A2 MEDIA BY: FARDOWSA AHMED

What genre does your film/video fall into?

The genre for my music video (Jhene Aiko – 3:16 AM) falls into R&B/SOUL in every R&B/SOUL has beats per minute to 90-160.  I chose this genre because it is suitable for my artist and the target audience we have aimed for.

What are the expectations of that genre (code and conventions)?

  The expectations of my chosen genre are…

Mise-en-scene - most R&B/SOUL male artist wear big labels/brands clothing e.g. Balenciaga, they wear heavy expensive jewelleries and watches, and mostly they show off money, cars and girls. For female artists they show a lot of flesh, such as wearing shorts and crop tops or see through clothes, they wear full make up for example, bright red lipstick, the colour red symbolized romance, power, and energy, danger and also females are seen as sex symbol.

Performance – many R&B/SOUL video has no band (no musician), they mainly have dancers and singers.

Setting/location – R&B/SOUL are mainly set in clubs, big mansion/house, at the beach and most location are chosen to express their feelings in to song e.g. in a forest or an empty big house.

Narrative – in an R&B/SOUL artists do talk about their feelings in their songs for example, towards their lovers, money, breakdowns, politics as this falls under their lifestyle.

Lip-syncing –

Gender stereotypes – In this genre of R&B/SOUL does come under gender stereotypes. This is because most males are seen as power, money, fame and brands, however female artist are seen in an R&B/SOUL video as seeking success through male, shows a lot of flesh as I believe that they want look sexy with or without clothes because they want to give an image/power to the females that can wear whatever makes them look sexy.

Editing – In most R&B/SOUL video have many quick cuts/ short cuts to match with the instrumental/beat. They also use special effects such as cross cutting, overlapping cut, back and forth cut, etc.

What limitations did you face?

The limitations that my group and me faced were…

Setting - our location at Alexandra Park was very difficult to film because due to the weather issues schedule and time. This is because we haven’t checked the weather, however we went back another time to get more footage and this time we have had the shots we wanted.

Editing - was an issue because of time scale but we finally accomplished it.

Lip-syncing – was a big issue in our music video, it was really hard to get the correct lip-syncing with the original song. We still have problems till now.

Did you challenge, develop or change the codes and conventions of the genre?

In our R&B/SOUL genre we did change the codes and conventions because in many R&B/SOUL music video have dancers, females wearing less clothes and a lot of make ups and jewelleries. Compared to our final music video we did not use dancers or made the main artist wear full make up and less clothes, this wasn’t suitable for the character and the audience we was going for. However, the locations for many R&B/SOUL artists film their music video are mainly clubs, house, etc. but we decided to use different location such as the forest because the artist can feel free to express her feelings in her song. Therefore, we did not want to perpetuate stereotypes as we only used one female character in our music video, however the male in our music video was full clothed as it changes the codes and conventions in an R&B/SOUL genre.