Gender Representation in Music Videos

Gender Representation in music videos can be in reference to both men and women however women are usually the main subject to gaining the attention of the majority of their audience especially their males viewers. Representation however can also span over to the portrayal of certain ethnic groups and cultures that might be shown in music videos. There are plenty of music videos that show the different ways in which women are used varying from sexualization to empowerment. Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Doja Cat are artists who make their music videos using those methods.

The music video I will be using as an example is Industry Baby by Lil Nas X:

In this music video it opens with Nas being sentenced and going to prison. This is not done in a way to stereotype black people or put them in a bad light. In this clip he is shirtless for the entirety which would potentially attract female audiences but could also attract certain male audience members as Nas is gay so it is sexualization to attract both female and male audiences. He also has tattoos on his upper body which are usually associated with 'thug' behaviour.

It is shown that the prison uniforms are pink for the male prisoners, pink typically being associated as a girls colour. in this clip there is also another man on top of Nas in a suggestive fashion which is akin to how women would typically be used to dance around and touch the male music artists in other music videos particularly rap music videos. 

In this scene it again shows Nas to be shirtless leading to there being voyeurism which is more commonly seen in music videos featuring female artists. In place of women being around Nas there are two gay black men which you will not see typically in a rap music video with a male lead artist. Still Nas is shown to be the one in power throughout all the scenes in the music video.

This scene with Jack Harlow shows now the more typical side of rap and the male gaze in music videos as the woman in this clip is hanging onto and clinging to Jack in a sexual way which will appeal to a larger male audience.

 

What people thought of my song choices

 This Time By Junk Bunny 

• Overall the class liked the song and said that it gave them the vibe of a early 2000's teen movie 
• They thought it would work better as a whole band instead of a singular artist which I had agreed with.
• However they thought the song tended to get a bit repetitive during the middle so the song would have to be cut down and edited.
• For casting they said it could be quite difficult to find someone who matches the summer/blonde beach boy type I kept this in consideration when further developing what the full idea would look like (whether I would use costumes and wigs)
• Not the easiest song to come up with a full idea for as the lyrics are quite basic.

CLOSE By THE ISLAS 

• The class thought that casting for this one would be very difficult as the voice is very mature and toned meaning it would be hard to find someone in school to match the tone of the voice.
• The song is the right length for the music videos so it will not require any editing or shortening though the intro before the vocals is quite long.
• The overall vibe of the song again is early 2000's summer teen movie/indie rock 

Kiwi Jr By Sub Pop 

• The class thought that it should be a band instead of a solo artist as it has the vibe of being a band more so than a singular member.
• The song leans more over to the pop side rather than the indie rock/2000's type songs that I had picked previously 
• The majority of the class liked this song more than the previous ones and said that it was easier to come up with a better concept for a video with this song over the others.

How the post production is going

In this final week of getting all the post production stuff together such as the editing of the music video, the digipak and the social media(Instagram page). For the editing of the music video as a group we put most of our trust in Chris and really did not have to give many suggestions on what could make certain sections better or if we wanted to switch the order of shots, so almost the entirety of the editing was successfully done by Chris. 

As for the Instagram page this was constructed and managed by Tara she had taken varying images of the band members, the shoot day, their instruments and moments where they were not doing anything related to making music and either posted them on the bands story or on the page, Chris and I suggested what sorts of pictures Tara might want to add to the page. 

Finally the digipak was constructed by me there were not many changes that I had added throughout the week I had tried different filters and colours for the digipak mainly different reds and landed on the final design, however photos of the band members will be added during the course of the next week to where the digipak will be completed fully. 

Meeting with the light designer

Tara and I had a brief meeting with the lighting designer discussing what type of lights and what kind of lighting we were going to have for our music video. We did not have to come up with many different lighting set ups as we did not have many different shoot set ups the lighting that we wanted for the shipping container was very straight forward as all we wanted were tube lights surrounding the edges and corners of the shipping container to give it sort of a run down fluorescent look, Chris then told us what colour tube lights he had and how we could have a strobe effect with them along with a flickering effect. For the lights in the studio we just had normal spotlights over the hay bales and the cult members this was a very simple set up with no extra light set ups needed.

 

Digipak

For our groups digipak we decided that we are not going to have a drawn front cover we would instead use a photo of our lead singer/Band member wearing the cult mask as the front cover with an additional fog affect covering the bottom of his face which will spill over to the outside back of the Digipak. Currently we are unable to do this as the decision change happened recently and our lead singer has covid meaning we will have to wait till a later date to complete the digipak.

This is how it currently looks:

Social Media

For our social media page Tara was the designer for a page as a whole. She had used a photo editing app called preview to create a layout of how we wanted the overall page to look as a whole. each post consists of different sections of one photo which all combine together to make the Instagram profile appear to be one image.

 

We will have more individual photos of the band members additionally to this group photo as we want to capture the essence of each member however we cannot do this as of right now as our lead band members has covid meaning we cannot have a full photo shoot.

Matt Social Media Campaigns Stream

Social media has helped many bands and artists in recent years promote and sell their music too much larger audiences than they could before without the use of social media platforms. To have a good social media campaign there are different strategies that can be used such as engagement, storytelling and promotion. these three techniques are used together to create a platform for the band/artist, however promotion should be used sparingly as most audiences hate constant promotion for products. 

Engagement

What is it about the artists social media that can engage the audience and keeps their attention so that they will continue to support them.

Storytelling 

Showing the journey of the band/artist and how and why they started music and what they hope to do in the future with their music and what message they are trying t get across to their fans.

Promotion 

Selling the band/artist as a product to the audience but done in a way that does not drive them away or make them engage less with the band.