Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory

Laura Mulvey used the term 'male gaze' through her theory in 1975. Through this, she believe's that women are seen as sexual objects through the use of camera shots and angles. This is majorly seen in music video's through the use of explicit clothing, and using women as 'prizes' rather than people. Rappers commonly use women in the same sense as a 'car', like something they've bought or using to brag about. The screenshot to the right is from Young Money's song 'Bedrock', which is predominately about a man 'pleasing' a woman. This is a prime example, as women are used in the video as objects that don't wear much clothing. Girl band's also use male gaze to attract their audience. 'Stooshe' use a lack of clothing in their music video to perhaps attract a male audience. This conforms to Mulvey's theory, as the shot types are used to focus on the women's sense of clothing as promiscuity (screen shot top left).

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

THE USE OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS

As our genre is a pop-alternative, we used similar conventions to real media texts. Our opening portrays a sense of voyeurism with the vintage television which is continued throughout our music video. Voyeurism is seen throughout many music videos in our genre, which is why we used this throughout our video. Usher uses a television to open his music video (seen to the right) and Cher Lloyd opens her music video with an MP3 introducing her song 'swagger jagger'.



We have two female artists in our product. We wanted to challenge the male gaze, so our female protagonsts are not objectified or portrayed in a sexual way. We have conformed to Laura Mulvey's 1975 Theory in which she challenges the sexualisation of women. 

Mulvey's theory is that because filmmakers are predominately male, the presence of women in film is often solely for the purposes of display (rather than for narrative purposes).
We did not want to use our music videos as a means of objectifying women to attract a male audience. Although we used a range of close up and extreme close up shots, we used these shot types to convey humour.

We created a band which had a unique style to most girl bands. Whilst we wanted to represent independent female artists, such as Lily Allen and Azalia Banks (pictured left and below), our style choices and also our use of location relates to youth rather than glamour. As girl bands aren't generally seen in this genre, we found that the girl bands that are, use style to enhance their image like the artists Allen and Banks.


Both of these artists use themes of youth culture. Throughout the majority of real media products in our genre, a brick wall is seen and usually a sunny day representing youth and life. Similarly, we used locations of brick walls and roads with a continuous colour theme. We also had a continuous theme of vintage clips, mainly abstract shots of random objects such as sun glasses and retro trainers in a slow strobe setting.


When designing products for our ancillary tasks (digipak and magazine advert), we used an image of our artist on both. Through doing this, we advertise our artist with a large fun image that is immediately recognisable to our audience. I also created a magazine advert that draws on key images from our digipak so there's a continued theme. I chose to use London buses to represent our 'Britishness'. London buses are instantly recognisable as icons of urban setting. This means our audience can also relate to our artist; similarly, Lily Allen uses her first digipak to show a quirky urban setting of London, with the black cab. The use of this relates the artist to their background and theme, which their audience can immediately relate to.



As most artists in real media texts use a big image of the artist to attract their audience, we used the same idea which covered the whole advert. Rihanna's magazine advert is a similar example, and on the advert is her digipak itself. Lily Allen also has the use of funky sneakers in her album cover, which relates to her close up shot of sneakers in her video for 'LDN' (picture right and above). We also used the idea of funky trainers, although we used it in an abstract, vintage feel in our Music Video. Cher Lloyd also uses this, which could show how young women are seen as 'funky' in the music industry. Lily Allen also uses a lot of red in her video for 'LDN', which relates to our ancillary tasks. Allen could be using these colours to connote to passion as her lyrics show her love for London, although it could also be reflecting the colours of red buses which suits the london theme. I also used the red theme in my ancillary tasks, connoting our artist was a London themed brand, which would also be quirky and youthful.

After our research and planning into real media texts in our genre, we found that quite a lot of the videos use relation to the lyrics for a visual (in accordance with Andrew Goodwin's music video theory which states that music videos have a strong correlation to their lyrics). One of our song lyrics is "Chase ya' boyfriend let's 'ave him". We wanted to use a split screen chase from two point of views (as in the print screen left).
We wanted to represent that we're not the average girl group. We watched Beyonce's "If I Were A Boy" video (black and white image to right) and liked the parallel editing she uses to mislead the audience into thinking that the girl is in control (yet by the end of the video, the girl submits and we see that the male character is empowered afterall. We decided to challenge what is usually seen in music videos - our female artists will have power throughout the video.

Similar to our chase shot, Lily Allen's video for 'LDN' uses a chase at the beginning of her video with 3 boys and a policeman. The use of this shows a sense of switch up of authority, because the policeman who should be in control is shown as slow and weak. Similarly, we used the man not having the authority and being the 'weaker' one through the split screen. We used a close up snorri shot of the male's face, allowing his emotions that could be perceived as 'scared, to be the main focus of the shot. although both chases were used for humour.

EVALUATION QUESTION TWO; How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

We wanted the music video to promote our artist as a british band and have relation to youth culture. In addition to this, we used our ancillary tasks to also promote our band in this way. We used the image of a London bus in both the digipak and magazine advert to give our artist an association with Britain. To the left is a magazine advert for our artist. 
After my research in to magazine adverts, I found that it was common for artists in our genre to have a 

The shot to the right is an opening shot from our music video. This shot is similar to our magazine advert, as an opaque editing technique was used in both. The relation of the classic mini (to the right) and the bus (image above) both connote to Britain. For our magazine advert, a large image of the artist was chose so our audience know exactly what's being promoted. Similarly, a choice of birds was put in the shot to the right to connote to freedom and youth, so both Britain and youth culture was seen in our opening shot.






Throughout our music video, a blue editing technique was used on each shot. This was used so that the whole video has a blue feel, relating to sky and freedom. When creating the magazine advert, I created 3 drafts (images to the left), with the red colour scheme in mind. I used a red colour scheme so the red and blue colour schemes of the magazine advert and the music video related to the British flag colours (of red and blue). 

Above is the digipak for our artist. Again, a red theme is seen; this allows the audience to relate our artist's digipak with the magazine advert, and the same images of the bus and artist so there's a link for our audience to notice. 

We created the band name 'Bacci + Filter' from the song itself. The song uses the lyrics, "Lighter and rizla, Bacci and filter"; This line is quite a catchy line in the song, and through previous research, we found that smoking was used in music video's for an edgy feel to attract their target audience. We used the shot of a cigarette being burnt out, and also the shot of a lighter and used cigarettes. 

Our artist was purposefully not smoking so we didn't bring a negative image of youth or create smoking to be portrayed as 'cool. 

EVALUATION QUESTION THREE: How did you use media technologies in the research, construction and evaluation stages of your production?

Construction
The construction of our music video throughout A2 excelled our use of media technologies and improved our skills from AS. We used a Panasonic HD camera to film all of our shots and archiving. We chose to use this over the HD flip as it was at a higher quality. It also had a reversable lens so we could use a snorricam and view it whilst filming as we had a particularly small group, which led to us usually not having someone to film us. Our camera allowed us to have fast panning shots, in which was helpful for our spinning snorri-shots. Most of our shots were handheld, although our medium/full body shots were taken on a tripod, which was filmed on a couple of locations by our camera woman Lucy.

As we did not use any performance elements (i.e on stage, recording studio), all of our shots were majoritily filmed on the streets, which conformed to our genre. Through filming on the streets, we used natural lighting rather than artificial lighting. We had to plan on filming at the correct time of the day which improved our research and planning skills.

After our production, we began our post-production by exporting all of our footage on to iMovie. At AS, we used iMovie for our entire video, so our skills were being used at an advanced level to use quick editing for our music video. Final Cut Pro was installed on to our macs at AS level, although the use of quick sharp editing, and the editing techniques provided were not need for our Film Opening. Throughout the A2 year, we had a short lesson on final cut pro. Millie and I took it upon ourselves to teach ourselves how to use Final Cut at a more advanced level. We viewed youtube tutorial's on how to use final cut and adapted it to our genre. Here's one in which we used

We used Final Cut Pro to do vintage shots, which used a few editing techniques (strobe, vignette..). Originally, we used vignette and ..... although we didn't like the outlook after it was exported back in to iMovie, so used a varied amount of editing techniques until we found one we liked, which was the strobe setting. The strobe setting allowed the vintage look, as it flickered like the tv's in the past.










After our overall editing was done, we found we were unsatisfied with our colour scheme in comparison, so

we changed our overall look. The picture on the right shows the editing technique that we did to every shot on iMovie, we did this to create a continued colour scheme which gave a vintage feel.

Research and Planning
After our group meetings, we both decided we would put the song on our iPod's and Smartphone's so we would have in constantly to gain ideas. When we gained any idea's we would use our smartphone's to contact each other so that we wouldn't forget the idea. Here's a short conversation Millie and I had on a social networking site to plan our meeting for a shot idea.

My first few blogs show our research and planning on genre's and artist's in our genre. From this I looked in to other artist's digipaks and magazine adverts from our genre, to research and plan for our ancillary tasks, which was all done through google as it was an easy way to search and explore other artists.










 For our ancillary tasks, I found youtube tutorial's in how to use photoshop and then made my Digipak and Magazine Advert in this software. I found that Paint didn't have the essential tools to create ancillary tasks to the highest quality, which led.

We used Twitter to communicate with other artists, and to see how they appealed to their audience. All of this enabled us to have a wider knowledge of our music video.

Evaluation

Both Millie and I use a majority of social networking sites, so as a team we created our own twitter account and used our facebook's to share the video to a suitable audience. This was very handy during our audience feedback and evaluation stages as we were able to broadcast our video to multiple audience's through different platforms.

We used iMovie to edit our audience feedback, then youtube to broadcast it. (picture to the left)
We also again used our HD camera's
to film for our audience
 feedback, then again, used iMovie to edit it. (picture to the right)
I also learnt a brand new media technique through the use of a Prezzi. I'd never previously used prezzi before, but I found it effective for my audience feedback and it looks very professional.
Overall I found that media technologies was a huge help through my research, evaluation and construction. Through using media technologies such as cameras, internets, magazines etc, I was able to put together my A2 project in a detailed, professional way.

EVALUATION QUESTION FOUR: What have you learned from your audience feedback

Evaluation on Prezi

Archive

Here's what we got up to throughout our project, we had lots and lots more footage for outtakes but thought we'd keep it short and sweet. Looking back, really really enjoyed filming for our music video as our shots were so quirky, although the spinning snorri-shots really did make me feel dizzy!

Lip-syncing practice

Here's a short clip that Ms Foster made us record to make us see how good we'd be at lip-syncing. It was nothing serious but it's something that made us laugh.

This video was made during year 12 as a laugh. We got a little bit too excited for A2's music video's, so myself and half of Mac 2 thought we'd make the most out of some free time and do this video. It's really not serious, and it's also very ugly, but a great example of what not to do.