1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our genre of our product was hip hop, typically conventions of hip hop videos are focusing on the need to sell the artist. A video we analised was "Love the way you lie". In this music video this convention is used throughout, Eminem's video used parallel editing in the form that there was a present and a past from of Eminem the narrator (present) sings the chorus's along with Rhianna and the character from the story line (past Eminem) this enables him to gather as much screen as he can selling himself as the artist. Another convention is a the lyrics match the visuals. This is typically used to tell a story etc, in our music video we did this by pretending to smoke drugs as this references to drugs is in the song also we matched "looking on the internet looking for class's" visually along side the lyrics. We also found that parallel editing is used in many hip hop/rap music videos this gives them a chance to tell a story along side the lyrics but yet still give the artist the maximum amount of screen time as possible meeting the Goodwin's points. Voyeurism was kept to the bare minimum as we found inappropriate in our style of song, however typically this genre is well known to use voyeurism as a key point in the music video with lyrics based around them. So in this we found ourselves challenging the typical convention. Visual music was also a key part in many hip hop/rap music videos this also came into our video on many of our transitions and and editing to the beat. altogether I found we met typical conventions of hip hop videos although in some aspects such as voyeurism we did not find it as appropriate.
2) How effective is the combination of your Main Product and Ancillary texts?
Our aim was to create three products a music video, a digipack and a magazine advert we tried to bring them all together as one product with obvious selling techniques such as standing out from the shelves. Our promotional package links in with each other with the background from one of our scenes is our front cover for the digipack and magazine article. This matches colouring and the artist (hakan) Kanye West this would bring in the fans and draw attention to the products. The scene from the music video was a great peice of graphiti we found in camgridge using good eye cathing colours doing the job for us. But most importantly it was a very typical location for a hip hop genre again bringing hip hop fans attention to our product. We found that we achieved this well. we rated our product to a 15 as off the type of language and drug references in the song this was a slight hinderance as we had to try and keep our ancillary products clean so they were consumer friendly. The use of bright colours such as luminous greens and the graphiti background helped the product leap off the shelves.
3) What have you learned from audience feedback?
Our feedback played a key part in our media product. However our mid way rough cut feedback was not so helpful as the unfinished product was put to our peers we knew what we need to add and do as well as anyone else. Therefore we found the feedback was mostly obvious to us and wasn't really very constructive in our eyes. Although after this once we were coming to the end of the editing process we could see the style of song was restricting our editing variations and showing off skills we put this to our teacher which brought in the head of media Tanya we discussed our pro duct after viewing and there we were able to highlight some key issues which enabled us to let the sequence flow and not so dull with lots of jumping shots and editing to the beat we were able to get the storyline across in a sensible fashion without becoming dull or unstructured. Whereas class feedback at that early stage we found was more of a hindrance than helpful. We also created questionnaires and out them to our target audience (our age group with similar tastes) this was more convenient giving us some certain points to clean up and other things they found unnecessary. Altogether we found a more expert opinion was necessary at key stages of our editing process although our peers was also interesting to hear as they were the target audience.
4)How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Organisation in the planning and development stages was key using the 'blogger.com' helped us arganise and keep safe all of our work along side research on the internet this was the perfect interface to keep our planning as oposed to hand writing. For the editing process Final Cut Express was the software we developed our skills on. This program had been used before, for other projects although our skills were still limited. We found youtube tutorials were useful when we wanted to learn a new editing technique to seperate our work from others. We learnt to use new transitions and editing on the beat was essential in our music video. There was also times where we resorted to asking the teacher how to pull off certain effects such as when saul was lying on the bed with clara as she fades away. This was performed using two shots one with clara and saul on the bed and then another with saul in the exact same position but without clara we then faded the two shots together. This gave us a very effective clip that gave the impression of special effects! Photoshop for the ancillary tasks was at the same sort of stage as final cut as we had used it before but finished more confident on the programs that before the project. We also used youtube to find out how to put the text behind the head of our artist.(http://www.flickr.com/photos/saul_blake/5220648770/in/photostream/) this also helped give a more professional effect. Overall I found that we gained much more skill and confidence on the software.
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Evaluation
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our final media product uses many conventions of real media products. We used Eminem and Rhiannas 'Love the way you lie' video as inspiration, as it had a similar storyline. One convention we used was selling the artist. We did this by making sure the artist (me) had the most screen time and used many close-ups. Also, i was wearing Adidas clothing and a flat-peak hat. This matches the genre as it is seen as 'hip-'hop' clothing and would be seen being worn by many other hip-hop artists, for example Kayne West. This also links into Genre Characteristics as it is a common convention of real media products. We tried to film the majority of our shots in 'hip-hop locations', so we found many different graffiti walls and decided to shoot infront of them. We thought this matched the genre characteristics as you would expect to see the same or something similar in other music videos of this genre.
Also, we used another of Goodwins Points. This was visual/lyrics. This is how what you see at the time matches what is being said on the audio. An example of one is when the lyric 'She had a lil weed and we get a lil high' is being said, our video changes to a shot of Clara smoking a fake spliff. We thought this would be effective and emphasize the drug reference. Another Goodwin Point is visual/music. We added this to our video by changing the camera shot to the beat of the song. We also thought this was effective because in this particular section, the beat is very noticeable and our editing goes very well with it.
A way we challenge a convention of a real media product, is that we have not used Voyeurism in our video. We all agreed that we did not think it would be appropriate as the song is about how Kayne West says how men use and take advantage of women, and how he wants to be different from the rest. Effectively, in our video we have 2 Kayne Wests. Me being the actual artist, and Saul being the narrative side. We thought this would be a good idea and believe that the audience would be able to understand this.
2) How effective is the combination of your Main Product and Ancillary texts?
I believe the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are effective. We used stills from the music video to create both the digipack and magazine advert. We took a still shot in Final Cut Express of the artist (me) and is the main focus on both the texts. For the digipack, the front cover is a big image of me standing infront of a Graffiti wall. Again, this is another way how we sold the artist. On the back cover, the background was again a graffiti wall and on the foreground we showed:
You can recognize all 3 of these products are all related and similar in at least one way or another. In all 3, there is the urban hip-hop background setting of the graffiti walls. This is a strong combination between them all and i think had worked really well. Another is the colours we have used. For the font on our magazine advert, we used one of the colours on my Adidas t-shirt to show how we colour co-ordinated it.
3) What have you learned from audience feedback?
We did not receive any feedback for our final product. However, we received helpful feedback for our rough cut version. It was given to us by other students in our class. They commented on both the good and bad points and we took these into account and worked on them for our final video. Also, the head of Media department gave us some feedback which we found very effective. She commented on the lack of camera shots and how we let certain clips run for too long without changing them, and also how there wasn't enough close-ups for us to 'sell the artist'. We all agreed this became very boring, and wanted to film a better variety of shots. After receiving this feedback we went away and filmed once again. The footage we captured was good, and there was enough to change to different locations when editing. Our new footage ranged from more close-ups and mid-shots, to long-shots and some more narrative footage. We were very happy with our new footage, and decided to make the shots the main part of our video to replace the old ones. The majority of it was me lip-syncing from a few different angles, and throughout the whole video, it keeps coming back to these shots. Also, we filmed in some new locations. Saul recommended the skate ramp in Arbury as it suits the hip-hop genre. This also features quite a bit in our video.
Another criticism we received was on how the lip-syncing wasn't up to scratch. On our Final Cut version, it wasn't too bad, but on the version the rest of the class saw, it had been compressed and the quality had been decreased. We believed this was the main reason for this, but we went back all through the video and improved it all.
To help us with our Ancillary texts, we created a questionnaire to ask to the rest of our class. This included questions we needed to know the answer to, to help us design them. An example of one of the questions used is: "On the front cover of the Digipack, would you expect to see the Artist?" We found out that the people we asked would expect to see the Artist, as he is a solo artist and the main focus.
I believe the feedback we received was very helpful, and if nobody was to criticize our video, then it would be no where near as good. As a group, we are all more than happy with our final result. We all think it looks professional and mature.
4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In the research and planning stages of our media product, we mostly used the blog and the internet. This was a good way to put down ideas and plan ahead about what to do, as it is secure on the blog and uploads above all our other posts. This meant the information we posted was there for us to look back on easily and would not get lost, as opposed to hand writing it.
Our main computer software we used was Final Cut Express, alongside Adobe Photoshop. We used Final Cut to put together and edit the captured footage. We learnt many new advanced techniques to make what we edited look more professional and believe we did an excellent job in doing so. In my opinion, one of the best clips in the video is when Saul is standing by the roadside and traffic is speeding by. We had planned this before hand and knew exactly how we were going to do it. Saul just had to stand perfectly still on the spot whilst we filmed, and the cars drove past behind him. When editing it, all we had to do was speed up the clip to the appropriate speed. This took a few times as we wanted to get the perfect speed. Another idea we came up with was Saul laying down with Clara, and then Clara fading away. Again, we had planned this before hand and knew exactly how we were going to do it. We needed to film 2 shots, one with Saul laying with Clara, and the other with Saul in the exact same position but without Clara. All we needed to do is fade the second clip into the first whilst that fades out. We had problems doing this, so we had a little help from one of the Media technicians who quickly gave us advice in which we then corrected it.
We used Photoshop to create our Ancillary texts, the Digipack and the Magazine advert. All of us felt that our skills on Final Cut were much stronger than on Photoshop, so didn't really know where to start. We completed our Digipack first as we came up with more ideas for it. We used our feedback from our questionnaire and used a still shot of me being the main focus from our music video, and put it as the background. We did this for both the texts, but used a different picture.
Our final media product uses many conventions of real media products. We used Eminem and Rhiannas 'Love the way you lie' video as inspiration, as it had a similar storyline. One convention we used was selling the artist. We did this by making sure the artist (me) had the most screen time and used many close-ups. Also, i was wearing Adidas clothing and a flat-peak hat. This matches the genre as it is seen as 'hip-'hop' clothing and would be seen being worn by many other hip-hop artists, for example Kayne West. This also links into Genre Characteristics as it is a common convention of real media products. We tried to film the majority of our shots in 'hip-hop locations', so we found many different graffiti walls and decided to shoot infront of them. We thought this matched the genre characteristics as you would expect to see the same or something similar in other music videos of this genre.
Also, we used another of Goodwins Points. This was visual/lyrics. This is how what you see at the time matches what is being said on the audio. An example of one is when the lyric 'She had a lil weed and we get a lil high' is being said, our video changes to a shot of Clara smoking a fake spliff. We thought this would be effective and emphasize the drug reference. Another Goodwin Point is visual/music. We added this to our video by changing the camera shot to the beat of the song. We also thought this was effective because in this particular section, the beat is very noticeable and our editing goes very well with it.
A way we challenge a convention of a real media product, is that we have not used Voyeurism in our video. We all agreed that we did not think it would be appropriate as the song is about how Kayne West says how men use and take advantage of women, and how he wants to be different from the rest. Effectively, in our video we have 2 Kayne Wests. Me being the actual artist, and Saul being the narrative side. We thought this would be a good idea and believe that the audience would be able to understand this.
2) How effective is the combination of your Main Product and Ancillary texts?
I believe the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are effective. We used stills from the music video to create both the digipack and magazine advert. We took a still shot in Final Cut Express of the artist (me) and is the main focus on both the texts. For the digipack, the front cover is a big image of me standing infront of a Graffiti wall. Again, this is another way how we sold the artist. On the back cover, the background was again a graffiti wall and on the foreground we showed:
- What is included in the digipack
- Quotes from newspapers
- Directors and Producers
- Stills from the video, both narrative and artist side
- Record label
- Price.
You can recognize all 3 of these products are all related and similar in at least one way or another. In all 3, there is the urban hip-hop background setting of the graffiti walls. This is a strong combination between them all and i think had worked really well. Another is the colours we have used. For the font on our magazine advert, we used one of the colours on my Adidas t-shirt to show how we colour co-ordinated it.
3) What have you learned from audience feedback?
We did not receive any feedback for our final product. However, we received helpful feedback for our rough cut version. It was given to us by other students in our class. They commented on both the good and bad points and we took these into account and worked on them for our final video. Also, the head of Media department gave us some feedback which we found very effective. She commented on the lack of camera shots and how we let certain clips run for too long without changing them, and also how there wasn't enough close-ups for us to 'sell the artist'. We all agreed this became very boring, and wanted to film a better variety of shots. After receiving this feedback we went away and filmed once again. The footage we captured was good, and there was enough to change to different locations when editing. Our new footage ranged from more close-ups and mid-shots, to long-shots and some more narrative footage. We were very happy with our new footage, and decided to make the shots the main part of our video to replace the old ones. The majority of it was me lip-syncing from a few different angles, and throughout the whole video, it keeps coming back to these shots. Also, we filmed in some new locations. Saul recommended the skate ramp in Arbury as it suits the hip-hop genre. This also features quite a bit in our video.
Another criticism we received was on how the lip-syncing wasn't up to scratch. On our Final Cut version, it wasn't too bad, but on the version the rest of the class saw, it had been compressed and the quality had been decreased. We believed this was the main reason for this, but we went back all through the video and improved it all.
To help us with our Ancillary texts, we created a questionnaire to ask to the rest of our class. This included questions we needed to know the answer to, to help us design them. An example of one of the questions used is: "On the front cover of the Digipack, would you expect to see the Artist?" We found out that the people we asked would expect to see the Artist, as he is a solo artist and the main focus.
I believe the feedback we received was very helpful, and if nobody was to criticize our video, then it would be no where near as good. As a group, we are all more than happy with our final result. We all think it looks professional and mature.
4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In the research and planning stages of our media product, we mostly used the blog and the internet. This was a good way to put down ideas and plan ahead about what to do, as it is secure on the blog and uploads above all our other posts. This meant the information we posted was there for us to look back on easily and would not get lost, as opposed to hand writing it.
Our main computer software we used was Final Cut Express, alongside Adobe Photoshop. We used Final Cut to put together and edit the captured footage. We learnt many new advanced techniques to make what we edited look more professional and believe we did an excellent job in doing so. In my opinion, one of the best clips in the video is when Saul is standing by the roadside and traffic is speeding by. We had planned this before hand and knew exactly how we were going to do it. Saul just had to stand perfectly still on the spot whilst we filmed, and the cars drove past behind him. When editing it, all we had to do was speed up the clip to the appropriate speed. This took a few times as we wanted to get the perfect speed. Another idea we came up with was Saul laying down with Clara, and then Clara fading away. Again, we had planned this before hand and knew exactly how we were going to do it. We needed to film 2 shots, one with Saul laying with Clara, and the other with Saul in the exact same position but without Clara. All we needed to do is fade the second clip into the first whilst that fades out. We had problems doing this, so we had a little help from one of the Media technicians who quickly gave us advice in which we then corrected it.
We used Photoshop to create our Ancillary texts, the Digipack and the Magazine advert. All of us felt that our skills on Final Cut were much stronger than on Photoshop, so didn't really know where to start. We completed our Digipack first as we came up with more ideas for it. We used our feedback from our questionnaire and used a still shot of me being the main focus from our music video, and put it as the background. We did this for both the texts, but used a different picture.
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Evaluation (Saul)
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video follows the genre of Hip Hop. We have successfully worked with and around the conventions of a real Hip Hop product. In a typical Hip Hop music video you would expect them to be set in an urban setting. We met this convention well by using the more urban looking areas of Cambridge. We used a Graffiti wall and a skate ramp for parts in our video. Another convention is 'selling the artist' this is also a Goodwin point. Our Kanye is Hakan and in the video we sell him very well as an artist by dressing him in expensive but urban looking clothing and jewellery. However the song 'Apologise' by Kanye West isn't a typical Hip Hop song. Instead of boasting about himself Kanye talks negatively about himself. In doing so, Kanye is sold as he comes across as honest.
Throughout the making of our video we had a strong influence from a music video by Eminem. The song is called 'love the way you lie' and in the song there are 2 Eminems. There is the Eminem, in the present, singing about his story(narrator) There is also the Eminem acting out the story, in the past(narrative) This worked really well in our video and meant we could show our artist a lot without the video getting too boring for the audience.
In a typical hip hop video specific editing techniques like jump shoots are used. Moving shoots (pans, dolly shots etc) are also commonly used in typical Hip Hop videos. Because our song isn't typical to the hip hop genre and is much more mellow we have decided to change this convention. We have used the jump shoots regularly in our video but we, rarely, use moving shoots. This worked well to keep the video mellow.
One of the 'Goodwin' points is 'visual and lyrics'. In most music videos, not just hip hop videos, the lyrics match the lyrics. We decided to follow this common convention in our video. We only match the visual and lyrics when the video is in the narrative(the past). This is because the Narrator (Kanye West) is talking about what happened in the past. We match the visuals and lyrics a number of times throughout the video. An example of this is when the song mentions weed we show Kanye and his girlfriend smoking.
When filming our video we used mainly natural lighting. We used natural lighting when outside to keep the setting purely urban. When indoors, in the bedroom, we used a couple of lamps to create strong contrasting shadows and to create a focus on what is important. This worked well and meant the audiences eyes didn't wander. Nowadays Hip Hop videos are filmed in top class studios with top class lighting and equipment. Not only did we not have the funding to film in such top class studios but we thought it would be more fitting, to the song to keep it really urban.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?
For our ancillary task we created 2 things. We created a 'Digipak' and an advert for a Magazine. Both of which were completed to a high standard. The combination between the 'Digipak' the Advert and the video is superb. We very successfully managed to create 3 products which would stand out from a crowd and also be recognisable as 3 products of the same thing.
We managed this through a number of ways. One of the things that helped us create a good combination was the colouring. We used the colours from Kanye's(Narrator) clothes to match the colour of the writing. This created a well colour coordinated set of products. The yellow is the main focus of the Magazine advert and comes from the Adidas logo on Kanye's t-shirt. For the 'Digipak' we used black as our focus colour. Kanye is wearing a black jacket and jeans. The font is in black and so is the spine of the Digipak.
The main thing that creates the strong combination between the three products is the setting. The video is set with urban backgrounds. With this in mind we decided to take the most typical urban images from our video. We then made them in to still shots and create backdrops for our 'Digipak' and advert. The typical backdrops we chose were the ones with graffiti. This worked really well and kept the products matched.
The final thing we did to make our products similar and combined is to have our artist on the front of each product. Kanye is pictured in front of the graffiti background and is the focus of each product. Not only does this sell the artist but it helps the audiences to know that the products are the same thing. Kanye is wearing the same expensive costume in all 3 products. This helps to let the audience know its the same song and video.
Our music video has the age rating of 15(due to the drug references and swearing). With this sort of rating we have a lot of freedom to put what we want on our product. However if we want our product to be successful on the high street we would need it to be store friendly. This is because there will be people younger than 15 walking around music shops etc. To avoid losing high street popularity and losing a mature and cool image we made sure our products kept cool and urban but also colourful and understandable for younger customers.
What have you learned from audience feedback?
Because of technically difficulties we were unable to get feedback on our final draft. We did get feedback on our 1st draft though. We got this feedback from a number of different people. Our Media teacher, the head of Media and all the students in our group. This range of feedback was very valuable to us in reaching our finished product.
The main problem we found was the lack of variety in shots. There was also a problem with how long these shots went on. After this feedback we quickly decided to go on another shoot. This shoot was much more efficient as we knew exactly what it was we needed to film. We filmed a variety of different shots from different angles and shot types. We also found new settings like the skate ramp and park which now features a lot in our video. This made a big difference and meant we were able to have jump shots from place to place.
Another thing that came up regularly in our feedback was the fact that the lip syncing in our video wasn't completely crisp. The main reason for this is because the video people watched was a compressed quality version. This meant that the video was very blurry and you couldn't clearly see the mouth of the singer. The 'Final Cut' version of the video is very different and there is not much that needs sorting out. Never the less there was still room for improvement and we spent over an hour perfecting this. Now when watching the video there is no point where it isn't matched.
Whilst in the process of making our music video we also came up with a questionnaire for other students to answer. The questionnaire consisted of questions that we wanted answers to. We did this because, even though our feedback was valuable, we needed answers to certain questions like, Would you expect to see the location on the front of a 'Digipak or Advert? From this we found out that consumers would like to see this but would prefer the artist to be the focus. We managed to fulfil this by having our setting in the background behind our artist on all our products. We also found out other bits of information like the types of fonts they resemble with Hip Hop culture.
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We only used a few different types of software for all of our products. These are Final Cut and Photoshop. We also used other technologies like the blogger to plan, evaluate and research from start to finish.
Final Cut was the main piece of software we used in creating our music video. We used it to edit the footage that we captured. We also used it to add effects and match the lip syncing. The most interesting and technical effect we created and used was a person fade out. We got the idea from a music video by Ne-yo an American pop artist. At the end of Ne-yo's video the woman he is about to kiss disappears. We did the same thing with Kanye's girlfriend disappearing from the bed room. We got some help from a media technician as to the basic technical points and then carried out the procedure to create a really nice effect. Lip syncing became a very tedious job in our video due to the fact we were jumping from set to set, meaning a lot of shots had to be matched. We learnt a lot of handy time saving techniques like marking the selection and filming the whole song(meaning you only need to sync once) then chopping up the clip. I believe we used Final Cut to our full advantage and we learnt a lot from it.
Photoshop was the second piece of software we used to create our magazine advert and 'Digipak'. For our magazine advert we gained our first ideas from a magazine called 'Hip-Hop'. The magazine created a very technical format of its image and title. It managed to slot the title between the artist in the image and the background in the image. This is a very effective technique and we decided to use it. Using the image slice tool we created 2 layers of the original photo. The 1st layer is the background without the artist, this layer is 'sent to the back'. The 2nd layer is the cut out of the artist which we 'sent to the front'. We then put the name of our artist 'KANYE WEST in between the 2 layers. This technique is simple but effective. We didn't use this technique for the 'Digipak'. Instead we created a dvd('Digipak') case with well placed info an images. We used creactive fonts with attracting colours to make this product of a high standard.
Monday, 6 December 2010
answer to evaluations Questions
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our music video uses conventions of real music videos. Our genre is hip hop so we have followed typical conventions used by hip hop and rap artists, for example the main focus is on the artist. The video goes between narrative and the setting. The idea of doing it like this was inspired a lot by Eminem and Rihanna's music video, 'love the way you lie'. In this video it is flicking between Eminem and a couple acting out what the song is about. This is also the main idea behind our music video, as we thought it is an effective way of selling the artist but without making the video boring.
We also used a conventional setting, this being urban settings. For example, places with graffiti in the back ground and parks. As we were in Cambridge we could not do it to the extent we would have liked to as Cambridge is limited with places like this. This setting is conventional as artists of the same style and genre use similar settings for their music videos. For example Rip Shop, 'A better day', also uses this style.
We also have Saul, the actor, wearing jewellery. In hip hop videos it is very conventional for people in the video to be wearing it. To make it more conventional we could have had Hakan, the rapper, wearing jewellery. Instead we had him in a flat peak, which is also conventional in music videos from our genre. It is often seen by the real artist of our song, Kanye West.
Our editing shows lots of conventions. We have used fast paced editing and the shots change to the beat of the music. We also used lots of the same shot but from different angles which is also a convention. It is done to make the videos more visually interesting. These editing techniques are used a lot in Eminem's video which was our main inspiration.
It is very conventional to have the visuals and lyrics matching. We used this a lot when we were showing the narrative side to the video. All of these shots are following what Kanye is singing about. For example, when he talks about a phone conversation, the audience see Saul on the phone.
In hip hop music videos there are usually more moving shots than still ones. We did try to add these in but due to the places we went to film, the ground was not smooth enough to make this work without the camera work looking bad. This is something we could have done to follow conventions more.
We also could have used Voyeurism in our video. This is something used by artists in music videos throughout many genres. Our original plan was to use voyeurism in the bedroom scenes, but in our final video these shots didn't work well. I think that although our song is from the hip hop genre, it is quite slow so it wasn't easy to get voyeuristic shots in the film.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
I think the combination of our music video and ancillary task is very effective. There is a clear link between the video, magazine advert and digi pack cover. This is partly because the images used are stills taken from the video, so there is a running theme throughout. The colours used are also all matched with the main image used so they all have the same colour theme throughout.
We have also used similar lettering on the title, 'Kanye West, Apologise' on both ancillary tasks. This is, having them in big bold lettering, with one letter on each word in a different colour from the rest of the word. For example on our DVD cover we have 'Kanye' in black with a white Y, and we have 'West' in white with a black S. We all thought that this looks more eye catching, and having such a colourful background meant that it was hard to find a colour that showed up throughout the whole of the title. For example on our magazine advert we used the yellow used on Hakan’s t shirt but it did not all show up so having one letter in black meant we could still use it.
In the hip hop genre a convention that is used very often is selling the artist as in this genre the videos are mainly focused on the artists. In all three of these tasks our main aim is selling the artist. This means that we have made the artist appears lots in the video and he is also the main image on both the magazine advert and on the digi pack cover. This will make the artist more recognisable as all of his products feature him a lot. This is something that is always important for somebody to be famous and to sell the music they create well, which is what being in the music industry is all about.
We do not use voyeurism at all and although this is a convention of hip hop, in our video we do not use it, so it wouldn't be appropriate to start in the ancillary task. This means that none of our products use voyeurism.
Our ancillary tasks use lots of basic conventions, for example the digi pack cover and magazine advert both have quotes. We used quotes from newspapers and also ‘hip hop magazine’. Using a quote from this magazine will make the music more popular as people that listen to the hip hop genre will respect the opinion of this magazine. Our digi pack cover has special features and a star rating as well as quotes. These are both used a lot in digi pack covers and magazine adverts, making our ancillary task look very professional. It will also make the digi pack sell better as there is more to it than what can be watched just on the internet.
3. What have you learned from audience feedback?
We do not have audience feedback for our final product, however, after our first draft of a music video we had lots of feedback. This feedback was from a range of people, we had it from all of our class, our teacher and the head of media. As we had similar feedback and ideas from this range of people it clear what needed to be changed.
We realised that we needed to shoot more footage as it was clear our shots were all too long and got boring for the audience to watch. So, from our first draft to final version there is a noticeably bigger range of shots and locations. When choosing these locations we went back to our story board and looked at ideas we had wanted to do but hadn't had time to film. For example we had planned to have some shots in a park, so we used this idea and shot lots of footage at the skate ramp in Arbury. We also used shots that we hadn't previously planned, such as the shot of the trees. Although this shot is slightly random in our video it added more of a variety for the audience.
We were told that we needed to perfect our lip syncing when Hakan is rapping. We think having it completely in time is a very important factor in a music video so we looked at the video very carefully to make sure it was perfected. However, this was mostly correct and the reason the audience thought it was out of time was because of the quick time conversion. However when we had made minor adjustments and improved the lip syncing there was an improvement, which is obvious when the video is watched in high quality.
We also learnt how we could improve our video from the positive feedback given. This was because we needed to add more clips to make the video go to the end of the song. With the positive feedback we knew what the audience liked to see, so we added more of this when finishing the video, for example they liked that the video switched between rapping and narrative. We tried to make sure that this continued throughout the song but the first half of our song does have more of the narrative than the second. They also liked the urban settings we were using, so when shooting more footage we made sure we used similar settings.
We have had audience feedback through a questionnaire we created. This involved seven questions and one person from each group in our class gave us answers. From this, we can see that what we have created will appeal a lot to people of our age. This is because the answers they have given nearly all follow what we have done. This involves mostly what they, as an audience would expect to see. The answers given were all very similar on each question so this meant that we were sure this is what our age group would like to see. We would have liked to have a bit more of a variety of people answering our questionnaire so we could make sure we appealed to the whole target audience and not just our age group that go to our college.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
When researching to make our music video we were mainly using the internet and our blog. This was very helpful as there is so much information on the internet about music videos. This was useful to us as we could make sure that our music video fitted the genre well and looked as professional as possible. Using the blog meant that we could record everything we found so we could go back and used it during the planning of the video.
When constructing our music video the main media technology that we used was final cut. We put all of the footage we filmed into final cut and selected the parts of what we filmed that we would use. We had to select carefully and make sure that we kept all of the footage that we wanted to use. After we had selected all of these we started the editing. Whilst editing we learnt lots of new techniques to make our video more visually interesting. For example, the clip where Saul is standing next to the road and the traffic is speeding past him. At first we just had all the cars sped up going forward but then we realised we could reverse the clip. So, this clip is switching from the cars going forwards and backwards which will interest the viewer and make people want to watch our video. Another effect we put in was to have Clara disappearing at the end, this is something that at the start of the construction not all of us would have been able to do. During the making of our video we all got a lot more confident using this software.
We also used photo shop when constructing our video. We made a digi pack cover and a magazine advert using this software. None of our group was very confident when using photo shop but by the end we had two good products. We did digi pack cover first so this is quite simple but I think it is still effective and does its purpose. In our magazine advert we used more techniques as we were feeling more confident as we had already made the cover. One effect we did was to make it look 3D by having Hakan’s head in front of the title. This makes it more eye catching and so it sells the artist and the video well. Using photo shop to construct these two tasks was a good piece of software to use as there are many different effects that can be put in. The text used was also one that is created effectively by photoshop.
Our music video uses conventions of real music videos. Our genre is hip hop so we have followed typical conventions used by hip hop and rap artists, for example the main focus is on the artist. The video goes between narrative and the setting. The idea of doing it like this was inspired a lot by Eminem and Rihanna's music video, 'love the way you lie'. In this video it is flicking between Eminem and a couple acting out what the song is about. This is also the main idea behind our music video, as we thought it is an effective way of selling the artist but without making the video boring.
We also used a conventional setting, this being urban settings. For example, places with graffiti in the back ground and parks. As we were in Cambridge we could not do it to the extent we would have liked to as Cambridge is limited with places like this. This setting is conventional as artists of the same style and genre use similar settings for their music videos. For example Rip Shop, 'A better day', also uses this style.
We also have Saul, the actor, wearing jewellery. In hip hop videos it is very conventional for people in the video to be wearing it. To make it more conventional we could have had Hakan, the rapper, wearing jewellery. Instead we had him in a flat peak, which is also conventional in music videos from our genre. It is often seen by the real artist of our song, Kanye West.
Our editing shows lots of conventions. We have used fast paced editing and the shots change to the beat of the music. We also used lots of the same shot but from different angles which is also a convention. It is done to make the videos more visually interesting. These editing techniques are used a lot in Eminem's video which was our main inspiration.
It is very conventional to have the visuals and lyrics matching. We used this a lot when we were showing the narrative side to the video. All of these shots are following what Kanye is singing about. For example, when he talks about a phone conversation, the audience see Saul on the phone.
In hip hop music videos there are usually more moving shots than still ones. We did try to add these in but due to the places we went to film, the ground was not smooth enough to make this work without the camera work looking bad. This is something we could have done to follow conventions more.
We also could have used Voyeurism in our video. This is something used by artists in music videos throughout many genres. Our original plan was to use voyeurism in the bedroom scenes, but in our final video these shots didn't work well. I think that although our song is from the hip hop genre, it is quite slow so it wasn't easy to get voyeuristic shots in the film.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
I think the combination of our music video and ancillary task is very effective. There is a clear link between the video, magazine advert and digi pack cover. This is partly because the images used are stills taken from the video, so there is a running theme throughout. The colours used are also all matched with the main image used so they all have the same colour theme throughout.
We have also used similar lettering on the title, 'Kanye West, Apologise' on both ancillary tasks. This is, having them in big bold lettering, with one letter on each word in a different colour from the rest of the word. For example on our DVD cover we have 'Kanye' in black with a white Y, and we have 'West' in white with a black S. We all thought that this looks more eye catching, and having such a colourful background meant that it was hard to find a colour that showed up throughout the whole of the title. For example on our magazine advert we used the yellow used on Hakan’s t shirt but it did not all show up so having one letter in black meant we could still use it.
In the hip hop genre a convention that is used very often is selling the artist as in this genre the videos are mainly focused on the artists. In all three of these tasks our main aim is selling the artist. This means that we have made the artist appears lots in the video and he is also the main image on both the magazine advert and on the digi pack cover. This will make the artist more recognisable as all of his products feature him a lot. This is something that is always important for somebody to be famous and to sell the music they create well, which is what being in the music industry is all about.
We do not use voyeurism at all and although this is a convention of hip hop, in our video we do not use it, so it wouldn't be appropriate to start in the ancillary task. This means that none of our products use voyeurism.
Our ancillary tasks use lots of basic conventions, for example the digi pack cover and magazine advert both have quotes. We used quotes from newspapers and also ‘hip hop magazine’. Using a quote from this magazine will make the music more popular as people that listen to the hip hop genre will respect the opinion of this magazine. Our digi pack cover has special features and a star rating as well as quotes. These are both used a lot in digi pack covers and magazine adverts, making our ancillary task look very professional. It will also make the digi pack sell better as there is more to it than what can be watched just on the internet.
3. What have you learned from audience feedback?
We do not have audience feedback for our final product, however, after our first draft of a music video we had lots of feedback. This feedback was from a range of people, we had it from all of our class, our teacher and the head of media. As we had similar feedback and ideas from this range of people it clear what needed to be changed.
We realised that we needed to shoot more footage as it was clear our shots were all too long and got boring for the audience to watch. So, from our first draft to final version there is a noticeably bigger range of shots and locations. When choosing these locations we went back to our story board and looked at ideas we had wanted to do but hadn't had time to film. For example we had planned to have some shots in a park, so we used this idea and shot lots of footage at the skate ramp in Arbury. We also used shots that we hadn't previously planned, such as the shot of the trees. Although this shot is slightly random in our video it added more of a variety for the audience.
We were told that we needed to perfect our lip syncing when Hakan is rapping. We think having it completely in time is a very important factor in a music video so we looked at the video very carefully to make sure it was perfected. However, this was mostly correct and the reason the audience thought it was out of time was because of the quick time conversion. However when we had made minor adjustments and improved the lip syncing there was an improvement, which is obvious when the video is watched in high quality.
We also learnt how we could improve our video from the positive feedback given. This was because we needed to add more clips to make the video go to the end of the song. With the positive feedback we knew what the audience liked to see, so we added more of this when finishing the video, for example they liked that the video switched between rapping and narrative. We tried to make sure that this continued throughout the song but the first half of our song does have more of the narrative than the second. They also liked the urban settings we were using, so when shooting more footage we made sure we used similar settings.
We have had audience feedback through a questionnaire we created. This involved seven questions and one person from each group in our class gave us answers. From this, we can see that what we have created will appeal a lot to people of our age. This is because the answers they have given nearly all follow what we have done. This involves mostly what they, as an audience would expect to see. The answers given were all very similar on each question so this meant that we were sure this is what our age group would like to see. We would have liked to have a bit more of a variety of people answering our questionnaire so we could make sure we appealed to the whole target audience and not just our age group that go to our college.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
When researching to make our music video we were mainly using the internet and our blog. This was very helpful as there is so much information on the internet about music videos. This was useful to us as we could make sure that our music video fitted the genre well and looked as professional as possible. Using the blog meant that we could record everything we found so we could go back and used it during the planning of the video.
When constructing our music video the main media technology that we used was final cut. We put all of the footage we filmed into final cut and selected the parts of what we filmed that we would use. We had to select carefully and make sure that we kept all of the footage that we wanted to use. After we had selected all of these we started the editing. Whilst editing we learnt lots of new techniques to make our video more visually interesting. For example, the clip where Saul is standing next to the road and the traffic is speeding past him. At first we just had all the cars sped up going forward but then we realised we could reverse the clip. So, this clip is switching from the cars going forwards and backwards which will interest the viewer and make people want to watch our video. Another effect we put in was to have Clara disappearing at the end, this is something that at the start of the construction not all of us would have been able to do. During the making of our video we all got a lot more confident using this software.
We also used photo shop when constructing our video. We made a digi pack cover and a magazine advert using this software. None of our group was very confident when using photo shop but by the end we had two good products. We did digi pack cover first so this is quite simple but I think it is still effective and does its purpose. In our magazine advert we used more techniques as we were feeling more confident as we had already made the cover. One effect we did was to make it look 3D by having Hakan’s head in front of the title. This makes it more eye catching and so it sells the artist and the video well. Using photo shop to construct these two tasks was a good piece of software to use as there are many different effects that can be put in. The text used was also one that is created effectively by photoshop.
When evaluating our video the main media technology we used was also final cut. We made a commentary to go with our video. We filmed ourselves evaluating our video and used clips from our video to give examples. As we had used it so much in the construction stage we were able to create a good commentary. We have managed to use a variety of ways to give the examples, for example having the pictures of the ancillary tasks over our voices.
Friday, 3 December 2010
Our music video uses many conventions of real music videos. Our genre is hip hop so we followed the typical conventions used by hip hop artists. We got our first inspiration from watching a music video by Eminem and Rhianna. The video is called 'Love the way you lie' and in the video there are two Eminems, the narrative and the artists singing. We used this same idea for our music video and had Hakan singing as Kanye West and Saul following the narration of Kanyes' song. Another convention used in our video is one of the Goodwins points, 'selling the artist'. Our Kanye is sold by the fact he is wearing expensive clothing like the 'New Era' flat peak. He is also wearing jewelery which makes him look rich. However the song is a negative song about Kanye so the artist is not portrayed as a good person but portrayed as honest. In a typical hip hop video jump shots and fast camera movements are used to create an exciting atmosphere, however our song isn't a typical hip hop tune and is very mellow. Taking this into account we decided to use the jump shots but without the camera movement. To make it more conventional we could use moving shots. We also used different shot types but of the same image which is a commonly used technique. To create the hip hop feel in our music video we used typical urban backgrounds. One problem we found was finding a good setting in Cambridge. We managed to find a few graffiti walls and urban looking areas(skate ramp) to create this setting. We ended up using the graffiti backgrounds for our advert and Digipack. We used the Goodwin convention, 'Visual-Lyrics' when the song referenced to certain things, like "smoking weed", we used a fake spliff to match this.
We created a digipack and a magazine advert for our ancillary task. We, very succsefully, created an ancillary task that matched our video.
We created a digipack and a magazine advert for our ancillary task. We, very succsefully, created an ancillary task that matched our video.
Questions 2 + 4
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I think the combination of both our main productand ancillary texts I feel are very effective. Both of our ancillary texts include stills taken from our music video, which is important so the audience know what to expect from the video before buying it. We all agreed that we successfully created a product that matched the style of our video. The colours used in the Ancillary texts are all matched with the main image used, so they all have the same running theme.
In all three of these our main aim is to sell the artist. The artist appears lots in the video and he is the main image on both the magazine advert and digipack cover.
We do not use voyuerism in any of these, although this is a convention of hip-hop. We chose not to use it in our video or digipack as we didnt find it appropriate in our narrative.
4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
FinalCut - We used Final Cut Express in our editing stage. We learnt new techniques to give our video the edge, and all feel alot more confident with the software. For example,
I think the combination of both our main productand ancillary texts I feel are very effective. Both of our ancillary texts include stills taken from our music video, which is important so the audience know what to expect from the video before buying it. We all agreed that we successfully created a product that matched the style of our video. The colours used in the Ancillary texts are all matched with the main image used, so they all have the same running theme.
In all three of these our main aim is to sell the artist. The artist appears lots in the video and he is the main image on both the magazine advert and digipack cover.
We do not use voyuerism in any of these, although this is a convention of hip-hop. We chose not to use it in our video or digipack as we didnt find it appropriate in our narrative.
4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
FinalCut - We used Final Cut Express in our editing stage. We learnt new techniques to give our video the edge, and all feel alot more confident with the software. For example,
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