A level media katie ruth davis: 2019

Friday, 29 November 2019

New Rules-Dua Lipa

NEW RULES – DUA LIPA Music Video (2017)

Product context:

The music video ‘New Rules’ was released on 7^thJuly 2017. It was premiered through Lipa’s YouTube account. The music video was directed by Henry Scholfield.

Industry context:

Dua Lipa’s estimated net worth is about $3 million. She has made most of it from her singing. She has 34 awards from 80 nominations and has 2 Grammys from the 34 awards.

Consider the use of moving media language and codes and conventions:

There are wide shots of women continently in the music video, the wide shot shot of the female bodys, showing a lot of their skin, and this creates the male gaze theory. In this music video the conversion would be that they have a full dance music routine that have been choreographed by someone.

Consider how the different elements of media language, and the combination of elements, influence meaning and communicate multiple meaning:

In the music video we can see pink flamingo. Flamingo symbolism calls for you to be vibrant and outgoing, and to be well-balanced and resourceful in life. The meaning of flamingo communicates to the audience that Dua Lipa and other females are like the flamingos that are well-balanced and resourceful in life.

Another important element of media language is colour scheme. We can see it through Lipa’s change of costumes. At first, when she is learning how to overcome break up, she is wearing yellow dress. Yellow symbolises intellect, freshness, and joy, therefore suggesting how happy and naïve she was while in a relationship. As the music video continues, and now one of the other girls is trying to get over someone, Dua Lipa is wearing black bra combined with silver miniskirt. This costume choice and colour scheme suggest that now she is not that naïve, but she is aware of the reality, she is independent, strong women and she will help her girl friend to get over her break up.

Consider how representations are constructed through processes of selection of combination:

Lipa’s representation changes during the video. Her dress code in the opening sequence could be considered to be quite covered up as she is hearing a dress with a jacket on top. However, as the music video proceeds she appears in a long shot wearing a bikini with her friends. This makes appears to the male audience as it feeds into their fantasy. There is a contrast in those scenes as at first she is covered, which suggests girl power; “my body, my rules”. However, later on she appears in a bikini making this idea of girl power disappear as it catches male attention.

Consider critical perspectives:

David Gauntlett’s theory of identity- The music video could be considered to be an expression of “Girl Power” as there is no male who can be seen and Lipa sings about not letting “him in” because she knows that she will be waking up in his “bed”. Therefore, by ignoring these “calls” and not letting “him in” she is reinforcing the idea that girls do not need a man in their lives.

Narrative – Tzvetan Todorov:

Todorov’s theory can be applied to this music video, because it follows three part narrative structure.

The disruption to the equilibrium occurs when Dua has just broken up with ‘him’. The narrative then builds to how she is going to deal with this situation. After that we can see resolution – Dua Lipa getting over him and now helping the other girl who is at the disruption stage – a break up.

At the end of the music video all women are dancing together while holding hands, that represents the successful resolution of disruptions (break ups) that occurred.

Semiotics- Roland Barthes:

The music video represents the idea of girls’ night out and how one of them is trying to forget her boyfriend. The long shot in which she is seating in the sofa with her friends jumps to a shot in the swimming pool with her singing “I got new rules”, perhaps these new rules are that she is not going to “pick up the phone” and if she does she will not get over him. Furthermore, when the music video goes back to when she wanted to pick up the phone there is a new girl who is suffering from the same thing as she was before. The fact that they are welcome her in the group it reinforces the idea of girl power. The music video reminds us of scenes from Mean Girls.

Feminist theory-bell hooks:

We can clearly establish feminism here, because in this music video, there is only women taking part and appearing in the scenes. The song talks about getting over a man. The music video shows a lot of females being single, that highlights the idea of females not needing a male in her life that is supported by bell hooks/Judith Butler.

Social context:

Female artists are constantly shown to be hypersexualised in music videos (this has become the norm). In the music video the male gaze is shown through the fact that females are showing a lot of skin (wearing less clothing) to attract straight male’s attention.

Audience:

The audience that would be watching this would be the primary views that would be between 16-24 year olds.But the secondary viewer could be anyone that may be feminism and wants to show that women can be on there own and don't need a man in there life.

Culture context:

The location of the music video was set in USA America California on Miami beach, also the coming up advertisement on 'New Rules' was that we had posted something on her Facebook account saying that she would be postponing her release on eponymous debut studio album so that she could record more songs. Where she later travelled to California to play 'New Rules'.

Thursday, 7 November 2019

Evaluation

The aims of my production course work, was to do two front cover magazine covers either ‘summer and winter’ edition or ‘regular and special’ edition, and we also had to do a double page spread, either from summer or winter, or if you did regular or special, I chose the summer and winter addition for my magazine front covers and I chose to do a summer for my double page spread I did this because I understood what these where and how to how the difference between them. The genre that I chose to work in was ‘beauty’ because I had seen magazine about it before and I had some kind of understanding of it. The research that I did into this was for my first task to find two magazine front covers from any genre then to annotate it, this helped me to understand what type of words magazines would use and how they would place the models or how they would place the texts or how they would place there titles, if they used the same front throughout or if they used the same size throughout, then for the second task I had to find two double page spread again from any genre and to annotate it this helped me to understand what would go onto a double page spread, how many photos normally would go onto it or how the text is placed and how they placed the photos, for the third task I had to find a magazine cover and double page spread, I annotated them this helped me to see the similarities between them both, like if they used the same text, or colours, or if the same model was used again. I incorporated conversions of a beauty magazine when I was doing my production, I always referred back to other magazine covers and double page spreads, to see what else I needed to inculpate, I was looking at similarities, so when It came to mine, I used a ‘adobe Caslon pro’ font, that way it look girly, sophisticated, and approachable, I used a purple, pink colour throughout my front cover for summer and for the winter i chose darker colours like dark red and brown I changed the font for the text to a darker colour that way the title would stand out more but also because it makes the texts look better that way, it kept the reader looking because the colour was different it intrigued the reader to want to read it I used different sizes of texts some text was big and small I wanted the main words to stand out like in other magazine I saw the key words were I made the font bigger like beauty related words, I wanted my main image to be the centre of attention what I had notice within this genre was that, beauty magazine made the model centre of attention and that the texts never obstructed the face, which is what I wanted to do, so I placed the texts around the face, I did this for winter as well. I also notice when doing both magazines that in the summer magazines the girls hair is done nicely or is up, her make up colouring matches the magazine colouring, the model normally always touches her face, so that Is what I chose to do, I had my model place her hand on her face, her hair was tied back by her sun glasses but yet her hair was still down so it made it look like her hair was up slightly, and her makeup e.g. her eye shadow matched the colours of the font on the summer magazine. For the winter magazine I wanted her to have a fur hood and scarf on so that it was showing it was winter, but also so it was still girly having the fur hood. Then on my double page spread for summer, I kept the same colours, front and the model to the double page spread, , I kept to the conventions of beauty magazines, on one side having just a photo of the model and the other side having articles. I kept my target audience in consideration throughout the process by not having it too childish because my target audience was between 16-21 I had a model that was aged 17-18, and also had articles in the magazine that was targeted at people that worked or just wanted the going out look, I wanted my audience to be intrigued, in the articles was, knowing the best brand to have or how to get a certain look, or what is in at the moment. What I have learnt during this process is to keep refereeing back to the research that I did, and to keep my target audience in mind when doing it.