Media Evaluation Question 1

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

Researchers Bulmer and Katz suggested that individuals use texts for various different reasons, this theory became known as ‘uses and gratifications’. These many different motives include diversion, personal relationships and personal identity. The genre of piece of media text is also very important in determining how the audience respond to what they see.

I chose to surround my A2 coursework around a band named Marvell, the genre style of the band itself is hip hop. Traditionally, the hip hop audience relate to seeing very dark and urban visuals on screen, however by using bright colours and younger actors, I chose to subvert these conventions and allow the audience to gain an uplifting reaction. This is seen in an establishing shot where colour is first exposed on screen; here a paintbrush is dipped into a glass of water, portrayed through a close up shot of the colour blossoming into the liquid.

Although the title of the song ‘Believe in Me’ suggests a sense of hope and faith within oneself, I approached my video to express the love of a young girl to her father. By showing a special bond between man and child, I (again) challenge the common convention of a love affair between a man and woman. By challenging these conventions it enables the audience to approach the song and video with an open mind, rather than knowing what to expect. Also, by showing a relationship where one person misses another, it allows all age groups and gender’s to relate to the video, this permits me to gain a wider audience as opposed to the 16-28 male primary target.

When a music video is based around a narrative, the general perception is that the storyline is the focal point in the video and that the performance from the artist is secondary. However, in an attempt to balance priority between narrative and performance, my music video contains a storyline in black and white throughout each chorus of the song; during each verse, the artist is shown in colour, performing his music to the camera. Having 3 verses and 4 chorus’, my video became almost perfectly balanced and gave the audience a story from two sides.

Also, within hip hop videos, a narrative is something that is seldom seen, and adding to this, a narrative based around sadness and hurt is seen even less. I challenged these conventions as I felt that the song I had used was a slower version of the general hip hop song. With that being said, slow narratives have been used in this genre in songs such as read all about it by professor green and its my time by scorcher.

Another common convention in music videos is that the artist generally looks at the camera when performing. I didn’t challenge this convention however I developed it by also containing shots where the artist didn’t look at the camera, this gave it the effect that the artist was lost in his lyrics.

Profanity is something often used in hip hop music, I chose to block out profanity in my video as the motion picture was based around a little girl and I believed that having swear words would put the audience off such a sad narrative.

In challenging all these conventions, i chose to keep some aspects of my video exactly how a general hip hop video would be. This is to remind the audience that although this may be a different type of hip hop song, it is still fixated within that genre. Having scenes where artists were performing in graffiti style backdrops and skateparks enabled me to show this.

Preferred reading is something that I focused on a lot in terms of my coursework and was brought to my attention through the reception theory, namely Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model. Here, Hall expresses that the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means.

I adopted this theory of encoding/decoding in my music video when I showed an army officer holding a death certificate, which I revealed through an over the shoulder shot. By showing a death certificate, I didn’t reveal too much information to the audience and therefore respected their intelligence, thus allowing them to put the pieces together.

A happy ending is probably the most common convention in all stories whether it be in the form of a book, film or music video. After much thought, I challenged this convention to add a sense of reality to my video and show that happy endings aren’t always necessary.  

It could be said that by using a cannon 550D to film my music video, I am challenging the common filming convention. However, nowadays, directors are using Digital Single Lens Reflex camera’s much more commonly to shoot music videos as opposed to big heavy camera’s.

In relation to my digipack and poster, I, again subverted conventions. In the general hip hop album cover, people are shown with expensive jewellery and super cars. I, chose to link my album cover to my music video and kept this sense of reality. Therefore I used a child actor looking upset and showed no jewellery, expensive cars or bright colours. Similarly, I kept this theme for my poster however I did add some common conventions such as a picture of the artists and more colour.

Overall, I challenged and subverted a lot of the conventions in the hip hop genre in order to add a sense of seriousness and a slower pace. Nevertheless, a lot of the conventions such as performances and visuals remained the same. 

Media Evaluation Question 2

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

Each production task that I created had significant impact on my overall media project. Not only was I creating a music video for a band, but by designing digipacks and magazine posters, it’s fair to say that I was creating an overall campaign for the release of a fictional album. My intention therefore, in creating my 3 separate production tasks, was to create them in chronological order as to how an actual PR company would release the three products.

After doing my research, and using some initiative, I realised that the first thing a band would do is create their album. Now as I wasn’t actually going to sit there and record 12+ songs for my media project, I started off by designing the album cover. Here, I named the album after the hit song that I would be creating my music video, called believe in me. I did this because by naming the album after the most popular song by that band, audience members far and wide will recognise the title of the track and therefore be more likely to buy the album. In regards to the design itself, I intended on basing my music video on the story of a young child, and I therefore linked that idea to my album cover by taking a photoshoot with a young child model and used an image of him looking upset. This relates to the title ‘believe in me’ which for me, connotates a lonely young person who want’s someone to put their trust and love into them. I also wanted my music video to denote the cracks in a relationship and I therefore applied this on my album cover by creating a cracked effect on my model’s face, showing the irony and metaphorical message. I then added a dark background with dull colours which connote loneliness. As the image of the digipack was so meaningful, I didn’t want to add many more effects and decided to leave it at that after adjusting the colours, hue, and brightness. Lastly, I added the title of the album and the name of the band, with again, cracks through the letters, to expand on the message of a broken relationship.

Secondly, after creating an album, a band would shoot a video for the most popular song on that album and use that as a tool to promote the upcoming CD. I therefore decided to shoot my music video next and keeping to the theme of young actors and this idea of broken relationships, I decided to portray a relationship between a child and her father who is never home. The video expresses how much the young girl misses and loves her father and the crack appears when soldiers come to her house and inform her of the father’s death. With these elements present, the video therefore links directly to the album cover in terms of the message and moral issues. However, in terms of visuals, there are also some differences, for example, the young actor I used for my album cover is different to the one used in my video. Also, in the music video I have footage of the artists themselves performing there verses, whereas the artists can not be seen in the album cover.

This brings me to my third and final task of creating a magazine advert. Here I used elements from both the music video and the album cover. On the topic of the artists, in my digipack, the main focus was on the young child, then in my video, the main focus again was on the child however the artists were introduced. Therefore in my magazine advert, my artists became the main focus taking up the most space in the ad. I did this because the advert will be shown in magazines that are viewed by the bands fanbase, therefore by seeing images of their favourite artists, audience members will automatically be enticed and then continue to view the rest of the ad. The remainder of the advert contains a small copy of the album cover at the bottom, logos to websites and shops where you can purchase the album, relevant names such as title of the album and band name, and lastly, a big quote which is a common convention in adverts, the quote read ‘the most anticipated album of 2012’. This magazine advert relates perfectly with my other two production tasks as the order in which I published each task shows the transformation of the band and the best technique to sell the album itself. To keep the same metaphorical message as the album cover and the video, I added cracks to the font in the magazine advert. By keeping this house style, it becomes a theme that the audience become subtly aware of and begin to realise the link between each product.

Media Evaluation Question 3

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After exporting the first completed edit of my music video, I uploaded it onto the website ‘youtube’ and asked a number of people to view and comment on it in various ways. My Target audience is 16-28 male and females. As this age group is particularly young, I used up to date social networking websites such as facebook, twitter and tumblr to post my video and show both males and females within that age group. I gained feedback by people commenting on the video itself through youtube, also through people messaging me on both facebook and twitter. Online social networks such as facebook and tumblr also have a feature known as the ‘like button’. I used this to my advantage by asking those who thought my music video was a good ‘finished product’ to hit the like button. Surprisingly, I had a good number of people liking my video. However, by gaining a number count of ‘likes’ theres only so much information I can take away from that. Therefore, I read through every comment that people posted on my video and gained knowledge about what things need to be improved.

One aspect that people commented on a lot which needed improvement was the fact that my video contained some extra shots that were not needed. This included footage of birds eating bread, bikers riding on flat surface and people walking down footpaths. Taking these points into consideration, I deleted some irrelevant clips from my video and found that it would flow much better when I did so.

Aside from online interaction, I gained feedback from an older group of people which were my secondary audience. Using research I had gained from the 2011 social networking demographic analysis, I realised that this group of audience is less likely to use social networking to interact and view music videos. I therefore took a much more up front approach and interviewed people face to face on camera, asking for their opinion on my video. Something very noticeable to me was that the older audience generally paid much more attention to the narrative and felt emotionally attached to my character. However IU also gained feedback here regarding extra unnecessary footage, especially when the young girl is painting. I therefore took out some of this footage and let the audience figure out what is being written, thus respecting the audience’s intelligence.

I decided to log the audience feedback I received also, and that allowed me to gain a numeric count of the general comments that came up often. This helped me a lot when analysing my feedback. Taking feedback from both audiences helped me a lot and was very effective in enabling me to create the final product that I wanted.

I also showed both my primary and secondary audience my digipack and album cover’s, this allowed me to see if the connection between all 3 production tasks was clear and whether the 3 products complimented eachother. Here I received very good feedback and audience members noticed little details such as the ‘crack’ in all products.

Media Evaluation Question 4

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

Ever since the first glimpse of music video’s in the early 1960’s, technology and its evolution has played a huge part in the production, visuals and even direction of videos. To begin my research, I used the internet to view different music videos so that I could gain a better understanding of common conventions within music videos as a whole. To do this I used websites such as youtube, vimeo and vevo. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter also helped me as it gave me the opportunity to view which videos were popular at that moment in time and which music genre’s were being most popularly shared through the internet.

When planning, it would have been next to impossible for me to have created my music video without using new media technologies to both organize and plan it. I created a blog online using a website called blogger.com which allows users to create an online web blog, this helped me to put my reminders and updates of what I had recently done into one place. Keeping myself organized using blogger helped me to keep on top of other aspects of planning. I also kept in touch with the band through text messaging and emails, all of which I saved on my blog. Using a mobile phone and electronic mail allowed me to instantly contact my artists and actors in order to plan my shoots. I also used Microsoft powerpoint to plan my earlier idea and create a detailed spec for my actor’s as to what would be required of them. Adding to this, I used a similar program, Microsoft Word, to create a call sheet which explained who I would need on what day and at where I would be filming. I then emailed this sheet to the relevant people after exporting it into a Portable Document Format (PDF). Using a cannon 500D I also took some practice shots and filmed a practice scene inside my house.

I then used both the cannon 550D and 500D to film my actual video, taking advantage of different types of lenses. I also increased the aperture to gain a depth of field, this made the footage visually appealing. These camera’s are known as Digital single-lens reflex camera’s or DSLR and at first glance, may seem like they wouldn’t give good quality video footage, or a professional feel. However, major directors and artists are increasingly using DSLR camera’s for popular music videos, tv and even film. The advantages of using an SLR instead of a big stereo-typical video camera are that it’s smaller so much more portable, the quality in these camera’s are now high definition, and when uploading the footage to your computer, all that has to be done is the memory card has to be inserted into the computer. This contrasts to the endless alternative of loading your footage onto a software which could take hours. I also used a shoulder mount which enabled me to steady the camera as I filmed on location, a shoulder mount has almost the same effect as a tripod, only it still lets you move about where as a tripod remains stationary. Having said that, I did use a tripod for numerous shots where I needed the camera to remain completely still.

In post-production, I used the software ‘Adobe Premiere Pro CS5’ to edit my music video. This included chopping clips, adding transitions and creating effects such as slow motion. I also used ‘Adobe After Effects’ to colour and gradient my music video as the colour connotation was very important to me.

To create my digipack and magazine advert I used ‘Adobe Photoshop CS5’ using various different effects and variables such as motion blur, gradients, noise and brushes. For my digipack and advert I conducted a location photoshoot with my model. I chose to do my photoshoot on location rather than in a studio as I did my previous photoshoot in studio for my magazine and I wanted a much more gritty effect, therefore I chose an urban block of stairs. Using the Cannon 500D, I increased my shutterspeed in order to gain a sharper image. I also used the software ‘Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’ to edit and gradient the images. Lightroom is an addition to Photoshop which focuses more on image colouring for photographers.

Addition to Location Recce

Final Magazine Poster

The 'coming together' of my CD Front Cover

Tour of music video set