Final Evaluation: Q1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our music video is very much typical of the ska genre and the aspects of it that we aimed to achieve, however overall greatly challenges conventions of the role of women within society. The most prominent media text used within all of the research, planning and shooting of our production is Shane Meadows’ ‘This is England’. This is greatly emphasised through the costume of the cast in our video. We have taken ideas for the costume of our cast predominantly from TIE (This is England). We have used Dr Martens boots, Fred Perry shirts, trilby hats, black slim fit suits and braces, all of which are iconic of the genre and feature in TIE. For example, these are the braces worn by me when acting as a band member in the video, and also there is a shot of Shaun, the protagonist from both TIE and TIE ’86 (the follow-up TV series) from which we got our costume inspiration. Although we had previously established that our song is more fitting of the two-tone ska sub-genre, we still felt it highly appropriate to cross reference texts of the more ska/punk sub-genre such as TIE when regarding aspects such as costume in our video. There are also large amounts two-tone elements within it such as the suit worn by Jack (actor), trilbies, and badges and glasses worn by both Jack and Izzy (actress), which are far more conventional of this sub-genre.

Another way in which we utilised aspects from similar texts of the ska genre is in the variety of shots we used. Our opening shot is of Izzy playing the protagonist female ‘money grabber’ and lead singer of the band, where we used an over-shoulder shot of her getting ready in the mirror. This inspiration was taken from a similar shot from TIE. There is also a brief shot of the same type later on in the video where Harley (actor playing band’s drummer) is seen getting ready in the mirror in the same fashion as it can be used to reference the existing text of TIE again. In the case of the shots regarding Izzy, she is shown putting on lipstick which emphasises her role within the video as being very much typical of the social expectations of women, making herself look glamorous and hence developing the conventions of the way in which women are presented in the majority of existing music videos; glamorously. This can be linked to Goodwin’s theory in the sense that generally, and in our own case, successful videos include lots of close-ups of the artist in order to establish them as having a dominant role within the band, as well as developing a recurring motif that features prominently throughout their work (e.g. the braces and lipstick worn by Izzy). This is also in-keeping with the theme of the song – ‘Moneygrabber’ in which it suggests that the female character is a glamorous figure who manipulates men to get her hands on their money. Our video reinforces the notion that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”, which could be read as a negative representation of the female gender, or In contrast could be a playful representation of the stereotyped manipulative female.

We also heavily referenced other bands of the genre within our video to make the production more fitting of the genre, and to make it more appealing to our target audience. The band we focused most prominently on are ‘Madness’. Madness are a British pop/ska band from Camden Town in London, who formed in 1976. They were the pioneers of a particular style of dance/walk called the Madness Walk (shown in this picture). For our own production to become more appealing to our band’s target audience, and as Madness are a band so heavily linked with our own to use as an intertextual reference, we attempted to recreate this style of walking, which is typical of Madness’ fun and quirky approach to ska. In terms of sub-genres, Madness were very much of the two-tone wave and were typically seen performing in smart black and white suits and Suggs’ (lead singer) iconic aviator-style glasses. The fact that we have dressed our actor Jack in a similar style works well towards recreating their image and emphasises how influential a band they were to the planning and production of our video. This is an example of how we have utilised aspects of real media products in our own production.

The reason behind us having referenced Madness so strongly throughout our video can be linked to the media theorist, Gunther Kress. In 1988 he defined a genre as being ‘a kind of text that derives it’s form from the structure of a frequently repeated social occasion, with it’s characteristic participants and their purposes’. This basically means that when watching certain media productions that have elements of similarity to other texts they are familiar with, audiences feel a sense of belonging to a specific group. For example in our own video, when we dress our actors in costume typical of the ska genre, and they view the actors performing the ‘Madness Walk’, they recognise these as having been in similar media productions so feel a sense of familiarity and comfort, so feel a part of the ska social grouping. Therefore our music video has the aim of making the audience feel a sense of collective audience identity.

Again looking at media theorists, Andrew Goodwin also played a large role in the planning of our own production. Goodwin’s theory states that successful music videos must demonstrate genre characteristics. Our own video evidently does this in terms of costume and shot types etc. as explained in previous paragraphs of the question. Because our band are of the ska genre, our video is not likely to feature a dance routine as would be used by a girl or boy band such as ‘Boyzone’, as it would be completely ill-fitting of the genre and would not appeal to our target audience. Instead we have made a quirky montage of both performance and concept-based images that is far more typical of the genre. He also stated that there should be a relationship between lyrics and visuals in the video. This is greatly appropriate to our own production as when the lyrics are referencing the ‘money-grabbing woman’ we ensured that Izzy is on screen playing the part of the money-grabber, or shots of money are in focus as this is strongly appropriate to the lyrics. The use of close-up shots of Izzy applying the lipstick can be linked to voyeurism, with voyeuristic treatment of the female body being an important aspect in Goodwin’s theory.

Our band, The Skanx, fit mainly into the 'two tone' context of ska, which was initially created in the UK the 1970's and uses elements of ska, ska punk and reggae dub to fuse together a brand new sub genre. Out of the similar artists I have researched in the planning of our video, The Specials and Madness are the bands that fit most into the two tone ska sub genre, so i can safely say that The Skanx are most closely related to The Specials and Madness in terms of genre, rather than say [Spunge] who are of the later ska revival genre of the 90's called 'third wave ska', being a different scene to the two tone ska scene. This two tone ska association is backed up by some of the art used in their videos, which black and white simple checked design is heavily linked with the two tone ska scene, for example this band logo. Our target audience are likely to be equally as youthful as the type of audience who were fans of such bands as Madness at the time of their peak popularity in the 1980’s (e.g. 16-20’s). We aim to appeal more so to the male half of the audience, having portrayed the main character in our video as a glamorous, money-grabbing woman, as this may not be as appreciated by a female audience as well as the fact that three out of our four band members are male. In conclusion, our target audience are likely to be mostly males of a sixteen to early twenties year age, much like the audience of our most prominently focused-on similar band, Madness at their time of peak popularity.

In the same way as our music video, my print productions also use and develop conventions of real media products. My first panel is a shot of the acting band in a pose when imitating the madness walk, aforementioned. One way in which this panel uses conventions of the ska genre is by the use of bold, vibrant colours which connote the fun nature of the ska genre whilst being featured in the urban mise-en-scene that is iconic of the genre and it’s fans. My second panel was taken from my initial research into the album cover for Blur’s ‘Best of Blur’ where I have used an image of all four acting band members arranged into quarters of the page in the style of Blur’s iconic album. However I have manipulated the image in such a way to conform to the conventions of the two-tone sub genre by changing the threshold of the image to make it appear black and white – this simple black and white of course being so iconic of two-tone, as discussed in the previous paragraph. My third panel uses a focussed image of Izzy being established as the protagonist amongst a blurred background of monopoly money, which is intended to represent the idea that she as the money-grabbing woman is focussed (whilst being literally ‘in focus’ on camera) and in control of the male gender, and chaos of the current and past economy that is represented by the blurred monopoly money. My final panel also conforms to the conventions of the ska genre by showing a news board, which can be linked to all the current news about the banking catastrophe that has been in all the tabloids, whilst being set against a brick wall background, which represents the urban theme of the ska genre.