Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre

Daniel Chandler states that "Genre is a distinctive type of class/text" used to identify or establish something to its audience. Barry Keith Grant continues that "genre allows audience to identify them specifically by what they are familiar with and what becomes recognizable to them." The genre I have chosen was pop with a sub-genre of dance in which I both challenged and adhere various conventions of pop during our take on Pixie Lott's video "Its all about tonight."

Firstly, we knew it was important to look at existing media texts to understand the conventions of pop and found that typically the genre gives the audience a set of pleasures and realized that we could give our audience emotional pleasure by relating to the narrative and artist by feeling happy that she's getting over her ex boyfriend and is off for a night out (a common emotion felt by most women at some point). We looked at videos within the pop genre such as Rihanna's "Take a bow" in which the videos focused on female empowerment aswell as having the "male gaze" from Laura Mulveys theory and wanted to represent this feeling during our video. We also  wanted to relate our video to its audience using familiar codes and conventions that make references to the audience and their society by having familiar cloths, makeup and shoes shown throughout the video to appeal to its main target audience of young women. We also wanted to follow the genres typical conventions by having over exaggerated features to give an escapism towards the viewers by having the hottub and sports car involved in the music video which are things which are possibly not things which the audience are familiar with but are shown for entertainment purposes. The video has a star persona of the main artist who is shown centrally in every shot through thought beats to show her importance. The main purpose of a promo package within the pop genre is to "promote the star" as Richard Dyer states so it was important to use lots of meat shots of the star and make her the centre of focus within every shot at each location.

A mixture of narrative and performance is also a key convention of the pop genre which we wanted to show within our video having lots of fast paced shots and thought beats to keep in pace with the music and flip from both narrativeand performance. Fragmented shots throughout which reveal the narrative involve shots within a bar, a sports car, at work and at a house party which allow a clear party narrative for the viewers but also allows the star to show performance with dancing to the beat of the music and lip syncing.  We did lack various conventions of pop however by not including a choreagraphed dance routine with the artist and backing dancers as we just had them dancing and not in a fixed designed way. We let them dance freely as a new convention in order to represent a free and fun night as part of the genre of being a happy, upbeat empowering video for women. The range of costumes and hair styles fit the genre by being popular but also are used to keep the audience entertained. Each location has a different outfit which fit with the location in order for the audience to differentiate between them. With the main star being shown alot and the storyline being easy to follow the video fits the genre of being something that can be watched by viewers while getting ready for a night out or with friends.