Evaluation

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


Going into the production of my music video, advert and digipak i required several different media technologies. I uesed final cut pro, photoshop, quark express and a JVC video camera.

In order to edit the footage that we shot, we needed to use a Mac computer with the correct software packages. The packages include Final Cut Pro. It needed Final Cut Pro in order for me to edit the video together, cutting clips, putting clips together, adding special effects etc. had to produced a pitch in front of our teachers, as well as a storyboard and animatic for our teachers to and our class to watch.

In order for our music video's lip syncing to be in time, we needed the artist to be able to hear the song while he is lip syncing. The way he was able to hear the song was with a mini portable speaker that plugged into a SanDisk MP3 that had the song stored on it, this process was rather laborious and on hindsight there could have been an easier way. In order for me to have created a digipack and advertisement, I obviously firstly needed a digital still camera. The camera must have been high quality so the two products look professional standards, and be able to store images to a SD memory card.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts, (digipak and advert)?

I feel that throughout the production of my music video and both my digipak and advertisement I have attempted to make clear visual links running through them so that my intended audience can easily identify my artist and genre. I was hoping this would attract my audience and in turn promote my artist. Above to the left is my artist and to the right is a picture from the album cover of the artist who inspired me, Akon. The pictures above both show the artists looking forlorn and upset, the title of my album is Victimised and the name of Akon's is Trouble. Both these have the same sort of message in it.

The running theme that i wanted to create throughout my products were my artist constantly being seen in the orange jump suit. The above advert for Akon's concert and the release of his album show him looking to the side with the words '`Freedom" being in written at the front in bold and in white. As you can see in the adverts the pose is the same and so is the seriousness on their faces.

Evaluation

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

There were several different aspects to my video that inspired me to make the video that i did, artists who sing about real things in particular rap artist made me make a video about contreversial issues. 2pac and NWA sang about these kinds of things and for my video a song by Akon called locked made me want to use the costume that i did.

i wanted to have the same vibe as i did in this video so we got an orange jump suit to help us portray the idea that he was all alone and he was being victimized. We also wanted to enhance this message by making the whole of the video black and white in some places and the bright orange standing out.

Here are two screen shots that inspired the making of ma video and my digipak, the first is from a film called schindlers list and the second from the music video locked up.

According to Andrew Goodwins theory ma video follows the route of Amplification, it clearly has a message and the message is being stated clearly through mies en scene. Another important piece of costume was the actual suit, when he is standing in front of the houses of parliament it is meant to represent a message that not all muslims are the same.

It challenges the classic representations that all muslims are terrorists and this shows that they can al have self respecting jobs.

Evaluation

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

During the production of my media products I was influenced by many forms and conventions of real media products. For example, I was influenced by others political hip hop artists and their videos. As our song's genre was political hip hop I sought to attract that sort of audience and so included themes from that genre. I felt my music video followed Andrew Goodwin's theory of amplification. This is because we wanted our video to introduce new meanings to our audience of being stereotyped and prejudged but we did not want to contradict the lyrics of our song. Instead we added more layers of meanings. We did this by showing our artist literally in a orange prison outfit and literally standing in front of the Houses of Parliament, thus directing the lyrics of the song to those in power, but in a more exaggerated way.

 

For example, this video from 2pac includes several establishing shots of the city of Manhattan, which in turn reflects a hard life and struggle. For me and my group we decided to include some popular well know London areas such as the Houses of Parliament in an attempt to confess our grievances to the highest office in the land. Going in to this product, our message for our video was one of fighting against the stereotypes of all Muslims being terrorists. We wanted to challenge the views many have that if one person is a terrorist, so too is everyone else. We wanted to show our audience that the more you brand someone and assign them similar characteristics to that of other people, the more you anger, prejudge and force people to become what you expect. This in turn made the message of our video more meaningful as we shot some scenes outside the Houses of Parliament.

The visual aspects of 2pac’s video were quite appropriate for my video as it includes many location shots. The bottom two photos include the themes of a prisoner being entrapped, this relates to my video as my leading character is a victim of stereotyping and being scapegoated. I tried to challenge these views many have by directing his message at the Houses of Parliament, which here, is meant to be directed at the stereotypers. 

Public Enemy is a fellow political hip hop group just like Lowkey, therefore I was able to secure and challenge many features from their front covers. For instance, the prison theme on Public Enemy's digipak was easily relatable to my digipak as my artist is fighting against being made a prisoner, in a sense. Also, this picture from Lowkey's video includes a prison suit which my character is also wearing. Throughout my digipak advert and music video I have included this running theme of orange as it represents every stereotype creating another prisoner. Also I included some features found on real digipaks: bar codes, record labels, copyright notices and track listing. I did this so that it will not only emulate some conventions of real products but to promote the artists album and record label.

My magazine advert also includes the orange theme which runs through all my products. Moreover, I decided to include many features found in real magazine advertisements in my own. Popular shops and websites were included so my audience can locate and follow my artist more easily, thus giving him the appropriate exposure and promoting him as an artist. Tour dates and social networking sites were included so my audience can track our artist on tour and keep up to date with him on the go. We also realised real media conventions would include this sort of information and so I decided to use and develop these features.

This video from Public Enemy, 'Fight The Power', links in with my music video as it about being oppressed and therefore fighting back.

Here is a short video of me analysing a music video from 2pac and explaining how I further developed ideas for my own music video

2. How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary text (digipak and advertisement)?

I feel that throughout the production of my music video and both my digipak and advertisement I have attempted to make clear visual links running through them so that my intended audience can easily identify my artist and genre. I was hoping this would attract my audience and in turn promote my artist.

For example, the font I used in both my digipak and my advertisement is written in 'Impact' font. I was hoping this will make the artist name and the tour date stand out. Also I wanted the font to become assigned to my artist, David. I wanted to make sure if someone was looking at my advert in a magazine they would easily identify he is a political hip hop rapper, and in turn, identify his album in stores or online more easily. Throughout the production of my media products, the mise en scene I used in my advert, digipak and music video reflected my artist’s genre as well as identity. I did this to tie all three products toghether.

This image here, taken from my music video, shows my artist in a prisoners suite and behind bars. I was hoping after the audience saw the video, the orange prisoner theme will make my artist and his political genre easily identifiable. Similarly, in my digipak and magazine advertisement my artist is wearing the same mise en scene, and in the case of my front cover, he is behind bars.

This is an example of my mise en scene running through each of my products. I feel that overall the features I have used makes my video and ancillary texts combined easy for my audience to identify my artist. The font, colours and mise en scene make it easy for my audience to spot my genre, which is political hip hop, thus promoting my artist as he can be easily traced through each product. 

One particular album that related to me and my genre was Public Enemy. I took some inspiration from their digipak's album cover as it had a two colour theme and a bold title displayed on the front. I decided to emulate its style in my own digipak. 

Despite Public Enemy's album cover containing a more artistic effect on the group members, the title 'Public Enemy', similarly is written in bold writing. I took especially to this idea as it is a way of immediately announcing whose album it is and the font type allows a certain types of genre and identity to be applied to that artist.

I was interested in making my digipak's front cover my artist behind bars as I liked the theme Public Enemy had used. Also, it related to my artist’s genre and message. I wanted to make my artists also be behind bars so I can visually reflect the prejudices he has been facing. In turn, I wanted this to highlight my genre and identity.

Overall, I feel that it will indeed be comfortable for my audience to track my artist through all of my ancillary and main products. I feel the mise en scene, font and colours tie all three products together, thus making it easily identifiable by my audience. I wanted to make sure anyone looking at his advertisement in a magazine or at his digipak in stores will immediately recognise my artist and therefore promote him more effectively.

                                                Here I further analyse my media products.

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


Going into the production of all three of my media products; music video, digipak and magazine advertisement, I required numerous amounts of media technologies to help me in the production, construction, planning and evaluation of my media products. For example, in order to make my music video I required a team- my group-to plan which song we would choose, the mise en scene we would require and or course the selected locations we needed. After a lot of planning we drew up a shortlist of songs we wanted our artist to perform and we also produced a pitch in front of our teachers, as well as a storyboard and animatic.

 

Pitch

Animatic

I used Final Cut Pro and Microsoft Power Point in order to produce my animatic and pitch. This was vital as it was all part of the planning process. It was necessary for us to know what we would be doing when and where so we made a production schedule and arranged meetings for further filming and editing sessions.

Naturally, different types of technologies and software’s were needed for constructing different parts of our media products. For example, during the construction of my music video I required Final Cut Pro to edit the footage we filmed. Final Cut Pro was especially effective for us to use because we, as a group, decided to make some scenes from our music video appear in a Pleasantville effect. In order to do this we required the colour picker. This was an attempt to make our artist stand out because his orange prison suit would be in colour whilst everything else would be black and white. Also, in order to film we need camera, camcorders and memory cards. We were supplied with all of these things by our media department. Furthermore, we needed Mac computers to work on. This in turn helped us edit things more easily. During the editing process of our music video we used much more complex editing techniques than we had previously used. For example we used the razor tool much more and edited through base tracks. This is why Final Cut Pro was especially necessary for us to use.  

Similarly, for the construction of my digipak and magazine advertisement I required the software Photoshop and Quark Express to manipulate texts, add photographs and mould my production.

Here is an example of us using some of our media technologies to construct our music video. We used our camcorders to film our video and a speaker to perform our song for our artist to sing along to, all in an attempt to allow his lip synching to be in time and realistic.

Moreover, during the production of all three of our products a considerable amount of research and evaluating what we had done was very important.

I used various sites on the internet such as; Blogger, Vimeo, Youtube, Google and Wikipedia to research other artists who we could develop our ideas on, also a place where we could post our completed music videos.

4. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After the production stage of our media products had passed, the evaluation stage began. We went on a cinema visit to view everyone's music videos. In the period after the cinemas visit I conducted some interviews to see what my class mates thought of my video.

 

After I conducted my interview with one of my class mates I began considering some potential changes I could have made. For example, I could have made my character interact more with the public, or actors. Perhaps if we had included one or two locations where there were a lot of people then it would have been interesting to see how people would react to him in a prison suit. From filming, we got interesting and curious reactions from the members of the public who were interested in our mise en scene. Therefore, I feel it would have been interesting to see what reaction in the cinema we would have got if our artist interacted with people whilst wearing his prison suit. Perhaps it would have been a humorous or serious reaction.

After this interview it became apparent that lip syncing is a very important part of a music video. I felt that most of my video was lip synced realistically, but it also suggests we could have taken more care with the editing to ensure that the synching was to near perfection. If we were making our music video again I would consider changing some scenes from the video that didn't appear realistic. I also would make sure we only used footage where the synching was absouloutly realistic.

 

In comparison to one of the video that helped inspired ours, 2pac' video, I feel that even though at the beginning we included an establishing shot of 'Big Ben' and The Houses of Parliament, and later on for our choruses we had our artist in front of it, I feel perhaps we could have included more location shots. I could have included more shots of our locations without the artist in front as it would have given the video a more tough-looking effect. If we had shots of some of the areas we filmed in it wouldn't have appeared as a glamourous place and that would have created an important message.

Here, I further discuss the feedback I received for my music video.

Evalution

Here I am going to evaluate my media products that I have created for my artist, 'David'. I created a music video for the song 'Terrorist' originally created and sung by 'LowKey', I also created a 4 panel digipack CD including the song on, I also created an advert advertising David's new album, 'victimised'.

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

During the planning and production of my media products, it developed real conventions of real media products and also challenged other forms of real media products. The genre of the song was political hip hop, being a fan of mostly rock music proved to be a challenge for me, so I had to put in a lot of research into the genre. I found out who the audience to this type of genre would be, I found mostly males between 16 and 21 to be big fans of such a genre.

When challenging forms of real media, we would not copy, but challenge; having similarities but creating them in our own ways. An obvious inspiration for me in making the media products was 'LowKey', the original artist of the song 'Terrorist'. We wanted to have the same audience that 'LowKey' has, so I decided to watch the video and view the main points of the video due to it being political, we wouldn't want to get the point he is making wrong. I also read the comments on the official YouTube video, most of which were people expressing there points with 'LowKey'. Now that I had understood the points of the song, I was able to start my own media products with the same point of view, but shown in a much different way.

I decided to keep one thing from the original video, its what I believe to be the best way to express the point of the song, and that was the prison jumpsuit as it signifies somebody being imprisoned. For the video we purchased a prison jumpsuit fro a fancy dress shop, it was the main highlight of the video, unlike the original video. Below, you can see the likes between the 2 videos, but how mine has the focus of the suit. You can also see the original music video.

Another influence for my media products was the artist 'Tupac'. Like 'LowKey', he was a political hip hop artist who gave his political views often in both song and video. A particular video I enjoyed was for the song 'Ghetto Gospel'. I liked the editing style as it included a lot of fades, which is what I wanted in my video also. The reason for fades was to represent each persons point of view, fading in and out of each persons view. Another thing in the video I liked was the mise en scene, it included prison bars which is also what was needed in my video to represent being imprisoned. One more thing was the mise en scene Manhattan landmarks were in the background of Tupac's video to represent the ghetto lifestyle, especially when Manhattan is a very ghetto gang ridden city. In my music video, I wanted the 'Houses of Parliament' in the background as it represents the importance of the point being made and how he is also respectable. Below you can see the comparison with screenshots and the music video to see the editing style.

Another video that had inspiration towards me was the music video 'Burn Hollywood Burn' by 'Public enemy'. The combination of a urban place and a well known location is what I wanted in my video after seeing this. Since the video was going to e filmed in London, it would have been perfect to film urban and in front of parliament due to it being political. Below you can see screenshot comparisons between both videos, you can also see the public enemy video below.

My digipack and advertisement both have conventions of real media. The digipack has what all CD covers should have including a record label logo, barcode, copyright, artist name and album title name. My advertisement also includes information such as website, facebook, artist name and so on. All of which were added are essential, as they are all vital parts of information relating to the album. Michael Jackson's album 'Bad' was an unlikely inspiration with my digipack. The cover features a single shot of the artist with font added. My album cover is pretty much the same, just with different fonts and styles. Michael Jackson is pop, whereas my genre is political hip hop, therefore it could be considered challenging the genre. 

The music video can also be related to Andrew Goodwins theory.

"Andrew said that music videos are often constructed by the link between the visuals and the song plus the artist. Relationships are built between these in the video, and the close-ups of the artists gives them the representation and publicity they require, which is obviously important in today's media entertainment . Voyeurism is used to increase the video’s attractiveness, particularly to males."

In the music video, it would be considered an amplification type of music video. This is when the video is linked to the song but not necessarily to the lyrics, they introduce a different perspective to the song and add layers to the meaning. 

Lots of close ups were used of the artist, but not just to show the artist but to help show the straight face while singing the song and the serious point he is making.  

2. How effective is the combination of your main product (video) and ancillary texts (digipack and advertisement)?

A successful music video will make clear visual links between it and its ancillary products, in my case my digipack and advertisement work well wit my music video. Having a clear visual link is always important in music as it helps to define who the artist is, they may watch the music video and forget the artists name, but may walk into a store and see the CD that they recognise because of the visual link between the 2 products.

One of the main and obvious visual links between the video and ancillary products is the costume the artist is wearing (mise en scene) in the video, he is also wearing it on the front album cover. The costume played an important role in the music video and pretty much summed up what the video was about, so I felt as though it needed to be on the front of the digipack. I believe this was successful as it is an easy to understand the relation between the music video and digipack.

Another visual link between the digipack and music video is the use of metal bars. In the video the artist can be seen behind bars in a prison like state, this is to represent him feeling prisoned by society. I felt as though the CD should relate to the whole prison view, so I put a picture of the artist with bars in front of him as the CD image. I believe this is also an effective CD image as it is very unusual to see the artist covering the face of the CD, the person looking at the CD may be attracted to it because of this unusual image.

A link between the advertisement and digipack is the same style font. I kept the font the same due to it being IMPACT and that it makes an impact, its easily readable and stands large and bold. The front cover of the album has a 'hollow' style IMPACT font, this is to represent there is more to the eye than is seen on the outside. This is to represent the fact that not all Muslims are terrorists. For the advert I decided to make the font full, this was to show its a strong album and has his real opinions. This will be a clear visual link between the two, the audience should easily be able to recognise the album after seeing the advertisement, therefore it is successful. You can see the pair below compared.

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

As with anything in the music industry, a successful product always has to be planned. Going into the production of all three of my media products; music video, digipak and magazine advertisement, I needed media technologies in order to help create my products, I also needed them in order to produce, construct, plan and evaluate of my media products. In order to create my music video, the teacher put us into groups of 4 in order to create a successful video. The group chose a numerous amount of songs and then it came down to the final decision on what song is to be used. We then needed to select locations and such things as a plot and mise en scene. We produced the following pitch in class to the teacher and students.

In order to create the pitch, I needed to use Microsoft PowerPoint to create the presentation, and then Final Cut Pro in order to turn it into a movie file. As with any music video, a pitch is essential as it helps to spot flaws, or even helps with other people giving suggestions as to what can be added or done. In this pitch we also had a production schedule which was use in order to help us know when and where we were needed, without a production schedule it would pretty much be hectic.

We also had to create an animatic of the music video also. An animatic helps to show the music video before it is created. it shows it with images and a numerous amount of them to show the change in scenes. This helped as it gave us a visual idea of how the music video would look. We  drew the animatic then photographed it using a digital still camera. We then used Final Cut Pro in order to make it into a movie file to be viewed on blogger.

Firstly, in order to have created the music video, I needed a video camera that is able to film in good quality and have easily transferable video from the camera to a Mac. A fully charged battery for the camera was also needed, in order for the camera to work. My college media department provided JVC GY-HM100E cameras. These cameras are semi-professional standard and can shoot in 1080p, but most importantly they record directly onto SD memory card, and have 2 slots so encase you run out of memory on the first, you can save to another card. Saving to SD memory cards provided us with much ease as it allowed us to transfer files between the memory card and Mac, we done this with the SD card plugged directly into a USB adaptor and then copied them onto our external HDD/Video drive (hard disk drive), this is so we could have our files stored in one place and could empty the memory cards for any other filming that was needed. A tri-pod was also needed for the camera, but most the camera work was handheld. The following equipment was used in order to create the music video: A camera, a camera battery, 2x SD memory cards, a tripod, a external HDD/video drive and a SD to USB adaptor.

In order to edit the footage that we shot, we needed to use a Mac computer with the correct software packages. The packages include Final Cut Pro. It needed Final Cut Pro in order for me to edit the video together, cutting clips, putting clips together, adding special effects etc. Livetype is was also needed in order for me to add any text that is needed on the video. We used both English and Arabic font in the music video. My college media department provides us with Mac's with double screens that have these programs installed. You would also obviously need footage in order to edit anything.

In order for me to have created a digipack and advertisement, I obviously firstly needed a digital still camera. The camera must have been high quality so the two products look professional standards, and be able to store images to a SD memory card. We were provided with Panasonic Lumix FS12 digitail still cameras. These cameras are 12 megapixels and store image files onto an SD memory card. When it comes to packages, photoshop was needed in order to edit image files. The program Quark was also be needed to load edited images and add text to the covers. Obviously with having an SD card, you need to be able to transfer the image files using a SD to USB converter.

In order for our music video's lip syncing to be in time, we needed the artist to be able to hear the song while he is lip syncing. The way he was able to hear the song was with a mini portable speaker that plugged into a SanDisk MP3 that had the song stored on it. When filming, we would start filming then play the song, so that we wouldn't miss the start of the filming.

Below you can see some of the media technologies in action being used by myself and my group when filming the music video. All were used in safe ways complying with health and safety regulations. All media equipment was looked after and put back in its case/bag when not being used. 

During the planning of our music video, a lot of research was needed in order to fulfill are music as successful. One of the problems we had was shooting near the house of parliament, since it is such a strict area to film around. We researched where we were legally allowed to film without being told to move on or having equipment confiscated. This research was found through Google. We also researched other music videos and passed A2 music videos using video websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Below you can see some of the resources that were used on the world wide web.

4. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After the music video has been made and finalised, we were taken to a local cinema to watch all the A2 media students music videos. Every music video was watched one after another. After the event, I conducted some hand written interviews talking about my music video and what they thought about it. This was so I could see what I done right and what parts may have gone wrong.

Charlie:

"I liked very much the use of mise en scene, the orange suit was was caught my eye the most not only because of the colour, but because of one of the effects you used to make just the suit in colour at times. It helped represent the song also. What I didn't like was some of the video was not edited in beat, I think it was the 2nd verse where so of the camera changes were off. The handheld camera work was also very good".

I agree with Charlie on the 2nd verse being off beat. Due to hearing and watching the song so many times you don't realise that something is off and need somebody else's opinion. You get used to your video and song that you believe it is the actual video. The prison suit I agree was good mise en scene, it had to be specially purchased for the music video.

I also interviewed a friend called George, who is a big fan of the original artist. I thought getting the opinion of a fan would show what lowkeys audience would have thought. He had the following to say:

George:

"I liked the fact you kept the original songs meaning, but interrupted it into your own way, it was a lot different to the original music video. The originally was a key, just like lowkeys songs and music videos, it was a lot different than I have seen any other music video. The editing was also good, the special effects with orange being the only colour worked well."

I'm glad George found the music video original. The plan was too stick away from the songs video, but keep the same meaning that was shown in the original music video. While filming it ended up us adding our own points into the music video, an underneath meaning to the song, which as you can see George thought worked well. The editing once again was successful, but I believe the editing could have been a little less rushed towards the end, we mainly focused on the opening and ending.

The final interview was with a female, Lydia, who is not a fan of the artist or the genre. She prefers more indie, bands especially. This was important to interview somebody who isn't a fan and has a different taste in music as it helps to spot what we could have.

Lydia:

"The song was okay, its not what I usually listen to but it was bearable. The music video I really enjoyed, I felt the time pass quicker when watching the music video than if I was just listening to the song on my own. The lip syncing was impressive, most was realistic and looked like he was rapping the song live on screen. One negative was the fact you used the same location for both verses. I expected it to be a different location the 2nd time as your locations were all really good".

I don't particularly agree with the fact we should have had a different location, we used 5 different locations to film and most needed permission to film in places. I am glad somebody who doesn't like the genre was able to get into the video, the music on the other hand is not ours so we would not be able to change that. The lip syncing I agree on, we kept it constant and used base tracks to do so.