Blog Reflection 4

Lesson 1: Today's lesson focused on producing a piece of audience research, so I made a survey on www.surveymonkey.com. I conducted 10 questions that would help develop my audience profile. I then posted the questionnaire on my Facebook for people to answer.  Click here to view My Survey.

Lesson 2: In lesson today we learnt about magazine advertisements – specifically we looked into who their target audiences are, what stereotypes are being presented and what message does the advert give to the audience. For example, we looked at the advertisement for Britney Spears perfume ‘Believe’.  From looking at it, we came to a conclusion that it was either targeted to a male audience who wants to buy the perfume for their partner or the female audience who aspire to be like the artist. There are a variety of clear stereotypes connoted – for instance the typical slim blonde girl, who can wear next to nothing to look good and still looks innocent/heavenly. Lastly, the advertisement gives off this message that women are goddesses that need to be set free and this connoted by the birds who are let out of the cage around Britney thus convincing people that having this perfume will achieve that. Therefore, when coming to make our magazine advert, me and my partner must make sure it is creative and grabs the audience’s attention. For example, Rihanna’s products for her album ‘Loud’ cleverly hold a common theme across all three texts. The colour red is in all of her products so is her vibrant red hair and the same typography has been used – having a common theme running across all products makes the audience think ‘ I’ve seen this somewhere’, using this technique makes the audience feel they really know the product. Furthermore, the red connotes a degree of sexiness with correlates with content within the music videos as she reveals a lot of skin etc.

Lesson 3: In today’s lesson I was introduced to Digipak’s. We looked into the key elements of a digipak and also its conventions. Then I spent the rest of the lesson picking three music videos ready for analysis.

Lesson 4: Today we looked at music videos. We watched three music videos as a class – ‘Paris’ by Jay Z which was a performance video, ‘Thinking About You’ by Frank Ocean which was based around a narrative and Massive attack which was a conceptual video. Lastly we analysed Rihanna’s music video ‘Pour It Up’. This video subverts its genre because you would expect to see these images in a rap video. She sits on a grand chair and makes quite strong gestures, acting like a man. This establishes how she is in control and this is further connoted as she does not have a group of men dancing around her, instead she is the dominant one. Moreover, she throws money in the air indicating her wealth and power. Also, the women around her use their bodies to make money; this disempowers females as it makes it seem women are only good for their bodies. However, another reading is that this video empowers females as the dancers are confident and it inspires women to be comfortable in their own skin.