How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues?
For our A2 final project my group and I created a music video for the song SWEET by Brockhampton. The song falls into the Hip-Hop and Rap genre and so we had to make sure to either use or challenge the conventions of that genre and of music videos in general.
While researching the song and analyzing its lyrics we came up with a plan for the music video and what it’s meaning would be. From researching we found that the bands meaning and interpretation of the song is a play on the idea that ‘licorice is sweet’. The meaning of the song was made to be playful and didn’t necessarily provide a deeper understanding of a topic, and so we decided that we wanted to create a new meaning for the song, one which would fit better with our plans for the music video.
The type of narrative that we used in our music video is an Interpretive one and one based on Amplification. Meaning that our music video encourages the audience to speculate as to the deeper meaning of the song, by using a narrative which is not lifted literally from the lyrics, and the bond between the two is not immediately obvious.
We took the idea of licorice being sweet and used it in our music video to show how people are different, they can even be like licorice, you either love them or hate them.
The music video is based around a group of friends, all different yet all extremely close because they understand how it is to be judged because of their differences. The storyline is about a group of friends wondering about a city, drinking, talking and just having a good time.
This storyline and interpretation fits into the conventions of the rap genre. While the video has a deeper meaning, about the importance of understanding differences and has a metaphoric and symbolic use of licorice in the video it also has rap elements.
We used stereotypical imagery, showing wine bottles, ‘gangs’ rapping the lyrics, chaotic and somewhat aggressive energies when rapping, showing off materialistic things such as sneakers and so on.
The use of candy and the representation of two main friend groups from different cities isn’t necessarily something taken from the stereotypical genre. We wanted to create something different and playful. In this sense, we did challenge the stereotypical conventions of rap music videos, as they are mostly meant to be materialistic or shallow, while our music video was meant to stray away from those conventions and create something with meaning and something that could be relatable for the audience.
However, we still wanted to include some aspects and conventions of typical rap music videos. We researched and included norms of rap music videos such as editing cuts between performance and narrative, we had a variety of camera angles and sections which featured the artist rapping to the camera. We also used the ‘fish eye’ effect in order to give it a more authentic feel, along with low angle and close up shots of the artist rapping into the camera, making the audience feel as though the artist is looking down on them and this creates a sense of superiority and power.
We used some illustrative shots, in which the lyrics was linked to the visuals. This was done with the licorice, as the chorus of the song is ‘twistin me up like licorice’ and we showed the characters eating licorice during these moments. We also showed a character throwing their denim jacket on the camera, this was done because the jacket had a wolf drawing on the back and we included this scene when the ‘i love huskies but i feel like a wolf’ line is playing.
Performance was also used as a convention, as we showed the characters lipsyncing into the camera.
Costume conventions were used in the video such as, dark colors, puffy jackets and loose pants and sneakers, all which fit in the Rap genre.
We also had to consider how we would represent certain social groups that were relevant to the song and the targeted audience. We needed to understand the demographics of Brockhampton fans, concerning age, race, and gender. Based on statistics from the website Next Big Sound we found that Brockhampton fans are 51 percent female and 49 percent male. However the race and age demographics were not available on Next Big Sound and so we looked at statistics provided by a Reddit questionnaire, which showed that the majority, meaning 53 percent of listeners were between 17-20. For the racial demographic the results concluded that 60 percent of listeners are white. All of this information was very helpful and relevant, as knew that we had to include female representation, as well as teens and young adults.
As the video was filmed in two separate locations and cities we had two different groups which we included in the video. Based on the audience research and on the resources and actors that we could find and include, we made an equal and fair representation of the relevant groups. For the Timisoara group we had three women and three men, all of the same age being 17 to 18 and for the Cluj group we had on different days with different people and so the representation was mostly male.
We made the music so that it could cater to various social groups in a relatable way. We also tried to this through our minor tasks.
The digipak which we created is in line with the conventions of digipaks. Conventions of digipaks usually include a front cover which tend to have the name of the artist, a logo, the album title, and a picture of the artist or any picture relevant to the album. The back cover mostly contains a tracklist of the songs on the album, album artwork and inside usually includes the CD.
Our digipak has a front cover with a picture showing one of the groups in the video, all posing together for the camera, along with a title of the song and the name of the artist.
Inside the digipak there is ‘artist artwork’, we used a photo taken of the other group showed in the video and a design of a CD with the name of the song and artist on it. The back cover has more artwork, including a picture of a landscape, taken during filming in Timisoara and a tracklist of some songs from the album from which ‘SWEET’ is.
Another minor task included the creation of a website for the band. After researching Lana Del Ray’s website I found that the main elements and conventions of music artist websites are sections for tour dates, music videos, links to music streaming channels, an about page, a gallery, contact info, social media links, stores links for merch and sometimes if the artist has released a new album there will be a large promotion of it on the main page.
On our website we included most of these sections, such as links to social media, including instagram, twitter as well as a gallery, contact information, tour dates and a bio.
We also included on the main page a large photo with one of the groups along with the artist name and song title.
In conclusion, our products were a mixture of using and challenging conventions and we did our best to represent different social groups as well. The creation of a music video, website and digipak were all done in order to create an authentic music promotion package.
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