Q1.b. Representation

Apply the concept of representation to one of your coursework productions (25 marks)

At A2 I created a cross promotional package which included a digipak, a website and a music video to promote a new music video. Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective. We had to use various representations in order to convey our genre and make the music video successful in terms of including all the noticeable features. We used different representations in order to illustrate the genre, gender, locations and the reality of the video, as well as the digipak and website inclusively. The music video aims to represent a form of reality for the protagonist within the linear narrative.

Throughout my A2 music video, the representations that have been shown do come through our own ideologies, values and beliefs. For example, one representation that we chose to use throughout the music video was various shots of close ups and extreme close ups of the characters face. Roland Barthes suggested the idea of enigma codes in any film opening or music video is significant. We used this to create an enigma coding for the audience to see. For example, we had shots of the characters feet, legs and torso because this type of coding and representation would give the video a mysterious effect throughout the beginning, middle and end, making the audience think about what is going to happen continually and why. We used many different shots but particularly several wide shots when establishing the locations which were all mostly urban as this was stereotypical to a rap genre music video.

When representing a new artist we wanted to portray star image, which Goodwin suggests is essential for a music video to be successful, through the use of close up shots. We were able to repeat close ups continually through the music video so that our audience are able to become familiar with our new artist. Another part of our cross promotional package was the website which was very important in promoting and representing our new artist in the correct way we wanted him to be seen by the nation. Through the use of images of our main characters face on the gallery of the website page we were able to represent him in the way we wanted by creating star image with appropriate images we felt portrayed the personality we aimed for. When portraying his identity we wanted it to look as though he was more than a ‘dead end’ rap artist, we wanted him to represent someone who had intellectual thoughts as shown in some shots, whereby the light captures the outline of his body making him look bright yet natural.

In our music video we showed vast amounts of juxtaposition between reality and concept as our music video shows our main character in real life and then contrasts to the concept of him being buried alive. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory he states that audiences may watch media for self-identification. This is relevant to our production as our target audience is that of older teenagers, 15-22 year olds that will be able to recognise the struggle between being the person people think you are and trying to find your real soul.

We represented a dystopian/ utopian theme throughout the video with the use of effects on Adobe Premiere when we edited our final music video. We decided to use this as we felt within typical rap genre music videos usually you see the main artist with either alcohol or reference to drugs, therefore we were able to represent this through our editing. By doing this we challenged the stereotypes as usually rap artists have a reputation for drinking and doing drugs at some point throughout their video which we found from extensive research.

Challenging the stereotype of rap artists being black and masculine with a strong build meant that we had to still target our audience of the rap fan base who wouldn’t be used to seeing this. Firstly, our main character was white and British which immediately went against the stereotype and challenged it however, we felt this worked. We went against the stereotype of including women in our rap video as we didn’t feel it was appropriate or necessary however, this is unusual for a rap video. Laura Mulvey’s theory describes how the audience, or viewer, is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. Mulvey believes that women should enjoy the attention of attracting the gaze, and put themselves in positions to be looked at. The concept of ‘the gaze’ is one that deals with how an audience views the people/person presented. Although, we didn’t use women in our video we still wanted iSO, our main character, to represent masculinity so we chose to do this through the variety of shot types. In order to make him look empowering and important we used many lower angled shots looking up at him whilst he looks down at the camera.