Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre

In this essay I will be looking at genre in relation to one of my media coursework products. Daniel Chandler said that genre was ‘a distinctive type of text’ meaning that it is instantly recognisable to a certain type of audience. I will be looking at my A2 Music Video, which was a Dance video and was for the song ‘Save The World (Tonight)’ by the group Swedish House Mafia. I will look at 5 theorists in relation to my Music Video and will look at points within this, looking at conventions, codes and how we used these in said product.

Barry Keith Grant said that all genres have sub-genres and can be mixed to become hybrids. He also said that they use familiar characteristics to show what genre they are a part of. My music video went alongside this theory as its primary genre is dance, but its sub-genres are house and pop, both of which we used elements of when constructing the final product. We knew the conventions of dance music, as we had researched them prominently in pre-production, so we were able to put these into our video. We then had to look at the conventions of house and pop videos, such as lip-syncing for pop or thought beats for house music. When we had got these conventions we were able to construct an accurate representation of the genre(s) we were aiming to reproduce.

Jason Mittel said that industries use certain genres to target particular audiences and to sell the products. He also said that to sell these products they had tried and tested codes and conventions. Taking this into account we knew that we had to include these conventions to make it a desirable product and one that our targeted audience would be interested in. We knew that by constructing a dance/ house/ pop video we would be aiming at 3 different sets of fans and this would give us a wider demographic when it came to promoting the product. One of the conventions that we used could be the fast paced editing, as this was a convention of all 3 genres that were merged together, so it is what they would expect from a typical video that they’d watch. We also had a degree of surrealism and this would be a part of the dance and pop videos so this would still apply to a wide audience, while not fulfilling the conventions of all 3 genres.

Christian Metz said that the genres of a product will always being going through the typical changes and cycles. This could mean that what once was a convention of one style is now not associated with it and is associated with something else entirely. For example RnB is completely different now, compared to what it was 40 or 50 years ago and now seems like a hybrid with hip-hop, dance or pop. In our music video you can see this through the hybrids/ sub genres that there is a distinct difference in what you would expect to see in older texts and what you can actually see. Because we had a ‘melting pot’ of genres we were able to play with the conventions that we used and create a unique, individual product for our wider demographic. Metz also said that media, which is set into genres can give a broken sense of reality and our video reflected this by showing a student in education who was disillusioned escaping into his imagination and becoming a superhero.

David Buckingham said that genre is not a given thing, but it is negotiated and changed, due to the perception of those consuming these media products. This is particularly relevant to our video because it is originally meant to be a video for a dance music song, but a lot of the conventions that we used were for the pop genre and by going against the conventions of dance music we were moving further away from this. For example in a typical dance music video you would see provocatively dressed women and this would come into the Laura Mulvey male gazed idea, but we didn’t do this, somewhat reversing it and making the primary male character the main focus. Similarly you would expect to see neon lights and a party/ gig atmosphere for dance music, but we didn’t include this, challenging the conventions as we did so. We used things like lip-syncing and surrealism in our video, which you do see in dance i.e. in Commander by David Guetta ft. Kelly Rowland where Guetta turns into a pair of turntables and Rowland appears to be singing the song. However these are much more relevant themes in pop videos and there is hardly a video released that doesn’t include lip-syncing, with lots also using surrealism.

David Bordwell said that any theme associated with a music video could appear in any genre of music video. We used this predominantly in our music video, with using a studio scene that you would normally expect to see in a rock video but we included it in a dance music video to challenge these conventions. By doing this we were able to create something that few people had done before and doing this meant that we were able to attract an ever wider demographic than we would previously expected. We also had more shots of instruments being played than you would previously of expected to be in dance videos in the past. We did use a lot of conventions of dance music videos, such as the thought beats that we had throughout the video at different points and the narrative going alongside the performances that we included meaning that it was still plainly obvious that it was a dance music video to an audience that would recognise these conventions and the style that they were done in.