied these techniques from the famous director Spike Jonez who plays with these conventions as much as we do.

We also chose to break continuity editing in order to establish an artificial or even a surreal world. Our pop video is very much held in the syle of surrealism we do not have any form of reality and play with the viewer’s eye and mind. Suddenly people appear disappear. She wears a black dress in one shot in the next shot a brightly colored feather dress. We want to distance the audience by setting it in a place far from reality to make them think about the actual meaning and the brand “Marie”.

However we did not subvert all of the 13 conventions because an audience does not only need juissance it also needs plaisir something familia something they are used to be confronted with. We did that by cutting very tightly to the beat. This also enabled us to give the pop-video a certain flow which made it much easier to watch.
We also imitated the conventions of “The featuring of the artist”. We did that by giving her 95% on screen. She is always present! We also included various close-ups of her lips, body, etc. to make her appeal to a male audience.


The Digi pack is highly important in order to sell the brand. It is essential that the potential consumer can see the main characteristics of the artist just by looking at the digipak. It has to be visually interesting and attract people. Our digipak has a closeup of her face as a front cover. It is in black and white apart from her eyes and eye lashes which are in bright colour. This makes her look much more interesting and gives her an artificial look which reinforces the fact that she is not like the mass.

The magazine advert has the same picture as the digipak as we are using that picture as an icon for her tour, etc. We do this because we want to make her face recognizable. By putting tour dates and locations on it in a very obvious font people know what they are looking for. Putting a web site on the bottom offers further help and booking opportunities. This helps us to make her more popular.