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.
