Before production, as part of the research process I carried out research into many theories including: Mulvey's Male Gaze, Goodwin's theory, Richard Dyer's Star Theory etc. Carrying out this research was really useful as it had a big influence on the planning and production of my final products. To make sure that all of my final products appealed to my target audience when planning and producing my products I took into account the existing conventions of the R&B genre and key aspects of some of the theories that I had researched.

 

Goodwin's theory - Our music video uses Goodwin's theory as he states one of the key aspects of a music video is having a relationship between the visuals and the music. Goodwin recognised that there is often a link between the visuals of a music video and the music itself. There are three ways in which the visuals can be used to promote the song; in our music video, the visuals are used to illustrate - meaning that it uses certain visuals and shots to express meaning of the song and lyrics. As the song for our music video is 1-800-273-8255, the song itself is quite emotional and thought provoking so it was really important for our visuals to match this to have the effect we wanted on the audience by the end of the music video. The lyrics obviously relate to mental health issues - in particular suicide and depression and as a result of this it was really important for us to have that contrast between the two characters and amplifying the difference between their lives. One time in particular that the visuals matched the music is when the lyrics are 'I don't wanna be alive' this part of the music was matched with the footage of Becky's dad shouting at her which emphasises the emotions felt by the character and makes the message really hit home. 

 

Another key aspect of music videos that Goodwin recognised was technical aspects - camerawork, movement, angles, mise-en-scene, editing, sound and special effects. In our music video we used various camera angles but we mainly focused on editing and special effects to convey the meaning of the song - the transitions we used (dissolves and dip to white) were really significant in this respect, we put the footage itself in black and white for the flashbacks to make sure the audience knew it was a flashback and the dissolves were really effective with the mood of the song.

​

The R&B genre has many conventions. R&B music videos are often either performance or narrative and we follow the narrative aspect in our music video. My research into the R&B genre showed me that although many R&B music videos are performance and feature the artist, there are also many artists who like to make their music videos more meaningful by including a narrative concept. Another convention of the R&B genre is dark colours like reds, browns, blacks and greys. I followed this convention through my black and white digipak and the colour scheme used on my website. 

​

Narrative R&B music videos are often shot in normal everyday locations because they are often representative of someone's life or experiences. This use of everyday locations is evident through this famous music video for the song 'Know No Better' by Major Lazer which features a narrative very similar to ours including a split screen between two lives of the same person. This screenshot taken from the video shows normal locations like the boy's bedroom. We followed this convention by filming in locations like houses and parks that are familiar to the audience making the video more relatable. Using this type of location also made sure that the audience's attention was drawn specifically to the characters and their actions rather than the background. 

​

Narrative R&B music videos often contain some unique aspects and this convention was followed in the production and editing process of our music video. We did this through the editing - we used black and white footage to provide an immediate contrast between past and present. We also featured some saturation  with hints of yellow at the beginning of the video in the bath/shower scenes. 

​

Many R&B digipaks and album covers are designed to strongly link with the music video. This is something I challenged within the making of my digipak by using different photos of my artist which didn't relate directly to the music video. However, I did have some elements of my digipak which linked in with the music video like the black and white images. I decided to do this because our decision to make the music video narrative based meant that we didn't actually feature the artist in the video so it was important to have images of him on the digipak and website, strengthening Dyer's idea of a 'star image'.