CCR task

One way in which my music video represents gender is by adhering to female stereotypes by presenting their looks as their most admirable features. For example, there are lots of close ups in the music video on the lead singer’s face and at one point on their leg when the lead singer is ripping her dress. Not only camera angles, but the use of pink in costumes, make up, and set design further adheres to the stereotype of pink being traditionally a ‘feminine,’ colour. 

The first set is designed especially to emphasise this colour. Laura Mulvey’s ‘Male Gaze,’ theory explains how our video adheres these stereotypes as it appeals to men, in other words ‘the male gaze.’ This explains the use of make up and close ups. Even though it does not obviously show how this has been influenced by men, it subtly sexualises the girls, thus appealing to the male gaze. However, as the video progresses, the girls change costumes to darker colours and colours that are not traditionally feminine, for example black and green. There are also more close ups on the instruments in contrast to previously where it may have been shots of their body. I still believe that they are still appealing to the male gaze, as they are all  are wearing make up to make themselves look attractive to men.

One way in which our digipak also adheres to gender stereotypes. Once again, there is lots of pink used in the front cover which symbolises femininity like the music video. For example, the name of the band is written in pink, both inside sleeves having a pink background and the lead singers wears a pink dress. With regards to our social media, gender stereotypes have been adhered to, to a certain extent. The social media does not primarily focus on selling the band based on looks or ‘sex appeal,’ however there are a handful of posts which may have the artists posing in a slightly provocative way. For example, our lead singer posing on a mattress with a dress that reveals her legs. 

Our band also released a fake make-up collection consisting of lipstick and nail polish, to go with the stereotype that women like make up, seeing as our target audience is female, and our band is all female. Our products also adhere to the stereotype of the lead singer having a higher status in comparison to the rest of the band. In our music video, the lead singer has the majority of the screen time and is often placed in the centre or front of the frame, therefore making her our main focus point and thus giving her more status. Furthermore, in our digipak, she is seen on the front, back and inside sleeves, showing how she is more relevant than the others. Finally, our social media has her in 23 posts, in contrast to our bassist, for example, who was only in 11. This also shows how she is the most relevant, and therefore has the higher status.

The brand we wanted to create with our products was one of encouraging the positivity in embracing your feminine side, whilst being confident to be who you are and not complying to societies standards of what a girl should be. Our target audience were teenage girls from ages 14-17, an age of which some may be starting to rebel against parents. We achieved this sense of branding through using the 4 band members on the front of the digipak to create strong role models for the teenage girls to look up to. 

We also actively used pink in all of our products to promote femininity and to link all our products together. We intertwined black with the pink as black is associated with strength and being fearless. Also, in each product you the band wear similar looking outfits. For example, the pink dresses used in the music video are also seen on the social media and digipak. As well as this, they are often seen dressed in black or other colours like red to also show the other side of their look, which goes with the message of not conforming to societies stereotypical view of how a girl should dress. 

Our Digipak’s album name is called ‘Riot,’ which is associated with rebelling and speaking out against whoever that may be. I believe that this will appeal to our target audience and create a sense of branding as, like previously mentioned, our products are aimed at teen girls who want to rebel against their parents and society. The use of graffiti on our digipak also can be associated with rebellious behaviour, and although it is not too defiant, for example having curse words or images of violence spray painted on the wall, it is just the right amount of disobedient behaviour to capture the eyes of the girls, whilst parents allowing them to consume the band’s music.

Our twitter follows this use of ‘gentle rebellion,’ by posting tweets with words such as ‘ass,’ and implying the ‘f word,’ in the tweet ‘who gives a duck,’ with one of our band members posing with a duck. These words are not too strong but are also not necessarily child friendly, and therefore further makes the band seem cool and defiant, but also are not seen as a negative role model from a parent's point of view. 

We used our products to engage with our audience through creating a personal relationship and a personal identity with our audience. This was predominantly done through social media, however it was also used in our music video and Digipak. Bloomer talks about the uses and gratification theory which consists of four ways that someone can engage an audience with a ‘star.’ These are ‘diversion, personal relationship, personal identity and surveillance.’ We created a personal relationship with our audience through social media in multiple ways. Firstly, we created a nickname for our ‘fans.’ This nickname was ‘Shelleys,’ because our band name is called the Michelles. By using this term of endearment, it makes the audience feel like a friend and thus creating a personal relationship which engages them with our campaign. 

We also used casual language and emojis such as the rock hand emoji to make our band seem friendly and conversational, using informal address to further create a personal relationship. For example, when we announced that the album was dropping ‘tomorrow,’ we phrased it like this: ‘How we know feeling our album is dropping TOMORROW!!! AHHH we are so pumped!!! We can’t wait to show you what we have been working on! (Two rock emojis).’ This shows how we used informal address to announce the releasing of our album, for example words like ‘pumped,’ and using the word ‘AHHH.’ We created a personal identity with our audience by showing the band hanging out. 

We did this by making them take a selfie and captioning it ‘Happy Thursday Shelleys.’ This creates a personal identity as many teenage girls like taking selfies with friends so they can remember certain moments forever, and also as it is heavily part of the culture nowadays. We did this once again with the bassist and drummer of our group taking a selfie together saying, ‘thank you to everyone who has listened so far, you guys are amazing!’ On our digipak, we engaged our audience by creating a personal relationship with them. We did this by putting our band on the front cover, and by making them stare directly into the camera, it makes the audience feel like the band is looking at them, and eye contact creates intimacy between people. 

Furthermore, for our music video, we created a personal identity with the audience which engages them by making the main themes of the music video relatable to teenage girls. These themes included not conforming to society, and wanting to change the blueprint, for example changing clothes in the music video, and trashing the ‘perfect Barbie set.’

I did some thorough research on the bands No doubt and Crimson Apple, as well as the solo artist Avril Lavigne. This is because all artists fall under the same genre of music we were looking at which was pop rock, and seeing as female rock bands are fairly underrepresented, my group thought it would be a good idea to also look at Avril Lavigne. Through this research I found that a lot of the artists shared similar conventions. 

Firstly, in the music videos I observed which were of Avril Lavigne and No Doubt I found that both included close up shots of the artist or lead singer (which in No Doubt’s case was Gwen Stefani.) We reflected this in our music video by also using frequent close ups of our lead singers face in all three of our sets. This is quite common in the ‘pop rock,’ genre, especially for female leads/ artists, because part of the appeal is how the singer is ‘conventionally attractive,’ and are sold partly on that fact that they are pretty. This follows Goodwin’s theory of all music videos of one genre will follow similar music video conventions like close ups, for example. Another thing we did in our music video that was inspired from our research was the themes in the music video. 

In No Doubt’s video ‘Just A Girl,’ Gwen sings about the expectations of ‘girls,’ for example ‘I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite.’ In her video there was a direct separation between her and the rest of the band who are male, which is represented by the divided bathrooms. At the end of the video this divide is destroyed, and everyone is seen together. This challenges the conventions of gender by showing that people should not be defined as gender and should be seen as equal. 

Our video also challenges conventions by destroying the ‘perfect pink world,’ that girls are expected to like. Similar lines that follow our narrative are lines like, ‘I’m not your perfect little girl in your perfect Barbie world.’