Evaluation Activity 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1.      Relationship of lyrics to visuals

As our music video’s genre is performance, the artist’s movement on screen is a very important aspect. This is why we tried to link the movements to the lyrics and their meanings as often as possible, without making them look fake or over-the-top.

This shot is on the line ' Cause I’m just a silly Asian…', which is one of the key lyrics, represented through the artists movement and the authority he has over the shot. The male artist takes his sunglasses on and off, showing his eyes to the audience while saying this line. This suggests power and respect as he is showing to the audience that he is proud of who he is and of his background/culture, which is proper of RnB/Hip-hop artists. We also added a quickly zooming in and out effect from the artist’s face to emphasize this line.

The costume of the artists and the props used in this shot such as the baseball cap and the sunglasses were crucial as they suggest the artist’s wealth and status, which relates to the music genre and to other R&B/Rap music videos.

2. Relationship of music to visuals

This shot is on the line' Eyes on the prize at the end of the line, I know that Imma get there it’s a matter of time” , which is a key lyric as it relates to the artists rise to fame and recognition, proper of the RnB/Hip-Hop genre. In this particular shot, the music and visuals link very well together as we added an zooming in and out effect that goes on the beat of the song. The colour of the image also changes to black and white and then back to colour really quickly to emphasize the beat of the song, and although this is a quick shot it links closely to the music.

As the artists sing the lyrics, their movements always go with the beat of the music. Furthermore, throughout the whole music video, we included a lively atmosphere of crowds of people dancing and quick shots which matches up with the upbeat tempo associated with the song and with the RnB/Hip-hop genre, making people want to watch it again.

3. Representation of artist with reference to record label's expectations

As our music video’s genre was a Performance-Narrative, the artist was the main focus of our music video and his image was important. We used a variety of different close-ups on our artists as all R&B/HipHop music videos include them to build the artist’s image. By making eye contact with the viewers and gesturing, the artist shows a confident and powerful image that people admire and relate to. Focusing the viewers’ attention on the artist is quite typical of this genre and links to Goodwin's rule 'The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close-ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style)'.

4. Genre of music and how it is defined

Our music genre was RnB/Hip-hop so we had to consider setting/location, mise-en-scene, props, etc according to this music genre’s conventions. We used a wide variety of different shot types, angles and camera movements proper of the RnB genre, such as pans, low angle shots and close ups of the artist. We also added different editing effects throughout our music video that fit the music genre such as the black and white colourisation and the fast paced shots, which help keeping the audience interested and focused on the main artist.
R&B/Hip Hop artists tend to use Narrative and Performance as their music video genres. That is why we included Performance shots that focus on showing footage of the artist acting and Narrative shots in black and white that focus on showing the story behind the lyrics (how the artists try to reach fame and recognition). We included a little bit of Narrative so that the audience can relate to the artists and their story.
Many R&B/Hip-Hop artists use choreographed dance routines (upbeat songs are more likely to have more movement) so we decided to include several quick shots of people dancing to make the video more interesting and enjoyable. We also tried to engage the viewers through the camera by using many close-up shots and gesturing, which fit the music genre.

Also the use of urban settings, fashionable urban clothing and props such as baseball caps and sunglasses is an important way of appealing to our RnB audience.

This shot shows an establishing shot of one of our main locations, London. This also fits the music genre as most RnB/Hip-hop music videos take place in big cities such as New York, LA, Sydney and London. 

5.Setting/Location

Throughout our music video, we showed a variety of different settings/locations that link well to our R&B music genre. Our first location was London, which is a very popular and well-known city where we found different urban settings proper of our genre, such as the graffiti walls shown in this shot. We decided to include the London Eye and Trafalgar Square in our music video as they are both famous and well-known landmark that viewers can easily recognise them. The car park rooftop and the brick wall are also an great urban settings that link closely to our music genre. We also had to create our own setting in order to be able to film the recording studio footage which is located at the Chaplains office in school (see picture below and picture 8). We chose this location because it has got a large window that can look like the small room where artist record songs in a professional recording studio.

6. Camerawork and Editing

We included a wide range of shot types in our music video: close-ups of the artists making eye contact with the audience, long and mid shots showing the artist’s movements and actions, establishing shots, pans following movement, etc.

This is the shot where the female artist is initially introduced to the audience.  It starts with a zooming in and out effect that goes on the beat. This editing effect was also included in other shots of our music video because it matches up with the upbeat tempo and makes the shot have a stronger impact on the audience.

The camera was set at an extreme low angle because we wanted to show the artist to the audience as confident and in control of the situation. We used this type of camera angle quite often throughout our music video because low angles are very common in RnB/hip-hop music videos as they help give a sense of power within the action of a scene, inspiring insecurity in the viewer, who is psychologically conquered by the figure on the screen.

The footage’s colour scheme was also edited, making it look more effective and professional.

We included fade in and out transitions as part of our editing to make the shots run smoothly. Cutting the shots matching up with the beat of the song also helped us to achieve a sense of continuity and verisimilitude.

We also edited the speed of several shots in order to emphasise the action taking place on the screen and the artist’s movements. This is a very effective way to grab people’s attention, as it makes it be more exciting and enjoyable for the audience.

7. Lighting

Natural lighting was mostly used throughout our music video. However, we also had to use artificial lighting, especially during the second chorus where the two artists were located in this night scenery. Lighting was particularly important in this night shots as the artists’ faces needed to be seen clearly, so we had to position the artists effectively near a streetlight so that the overhead lighting shone down on their faces lighting them up. Thanks to this, their lip syncing and movements can be easily seen.

Lighting was also an important element in the transition process between the second chorus and the rapping parts. This is because, in order to create continuity, the night time shots and the day time shots of the second rap had to be gradually introduced by changing the lighting of the shots progressively, showing a change in day.

8. Mise-en-scene
Mise-en-scene is a key feature in RnB/Hip-hop music videos so we had to wisely consider costume, appearance and make-up that fitted our music genre.

The artists’ clothing, make- up and props used such as the leather jacket, the gold jewelry and sunglasses fit the R&B genre and show their self-confidence and determination to become famous and recognised. Many R&B/Hip Hop costumes take inspiration from American sports such as basketball or baseball, symbolizing that the genre itself originated in the US. That is why the male artist and some people from the crew wear Baseball caps and baseball jackets. The people behind the artists are wearing more ordinary clothes as we wanted the artists to be the main focus.

In this particular shot, we paid special attention to the mise-en-scene as we needed to make people believe that we were using a real recording studio. In order to do this we had to cover the wall with black cardboard and include props such as a microphone, headphones, music sheets, a keyboard, a laptop, etc. and film the shots from strategic angles.

9. Intertextuality or influence of other music video

Tinie Tempah’s “Written in the Stars” music video had a big influence on our music video. Both songs are within the RnB/Hip-Hop genre and talk about getting to the top and reaching fame and recognition. It uses similar aspects of mise en scene with our music video such as key props (sunglasses and leather jacket) and the use of soft natural lighting throughout most parts of the music video.  We also used similar settings and backgrounds proper of the music genre on our music video, such as the roof top with the urban view and the bright sky as a background, which connotes power and infinity.

We got the idea of this particular shot from Tinie Tempah’s music video, where there is a very similar shot of him doing the same movement (below there is a still of this shot).

 For this shot we set the camera at an extreme low angle because we wanted to show the artist as very strong and powerful character, as extreme angles are more symbolic and heavily-loaded. The main artist dips down towards the camera in a dance move (on the beat) and then quickly backs away from the camera. We achieved this effect by using the original shot and then reversing it. Then we changed the speed of the shot to get a more striking effect it and to match the time of the music and lyrics on screen. The colour of this shot was also edited. We turned the artist into a silhouette against the bright blue sky, which relates to the song’s theme of fame, wealth and recognition.

Tinie Tempah’s music video also influenced our digipack as we used a still of the main artist doing this same movement on the album cover, creating a link between our music video and our ancillary products.

Furthermore, there is an intertextual reference to film and TV in our magazine advert, as the artist is wearing a top with Superman’s famous logo on it, connoting strength, hope and power.

Evaluation Activity 4

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research:

When doing the research for our music video and ancillary products, the internet played a main role in allowing us to watch and analyse similar music videos, digipacks and adverts in order to get new ideas for our project.

Google is a particularly important website that my group and I used to research into unsigned artists and songs, record labels, RnB/Hip-Hop genre conventions, music magazines, etc. However, Google is not the only good website for instant access to music, YouTube is also significantly important. This is because YouTube plays a dominant role in promoting signed and unsigned bands as anybody can play their singles for free online. As a result, it allowed us to get ideas from other music videos and, as we had instant access to thousands of new talent, it allowed us to pick a good unsigned song for our music video. But not only we used YouTube to research unsigned artist, I also used it  to research and analyze existing professional music videos specific  to our music genre of RnB and Hip-hop.

I also used Sky music channels such as “MTV,” “AKA”, “The Vault”, “VIVA” and “Kiss” to watch other RnB and HipHop music videos to help me gain ideas of what type of camera angles, shots and effects we could use for our music video.

As a group we created an audience research questionnaire in Survey Monkey so we could understand and identify our target audiences

I used Prezi to create my Star Study and my music videos analysis because it is a very interesting and interactive way of presenting information.

I also used Time Glider to create a timeline of the history of music magazines an of the history of music videos, as it is a very easy to use website and result is quite effective and interesting.

Planning:

Blogger has been an important part in the production of our music video and print productions throughout our coursework. Our blog has been a key element to keep record of all our research and planning, allowing us to show our journey and how we developed our creative and technological skills throughout this project.

In terms of our music video planning, we used it to upload our initial ideas and sketch to the blog, which made it easier to decide which ones were the strongest for our music video and ancillary products. We also used our blog to record the times when our group would meet to plan, shoot and edit our music video and produce our ancillary products.

Moreover, in terms of recording planning for both of our ancillary products, the blog was great as it enabled us to upload pictures of sketches and possible digipack covers and show our teachers so they could immediately evaluate and leave comments to help me improve my planning in order to achieve the highest grade possible.

Social Networks such as Facebook and Msn/Hotmail were used as the main way of communication between the members of our group when we weren’t at school. It also allowed us to remind extras and the people that were helping with the filming and production of our music video the times, dates and locations that they needed to be at. This proved to be a very cheap, quick and effective way of communication.

The use of digital cameras allowed us to take appropriate pictures of possible locations and settings so we could then upload them to our blog and discuss them as a group. We also created our Animatic on iMovie HD by tacking pictures of our storyboard with a digital camera and then we uploaded the video to the blog.

iMovie HD was also used to edit the footage of our digipack discussion as it is very simple and quick to edit clips with this software.

I used Google Calendar to stay organised and to manage my time more effectively. I also used it to plan our group meetings and filming and editing schedule to make sure that there were no clashes with personal arrangements. 

We used Microsoft Powerpoint to create presentations  on our work and Microsoft Word was used troughout the whole coursework to create our magazine advertisement and dijipack analysis and research documents. I uploaded some of this documents to SlideShare, as it is a very easy way to upload documents to our blog.

Construction:

We used a Kodak PlaySport video camera and my iPod Nano 5 alongside a tripod to shoot our music video. These cameras used allowed us to get HD footage and, as they are both small cameras, we were able to get more interesting angles and shots. The tripod was used to keep a very steady shot and to adjust the height so we could either shoot from a low angle or high angle.

We also used a mobile phone to play the music while we were filming to make sure that our lip syncing was as accurate as possible.

We edited the footage using Final Cut Express on a Mac, which enabled us to include many editing effects appropriate to our genre and song choice to achieve a product of high standard, although this software was more difficult to use and understand than iMovie.                                                                                                                                                                      

The main software we used for both of our ancillary products were Paint and  Adobe Photoshop cs5. Photoshop allowed us to use a wide range of colouring and lighting effects, and special effects in order to manipulate the high quality photographs taken from a DSLR camera. Thanks to this camera we were able to take great pictures of our male character/rapper that make our magazine advertisement and digipack look effective and professional. I already had experience working with this software which helped our editing to be quicker and of a higher quality.

We got the fonts for our album and magazine titles(“J.REYEZ”, “TakeOver”) from Dafont.com.

Evaluation:
Social networking sites such as Facebook enabled my group and I to gain audience feedback on our music video, which was crucial in helping us to understand where our music video needed improving. We posted our music video from YouTube, allowing our peers to leave comments with either positive/negative feedback, which was a very easy and efficient way to gain quick audience feedback.

YouTube also allows our audience to have immediate access to our music video, which is important it helps us getting more feedback from a wider audience and it is a good and easy way of promoting it.

We used “Go! Animate” to create the Evaluation Question 2 as we thought that creating an animation was a more interesting and creative idea than filming ourselves.

We used digital cameras to take appropriate stills of us using the equipment so I could then process them onto my evaluation. Paint and Microsoft PowerPoint were also used to create and edit the 9 frame analysis’ image on the Evaluation Question 1.
NCESKids allowed us to create graphs for our Prezi Evaluation Activity 3 presentation to show the audience feedback we got in a more visually pleasing way. 

Evaluation Activity 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Peer assessment of the rough cut of our music video:

We asked 15 media students in our class to evaluate our music video’s rough cut by completing a form and writing down positive and negative feedback.

We learnt that we needed to tighten up on the lip syncing and that there were too many long shots and barely any close-ups of the artists. We also learnt that we needed to add more special effects and transitions that could fit in our RnB genre. We also needed to edit and improve the brightness and contrast, especially in the night time scene, so that the artists’ lip syncing and movements could be clearly seen.

Peer assessment on the rough first draft of our digipak:

We asked the same media student to evaluate and give us feedback on our digipack and magazine advert. We learnt that we needed to get rid of unnecessary sections such as the barcode because although our group though it was a creative and original idea, people found it really confusing. Our group created the barcode as the artist’s logo, representing that he was becoming more recognized. We decided to remove it as we didn’t want it to cause unnecessary confusion.

 We were also told that the font of the writing inside the booklet was very hard to read as people could not see the punctuation clearly, and the artists’ signature was too small and illegible.

Everyone liked the photographs used for our digipack and thought that the editing was good and appropriate and that it linked well with our music video.  

There weren´t any bad comments or feedback on our magazine advert as everyone thought it was very effective and looked really professional.

Thanks to this feedback, we were able to make some necessary adjustments and get a more successful and effective music video and professional-looking ancillary products.

(Prezi done as a group)

What have you learnt from your audience feedback? on Prezi

AS a group, we created the following Questionaires to get feedback from people from our music video and ancillary products. People wrote down improvements we could possibly make if we had more time to edit our media products. The last page shows good comments and feedback from different people (The last comment  is from someone studying Film at university).

EVALUATION ACTIVITY 2 (done as a group)

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

-     How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
-     Our main product and ancillary text link well with each other.

-     Why do you think that?
-     Our group started by discussing and brainstorming different ideas into existing RnB products. From this discussion, we learnt that RnB artists image is important as they want to promote themselves, and to be recognised. We took this into account and made our music video and ancillary products with the artist's image as the main focus.

-     What features have you placed in your products that are effective?
-     One of the features we included was the blue colour scheme we carried throughout our products. The colour blue symbolises optimism which relates to the main single of the album this implies that the artist is determined to reach his ambitions. The colour blue also symbolises wealth and business which also links to our products. Another feature we used was the close-up of the artist. We used this on our music video and ancillary products as this is important to promoting the artist as well as showing his authority and personality. 



-     Finally, we carried a modern theme for our music video and ancillary product by our choice in mise-en-scene, location, costume and editing. This is important because it relates to our music genre, R&B as it reflects the continuous growth of the modern society and the music industry. 


-     What was the idea behind the album cover?
-     We researched into existing album covers and found that the artist's image is the main focus as this is important to up and coming artists. This builds their image and promotes the artist and his music. We chose the album title, 'TakeOver' because it relates to the album's theme of being determined to reach recognition. This is supported by the effective use of font that fit our music genre and the modern theme. 


-     What was the idea behind the magazine advert?
-     We analysed existing magazine adverts from different genre and see the difference between. For our inspiration, we chose Rolling Stone, XXLMag and RWD as they promotes our music genre well to the target audience. We presented a close mid-shot of the artist as we want to attract the audience's attention to the image to promote the artist and his music. 



-     This is also effective as the artist is only starting and the artist needs recognition. The white background is effective as it makes the artist stand out, and it symbolises strength, wholeness and completion. 


-     Are you happy with the final outcome?
As a group, we feel that we have done a great job and we have achieved our initial aim of creating product to fit with our music genre whilst making it look professional. Our products are eye-catching and interesting from the ideas our group had. 

Final Music Video :)