Evaluation Question 1

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

Our chosen song was by a White-British Rapper named Professor Green, his videos have never all had something in common, and some of them have challenged generic conventions of his music genre, so choosing him as an artist inspired us to be as creative and individual as possible with our video as he has already made a benchmark for freedom of expression in his videos. The typical hip-hop video uses specific iconography such as girls, cars, jewellery and gangsters usually because it illustrates the lyrics. But Artists like Eminem, NAS and Jay-Z changed the face of hip-hop by making rap songs about personal stories and tragedies, where the music never changed but the content did, meaning that the visuals would have to introduce a different style, removing the generic conventions. Our song 'Today I Cried' is a rap song, but the lyrics are a personal, self-evaluation of his life, so this questions does this song belong to the genre of hip-hop anymore, and if the visuals don't use hip-hop codes and conventions then how can it be Hip-hop? This relates to Steve Neale (Film Theorist) who believes that film producers have to always re-invent their genre-specific products as the genre evolves. And how does the genre evolve? by the audience getting bored of the old conventions and wanting change, and this cycle never ends. This theory relates to music, as the audience will never expect the same old or they will move on to whats new and breaking the boundaries of originality. Some may believe our media product uses and develops forms and conventions of real rap videos because they expect to see Rap videos to include more narrative, individuality and not the old conventions due to the overwhelming popularity of rap artist who 15 years ago would not be the archetype of a rapper. For example Plan B is a very famous Rapper with plenty of UK Number Ones and he wears a suit in his video which some people wouldn't typically think a rapper would dress like, but due to his success it has clearly been accepted in the masses to an extent where the audience may expect rappers to wear suits. Conclusively, our iconography such as the urban courtyard location and our artist style and performance characteristic blended with the old form of hip-hop by having a street location, and developed the new form of real rap media products by filming in a solemn location such as Vauxhall Embankment. These decisions where influenced by the melancholy meaning in the lyrics and the smooth feeling to the melody in the rap song.

Our media product used forms and conventions of rap videos/rap music The grain of voice is a theory by Roland Barthes that Music Artist can be recognised by their sound of their voice, the way that the sing and the ad-lib's they use. One example, that fans of our genre will know is Rick Ross because his style is so individual and bold that you immediately know its him at the beginning of a record when you hear a deep voice say "huh". Our chosen artist Professor Green has a very instinctive high-pitched London accent of a White Male. So upon casting, our star had to be white, English, and be convincing as a rapper, which is why I took the role. Therefore by understanding the importance of Grain of Voice we had to make sure our performer looked as if it was his song, in fact in our feedback one person did ask "is this your song" as she believed the voice matched my face. In our video, their is also a different singer for the chorus, and this was Fraser and the same process applied to him. Having both a male rapper and male singer is very rare so it's hard to say if the song/combination challenged the form of hip-hop songs, with the debate, if it has a pop chorus, and other pop elements, is it still hip-hop? however, recently we found that rappers collaborating with female artist has been a huge success with Eminem & Rihanna plus Professor Green & Emili Sande. The only one with both male that we know was Tinie Tempah & Eric Turner; which was a huge influence on our Video. The performance characteristics in 'Noxious' were deliberately Representative of Tinie Tempah, plus the style in our photos and interviews was influenced by him, therefore we used previous forms of real media products to develop our own.

The role of intertextuality was apparent in our music video which we had seen done before in rap videos. I had seen 'Ghetts - Red Pill' and in this video they use cut-aways from the movie 'The Matrix' and although their short, they illustrate the lyrics "most of the worlds plugged into the matrix". This inspired us to use a movie for cut-aways and creating intertextuality. Steve Neale(Film theorist) says that it can be used as a mark of respect like in 'Ghetts's' case or for mockery which fellow Rapper does quite a lot in his lyrics and videos. So we developed this form and chose to edit cut-aways of the movie 'The Truman Show' into our product. We believed the themes in the movie and the themes in the song related strongly enough to make a coalition, and the response from our audience was mixed. Even so, we were proud to challenge the conventions of our genre, by using a Hollywood family film, as we strongly believed that it could illustrate our music in the visuals(Goodwin).