Discuss how you used genre in one of your coursework productions to create meaning from your audience.

For my A2 production we created a hip-hop music video for an upcoming artist called C.DOT. We also created a cross media package including a website, digipak and the final music video. Hip-hop is a very wide genre with many artists producing from many different backgrounds so this genre gave us many possibilities to venture into.

The first theorist I have used to compare our music video to is Steve Neale theory, he states that the genre in videos is created through repetition, this theory provides the audience with an understanding of the genre from their previous experiences. For our music video the main task from our point of view is to make sure that the viewer is constantly interacted with the music video their main attention should be on C.DOT, to do this we decided to subvert to normal hip-hop conventions and use editing techniques and camera shots that are not usually used in this genre to keep the audience entertained throughout the video. We filmed our music video in many different sub urban locations across London such as The 02, Shoreditch, The Barbican, we took inspiration from popular grime artists such as Skepta where his video “Shutdown” is filmed at the Barbican. As C.DOT is the main artist in our video it was vital that he was centred in the middle of the frame throughout the video to establish his importance. Even when there are shots with him and others they are all placed around him C.DOT is always placed in the centre of the frame. This is also seen in many other rap videos which we mainly gained inspiration from A$AP Rocky’s “Peso” video where he is surrounded by others but he is always centred to establish he is the main figure.

Editing and camera was a major factor to create and establish the meaning of our music video towards the audience. By using Andrew Goodwin’s theory that the start person being C.DOT is the most important and our editing techniques established that by using many close ups and slowing down solo shots of C.DOT on his own. As this is our artists first music video and potential audiences will be very un-familiar of him we needed to ensure that he was centre of the frame throughout the majority of the video to establish him as a very important character. Our editing techniques very much went against current genre conventions as we really wanted to stand out from the very popular genre that is becoming more and more popular so we wanted to use certain techniques to push our product to the audience. As an example from viewing Justin Biebers “Where are U now” video which is in the complete opposite genre we used editing techniques from his video to put to effect in ours. With camera work in contrast we went very much with current media genres using a variety of popular shots which are very much used in our genre such as many low angle shots with C.DOT talking directly to the camera and making many gestures towards it. With the music already establishing the genre and the camera shots throughout the video we hope that our out of genre editing techniques really pushed our music video towards the potential audience.

Using mise en scene which is a very important topic in our genre as fashion and accessories is a big part of making it in the industry we had to establish C.DOT’s different clothing and accessories integrating with camera work. There props include the stereo typical accessories such as gold teeth, a gold chain and also many different types of unique and vibrant clothing which the audience will look to inspire to what C.DOT is wearing. This is staying with our genre convention as going against it wouldn’t really work due to the strong criticism in fashion in our genre. With expensive fashion and accessories being very popular in our industry it has much changed from the old conventions of filming in a poor area with poor clothes with lyrics of the past. It is now about who has the most money and the nicest clothes so portraying this through C.DOT towards our audience is vital.