In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

After doing all the research into R'n'B genres we were able to define what is expected in a typical R'n'B music video and therefore i am able to outline how we used, developed and challenged these conventions in our own production of an R'n'B production:

Conventions:

• Dull lighting, except of girls
• Male gaze shots used a lot
• Patriarchal
• Big expenses cars and houses
• Men wearing lots of jewellery
• Girls often wearing just underwear or swimwear
• Many girls often crowded around one boy/man also known as 'pimping'
• Lyrics and video often about relationships (make-ups, break-ups and cheating)

Use:

We used the stereotypical lyrics and video storyline, we done this so the genre was easily recognisable to an audience, although we put our own twist on it as we wanted to come away from the stereotypical audiences. We chose to use this convention as we believed it to be important in keeping the R'n'B audience as if they didn't recognise the usual setting of the video they would be likely to turn the channel and find something more to their taste. Our lyrics are used to tell our story that's why we wanted to write them ourselves, the storyline is about a girl who gets caught cheating on her boyfriend and he finds out. Therefore this follows the stereotype of the storyline and lyrics about cheating in a stereotypical R'n'B music video.


Develop:

Instead of using expensive houses, which the majority of R'n'B listeners cannot afford we film in the local town, this enables the R'n'B viewers and listeners to be able to relate more to our video. This develops the conventions of real media products, because not many people can currently relate to their video instead just seeing the video as 'the American Dream'. If the audience can relate to it they will feel more involved with the story and maybe even share emotions. The idea of them sharing emotions may make them want to see more from this artists to see if they can relate to more of their videos and therefore we create a long lasting audience.


Challenge:

Our video challenges the current conventions as the girls used in our video are fully dressed and not in underwear and bikinis, we did not want to include this as we believe it shows patriarchal control, when we believe it should be of equal control, therefore we have shown both matriarchal and patriarchal control in our music video. We also went against the stereotype of the male usually cheating on the female, instead the female is cheating on the male.Instead of the men wearing lots of jewellery we had the male and female characters in everyday clothing, therefore it can also be related to better by the audience.We used a variety of different shop types, but we did not wish to include the male gaze as we believe it does not represent women in the correct way.Another way in which we challenge the conventions is the fact that we used natural lighting as we believe this gives a more realistic outlook on our video helping people to feel involve and help them to relate to the storyline that is being unfolded.