Q1.b. Genre

Discuss how you used genre in one of your coursework productions to create meaning for the audience (25 marks)

The word ‘genre’ comes from the French word meaning type or class. Media genres appear within a medium (film, television) such as the horror film or the television ‘situation comedy’. A genre can be recognised by its common set of distinguishing features such as codes and conventions. At A2, I, along with 2 other group members researched, planned and constructed a cross promotional package promoting a new artist. During the production of my advanced portfolio, genre contributed a massive part in how we would create meaning for audience through the use of the rap genre.

I have chosen Steve Neale’s theory of genres being created through instances of repetition and difference to analyse the ways in which different genres of music videos have developed and how the genre of my A2 coursework can be established by an audience. Steve Neale theorised that it is repetition of certain elements of media products that creates a genre. In my music video, you could identify the use of explicit language as a repetitive element of the rap genre. Similar use of bad language within a music video can be identified in Wiz Khalifa’s songs, similar songs within the genre. This repetition of lyrics associated with the rap genre would provide audiences with an innate understanding of the genre of my music video due to their familiarity with this convention of the genre. Steve Neale stresses that ‘genres are not systems: they are processes of systematisation’. Traditionally, genres (particularly literary genres) tended to be regarded as fixed forms, but contemporary theory emphasises that both their forms and functions are dynamic.

Goodwin’s theory stated that in order to make a music video successful, it need to have at least 3 of his key components within it at some point, the relationship between the music and the visuals being one. This therefore meant that we used our relationship between the music and, what we wanted to portray as, the visuals, to dictate the pace of the cuts as this would affect the speed of editing in order for the sequence to make sense and feel real. The speed of our editing would also relate to our genre as typically the rap genre is a relatively fast pace throughout the entire music video apart from one or two specific points within the music video where it really slows down and so do the visuals. This is evident within my own music video, as I have edited the footage so that certain shots cut on the beat of the music creating a smoother flowing sequence making for an easier watching experience.

An iconographic element of the mise-en-scene is that in rap genre music videos, they tend to be set in an urban location, often around graffiti and big buildings. Therefore I wanted to incorporate this into our music videos to make sure this was obvious and clear to the viewer which would reinforce our genre through the use of urban locations. Conventionally, a lot of low angle shots are used to make the artist be shown as superior and powerful, as well as asserting authority. We made use of this low angled shot a lot throughout our music video as we wanted to do just this, when we shot some of these low angled shots we were on the stairs, whereby the camera was at the bottom and the protagonist was at the top as this, I feel, emphasised this greatly. Even if there is a strong narrative and it is not all performance based, the lead artist tends to be featured a lot, which we incorporated into our music video as we wanted to stick with the conventions of the genre as well as creating star profile which was another of Goodwin’s key components to this theory.

When producing both my digipak and website, to support the promotion of my new artist, iSO, I wanted the genre to be visually clear even at a glance to all of my audience. After carrying out some research, I found that most commonly, rap artists’ website were very minimalistic, and only focused on promoting one single/album at a time. We tried to replicate this as we thought it was a good way of advertising our artist and we thought it would get the message across simply, rather than bombarding our audience with lots of new information, music and media. I also tried to stick to a fairly dull and dark colour scheme throughout the process of creating the album cover, website and digipak so that they were all relatable. This also made my product fit the genre as the typical colours most common throughout the genre are black, white and grey which are 3 colours used continually within my ancillary texts to keep this consistent. As part of our research, I identified that Black was very common in our genre but also in similar artists products. So many of the products, especially the clothing, are black which links to the genre research I gathered in relation to clothing; identifying similar conventions. Offerings on G-Eazy’s website were mainly types of clothing so we decided that our store should also largely feature clothing.