Evaluation

Filming

In one of the scene the artist himself raps to the camera an looks away and he is facing towards a visual of canary wharf which is a classy, rich place. The reason being is because that it shows the artist looking towards success and chasing his dreams.

Towards the end of the clip as the artists walk, there are lights on the trees and if you look carefully they look like angel wings which represent a spiritual message/meaning . It also symbioses life/death and straight after that is a time lapse of clouds moving and this represents how their journey continues.

The opening of the film has white/red particles. The colours itself represent good/bad. Also how danger can be avoided if you believe in yourself and walk away form them bad situations.

Child:

I decided to focus on one kid as having many as this creates a more emotional image to the audience.

Editing

The editing overall contained soft gentle dissolves as the lyrics of the song was not harsh or fast.

Time lapse

The time lapse used below was shot during summer by me as early preparation for the music video. The time lapse was significant to use in this video as it matches with the lyrics about moving on in life as there is a scene of the boats passing by.

Child Abuse/ Life

The meaning behind my track is related to child abuse and never to back down and fear anyone who stands in your way into accomplishing something. This world is very competitive and life is getting harder every second.
I did a lot of research into child abuse, read lots of articles which were published and had a dramatic/emotional effect on the audience. Below are some of the articles i looked at.

Cops: 'Woman Tries to Kill Children, Self to Avoid 'the Tribulation'

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-palmdale-woman-attempted-murder,0,3939586.story

'Longo strangled his wife and baby in a Newport hotel,

stuffed them into suitcases and sank them'

http://www.katu.com/news/local/118218959.html

Look at these headlines. Doesn't this affect you or at least make you think how horrible this world is actually is? People are mentally ill and sick minded of what they do to their own child, their own blood. Why????? :(

As I am a teenager, the typical stereotype would be violence, gangsters, troubles etc.. Mostly negative. However with me I am trying to show the positive side. There is nothing wrong to prove your side. So in conclusion I decided to preach out a valuable message so the audience can think twice and be aware of their actions before they hurt their child and that is 'Everybody's Child is Born With A Gift, Regardless how smart or dumb he is!!!
This is something which more and more artists are doing, relating the lyrics of their tracks to real life issues. Such as Eminem- Stan, Pink- Perfect picture, and Akon- Africa, all songs where the lyrics tackle serious real life issues. Also charity videos, big artists come together to make the world aware of seruous issues.

Finished Product

Unfortunately I was unable to post up my video due to high definition playback. However I tried converting the video and compressing it to a smaller size. Even though it did not upload because the clips were recorded using a HD camera and it will remain like that. However below I will print screen some shots, images of what I have done and improved of the final music video :D

Particle Effect:

This is a clip from the time lapse of cars passing by at night. To make it more effective I decided to create an effect where i learnt it from youtube. I took this clip and inserted it into Sony Vegas which I have at home. Sony Vegas is a powerful video editing software and I tend to use it more often that imovie. Any way next what I done was place and effect over the clip which was known as particles. What this does is obviously makes the image/clip look like flowing particles or still particles. I done this effect over the time lapse of cars and it looked very cool.

This clip below is the moon slowly moving. This was a very hard attempt to get. It was late night and we were very tired but however we were still motivated to get a shot of the moon as it looked beautiful. We recorded it for 2 hours moving from one spot to another. It was hard but worth the effort. Moon has light and bright light represents birth, life or a positive change and thats why I wanted to use it for the video.

Below is a picture of the city showing trains, air planes and building lights flashing. I could not upload the clip due to high resolution problems and it kept on failing during playback if posted on blog. Sorry! This clip in my opinion shows how life is moving fast. As it is a time lapse it shows how everything is moving really fast and life at the moment feels like that.

As one of the audience feedbacks were to have a variety and range of shots. So I took this into consideration and decided to do more creative shots. In addition i used the usual close up, medium and a high, low angle shot. All music videos have a variety of shots and the length of one shot is maximum 5 seconds. I did not want one shot to be 15 seconds as my roughtcut was. On the day of the recording we were playing about with the camera and finding out how to do better creative shots, There is a part where the camera is seat as a high angle shot and it follows the movement of the rapper. This was unique as it looked cool to do.

As you can see there a variety of shots know. Another feedback I got from the audience was to get shots of areas postcode. I did not agree to this idea as my music is not about crime or areas and violence between teenagers. Its more about child abuse and life with in children who get treated like that. Instead I got clips of Zac crying which is more effective and it will draw the audiences attention and make them think and that's what I want.

Storyboard

These are my storybaords to my music video. Heres the link to watch it with the track.

http://sp4rky987.blogspot.com/2010/12/storyboard.html

Evaluation

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

The genre I chose was r&b/rap. The reason I chose that genre was that I write music myself and it falls under them genres. As this year filming was about music videos I though this was the perfect opportunity to create a video with some of my own music. I looked at mainstream artists as well as non mainstream artists. I looked a t devlin luke fiasco sway. The non mainstream artists I chose were particularly Asian. The reason being is that I want to break the typical stereotype of an R&B song which is normally black people. I want to tap this new wave of artists and show that there is a gap in the market for my artist and songs. The style of the song is calm inspirational and centered on choices you make in life. The lyrics are about keep on moving and never back down. It’s about motivation and persistence in life.

I looked at mature artists not kids as I wanted a serious tone to my music video. Although I am young I wanted to use the conventions of older artists as I did not want to be labeled as young aggressive yobbish rapper.

A real inspiration in recent music video will be p diddys coming home. This song is about self discovery and finding the right path in life. He mentions his kids and how he is a role model to them which is something I done through my lyrics of showing how kids are precious and valuable. Every child is born with a gift.

The ideas I took was a time lapse of London city to represent time passing by and the idea of life passing by. An example of a music video would be an Asian artist who goes by the name of arjun – remember tonight. He has many cuts and scenes of time lapse of London city. Since year 12 I knew that we were going to do music videos the following year so I decided to do preparation early. I went out during summer and took shots and time lapse of London city. The locations where mainly city wise to represent wealth/highlife/ aspiration, doing well and success. I also shot a scene on top of a building. A video that done shooting on top a building similar is n dubz – so alive. Rapping to camera shows the construction of an artist star and it shows confidence as I have done this. The choices of a costume were a mixture. Of street look and smart. The street look was to relate to audience of working class/lower class street kids who have aspiration in life to do better. The sophisticated successful look was to show success and meet the glamorous lifestyle that they inspire to.

The ideas I chose was to have a narrative lyrically – subliminal messages. I wanted to focus more on the lyrics instead of the visuals. There are shots of lighting where it is red and white. Red to represent bad and white to represent good. There are paths where it symbolizes choices in life. Towards the end of the clip there are lights on trees and if you look carefully they look like angel wings which represent a spiritual message and the clouds after it.

I wanted some intertexuality with child in line pictures, sad children. Although this isn’t featured in many rap videos I thought it would be unique and maybe gain a few more fans for showing a more serious and sensitive side. I found a few videos which address family issues and used children in their videos such as pink and cello green

The ancillary tasks – the main achievement is too be focused on the artist directly. The artist itself is looking away from camera and looking down. This shows that he is thinking and it all adds up to creating an intelli9gent and thoughtful artist. This look also determines the track as being meaningful.

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

The shattered glass effect on the pictures relates to overcoming problems anger/ aggression and breaking free of anything you’re trapped in. The image of the artist – the clothes he wore was the clothes he wore in the video as well as I wanted to reflect the same image. I decided to stick with the sophisticated look for the ancillary tasks as I wanted the promotional image to be higher. I wanted to promote success and this is the image I want to give to the audience. In my magazine advert there is a smaller image of the actual cd album so that it could be recognized from that advert.

3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback played an important role in the making of my video and ancillary tasks as it has been an influence from the beginning.

The ideas from the audience feedback were to have more shots that symbolize life. I took this into consideration and decided to match the visuals with the lyrics. Goodwin’s theory. The initial footage feedback I got was positive but I need to fix it up. People said that it was good but they shared their ideas into making the video more powerful and better. I got the feedback from class and social network sites such as YouTube and Facebook.

There where a lot of changes occurred to the new music video. The changes I made were I had more cutaways and variety of shots as it was one of the suggestions made from my audience feedback. Another thing was that the costume change. This wasn’t brought up by the audience but I decided to take it on board as I wanted a sophisticated look. I inserted cutaways of zak the little kid crying to add meaning and emotion. The time-lapse was from before as I shot it in the summer the year before.

There was a suggestion that one of the audience feedback gave was to have shots of different areas/ postcodes. The reason being I did not take this on board was that one its time consuming and the lack of time I had I wouldn’t make it. Second was that I didn’t really like the idea as it did not match with my lyrics. My lyrics were about children and I wanted cutaways of kids instead to show emotion.

However all the changes helped me a lot to attract the right target audience as it made me realize how many amendments of little things are needed to get the exact look needed for a target audience?

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

For planning and research the use of technology was vital. As I was using my own track I spent a lot of time using music software at home making the track and perfecting it. This was really time consuming but I was set on using my own music.

To help me decided on the style and look of my video I did a great deal of research. I’ve never watched so many music videos before. The internet was vital for this a sit allowed me to search for any artist and listen and watch their video on YouTube.

During research stages I also used the internet to share my ideas and gain feedback on my track. I uploaded it to Facebook and was able to get valuable feedback and the assurance that there was an audience for my music. I used Facebook as a forum for discussion around my music which influenced my planning decisions about locations, artist and styling.

I also used blogger a great deal to keep a diary of filming and also to document my progress.

Mobile phones, although a seemingly simple piece of technology were crucial in perfecting the lip syncing. When you filming in a busy area such as canary wharf and you need to hear a track without being intrusive to others our phone came in handy as we used them to play the track on. Obviously the other thing was communicating with each other and arranging shoots which we used the internet- Facebook, email and phones for.

The music software i used to create my music was fruity loops producers’ edition.

The photography was done by the camcorder as it produced HD quality images. However since we were out in the dark we had lighting equipment, portable lighting to help us shoot the music video and take the images. The HD feature helped a lot as it did not loose quality when we shot at the night. Since it has internal storage it was quite flexible to use it as it did not need tapes which can lead to loosing footage etc. However there was a restriction while using it on mac computers as you has to additionally install a driver to recognise the camera in order to access it.

If i had no technology that was present in making my video. The outcome would have been tot tally of what i had originally expected to be. Overall it will not be a video as you will not have the features that you have today and it will be in black and white.

Review Of Footage

Finally the video is finished. I am going to talk about some parts of the video of how i came across to do it to produce the final touches.

Ive been involved in a lot of media projects with my own youth club. Last summer i was involved in a project where i had to go around London city and do various type of shots. The youth club took me around places and i set out the equipment and started filming. The project lasted for a week just for camerawork and the rest was uploading it and putting the final touches. The software i used was sony vegas pro 9.

During the summer I took an early preparation as I started to record some time lapse of London. As I knew I was going to do music video this year, I decided to go out n record some parts of London city from day to night. The reason I chose to do this is because it looks very cool. In addition later on I also decided to use this because since my track is related to life, the time lapse can be symbolic of how life and everything around you goes very fast and this is true!

At first I wasn't really sure if I would use it as it was very time consuming recording a scene for hours especially in the summer. However I told myself let me try it and see how it will look. Turned out that it fitted well with the music video.

Audience Feedback

Today we evaluated each others music videos and gained some audience feedback. This was very helpful to me as my friends and other people shared their ideas of how to improve our video even further and what was wrong with it.




From this some of the main points need to focus on are:

• A range and variety of shots such as more close up shots

• Shots which show the meaning of life and less various shots of tower bridge

• Maybe include shots of different area codes

I had a few ideas myself and my teacher also suggested of having shots which math the lyrics. We are going to have a scene were a child is going to be crying. It will be shown as soon as the lyrics 'I see them mummy's that want to make their kids cry.' This will be really affective as it follows Goodwins theory.

☆ Photo Shoot ☆

Here are some pictures that we took during the cold weather. We chose these particular styles as it matches with our track. Some of the pictures you see are in black and white which represents life as most hip-hop/rap artists tend to do if there track is about it.

The reason being for the picture having the spotlight focused one part rather than the other is to reveal the artist. I chose this idea as you can see in the pictures there are light effects or the light is set at a point where it shows only the artist rather than the background because

1) Light symbolises life, rebirth, positive change

2) Reveal Artist & Colours