G324 Evaluation In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our narrative format and structure follows the established forms and conventions of music videos by cutting between a narrative storyline that is related to the lyrics of the song and shots of a performer lip-syncing the lyrics of the song. The use of either one of these is very typical of a music video, but the use of both is becoming even more popular because of the strong influence coming from the dominating Hollywood film industry. We developed other conventions of music videos like the reference to voyeurism. The music video did not go to the extent of which many of the major record labels demand, for instance, the famous use of ‘video girls’ and dancers, mainly because we did not have anybody willing to do this. We still however managed to achieve a similar idea by using camera shots of where it seemed that the performer and actress were unaware of them being watched, creating an atmosphere of sexual predation for the audience. Following up to this was the use of many close ups of the artist which is becoming a big demand from record labels in recent years. It is used to enforce the concept of the male gaze, whereby women are portrayed are fantasised sexual objects. The style of presentation was developed from film noirs, which was used to make the audience aware of the character’s part-cynical personality of when she is under the influence of cocaine.

The use of camerawork in our music video follows conventional, technical and symbolic codes by using a variety of shots to portray a sense of personal connection between the viewer and singer/actress. One way this was achieved was by using close ups of their faces and objects of which they were holding to create a sense of virtual intimacy that the viewer cannot ever really experience. An example of this in use is the close up shot of cocaine ready to be snorted. We also achieved this by having the actress walking towards the camera while tracking out. This created a sense of teasing because the viewer wants to get a closer at the look at the actress but cannot, as the camera is actually moving away from her. A very good particular shot that helped to engage personal connection was the shot of the actress looking into the mirror. It created a sensation that as if the audience knew who this woman was and could feel the emotion of what she was going through.

The editing follows the traditional style of transition cuts between the beats on the music. Though this is not followed strictly, we felt that this can allow the visuals to compliment the music, without it getting in the way of understanding the narrative. During the intro and outro of the song, the mood of the music is very mellow, which we therefore used gentler transitions to help establish the mood the sadness. However, as the heavy drums and bass entered in the middle of the song, the atmosphere became vibrant, which required faster transitions to compliment with the energetic feel. As our chosen genre of Dubstep is not a very established style of music, there were no real music videos conventions that we had to follow according to its genre. As a result, our use of mise-en-scene left us open for creativity and ideas that are not common, for example, the heavy use of disorientated visual effects. Dubstep has roots from London’s underground urban Dance and rave scenes, therefore we felt the need to express this in our music video. We had a large emphasis on both the urban and classy settings of London’s West-End. On one side we showed the inspirational affluent lifestyle of London by having one of our locations in a classy 5-star hotel. The other side was in the backstreets on London’s West-End, which may be seen as less desirable, establishing both sides of London’s urban life. We however did deviate away from some mise-en-scene conventions, for example, the extreme seductive allure that some music video directors will go to. There has been much controversy about this and how music videos have gone a step too far recent times, taking for example, Lady Gaga’s famous video for Telephone which feature her wearing nothing but covered delicately in crime scene tape. We also went away from the typical use of the performer singing on stage or to other characters in a storyline (like a musical) because we wanted to emphasise something different for the performer. Instead we had her against a black background alongside with visual effects, creating a surreal and disorientated establishment. With many music videos, it is common that a bigger budget will be given to a bigger star. Yet we still managed to use locations that they would have to pay a lot of money for. For example, we still had access to film in a luxury country hotel by building a network of contacts (which we did not have to pay for) and had shots of London’s West-End, which anybody can film for free.

With regards to intertextuality, our use of forms and conventions from music videos show that we have been influenced from other similar music videos and genres. For example, our use of a music video that is very narrative-driven has been influenced from Dance music videos. It is very common for them to be narrative or concept focused or even wholly. Although they tend to tell stories of love and friendship, we decided to take a turn to tell a much darker story of a woman that is from a wealthy background who is actually a heavy drug addict behind her classy lifestyle. Another big influence came from Thriller films, which explains our use of heavy dark themes, for example, snorting cocaine and being under the influence of drugs. The influence of using conventions of thriller films came from the director’s passion for thriller because of the suspense it can create. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? We feel that the combination of our main video product and its ancillary texts worked well as they managed to adopt the key elements of branding. This was firstly achieved in our video as we tried to differentiate ourselves from what already existed in the current trend of music videos. We noticed that many of the big acts like Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj have music videos that use very surreal and creative ideas in terms of mise-en-scene, but no artist/music video has really explored in visual effects (other than the use of CGI). Therefore in our music video, we found it important to focus on keeping a consistent mood of obscurity in the stage of editing, rather than the stage of filming, which was achieved by overlaying and modifying colours of clips.

By having adopted the key elements of branding, we were able to develop characteristics from the video into the digipak. For example, our concept of menacing was followed by the use of colours of red as it is a colour that connotates violence and blood. The use of this was also so there is a continuation of the mood from what the video gives, to what the digipak gives because both products should compliment each other. They should be complimenting each other because if the viewer were to buy the digipak after watching the video, they would be expecting to see the digipak cover with mise-en-scene that was associated with the music video, weather it be the use of colours, location, props etc.

Our digipak follows several established forms and conventions, for example, an image of the artist, the name of the artist, the name of the song and a tracklisting. Although it is common for many singers to choose not to have an image displayed of them on their digipak/album, we felt it was important factor to include in order to sell face of the singer because they are not an established artist that has a name that many listeners may be familiar with. Therefore, by viewers seeing the singer’s face on screen and on the digipak, they can familiarise themselves more with the artist and feel a personal connection with them for the future and avoid being known as a ‘one hit wonder’. We also challenged the forms and conventions of digipaks by using heavy visual effects on the image of the artist. It is more common that the image may be modified in colouration, we however decided to make the image look very contrasted because it complimented with the visual effects that was used in the video. Although this was a to deviate one type of convention, it followed another by having the mise-en-scene of the digipak complimenting the mise-en-scene of the music video, which an example can be taken from Rihanna’s Only Girl.

With regards to the magazine advert, we tried to achieve branding largely by keeping a consistent theme of sinister moods and disorientation with between the magazine advert and the video. Yet we still wanted the magazine advert to differentiate from the digipak so the whole atmosphere of what we want the audience to experience would not be overused and loose their interest. The final idea of having a ‘3D effect’ in our magazine advert was inspired by maintaining the distorted atmosphere that we wanted reflected from the music video and digipak. However the magazine advert is not completely different from the digipak as it still contains vital elements like the use of the same font. We felt this was important to maintain a sense of continuity so when the viewer see magazine advert and then the digipak, they will be able to recognise that the two ancillary texts come from the same video.

Our magazine advertisement follows established forms and conventions by showing an image of the artist, the name of the artist, name of the song and the date of release. These are all included as there are all vital elements in selling the final digipak to our audience. This is because our audience want to know who the artist is and when they can buy it. The use of an image is also very important because it needs to catch the eye of the reader. It has been common in magazine adverts to refer to voyeurism, which is the treatment of looking at women (and recently men) as sexual objects. We however felt there was no need to go to this direction for our advert because it would not have much significance to our video. With consideration to intertexuality, our magazine shows that we have been influenced from forms and conventions of other works of art. The inspiration for the use of 3D visualisation was taken from Tinie Tempah’s album artwork for his debut single Pass Out. It is a very simple, yet eye catching image, which at the time of its buzz from the press, was the release of Avator, which was credited for its breath taking quality of 3D cinema.

What have you learned from your audience feedback? Our initial target audience characteristics were males and females between the ages of 16 and 24. This was decided because Dubstep is fairly new genre and has only recently been receiving mainstream success, therefore we felt it is more likely to appeal to a more younger as they are more likely to keep up to date with newer artists and music genres. We felt that targeting to particular ethnicities and genders would be irrelevant as the sound is suitable for all to listen to - it is not too heavy nor too mellow. Our target audience research showed us what they enjoyed in music videos. For example, we found that our target audience’s favourite aspects of music videos were visual arts and an interesting narrative. It was interesting to know that the use of a performer was only the second least favourite aspect of music videos. This however my be due to the fact that music videos with performances are more popular amongst those who are favoured the rock music because watching a band perform is part of the whole rock culture/experience. The majority of our target audiences were fans of hip-hop and RnB, and videos of these genres tend to focus more a storyline, as opposed to on-stage performances. For example, comparing a music video by rapper 50 cent and the rock band Limp Bizkit.

From our target audience research we then tried to create a music video that would appeal to our target audience judging from what they told us they liked. We tried to focus particularly on creative visual images and an interesting narrative because our research told us that this is what they found most appealing. Although our research told us that they found the performance aspects not being an important element of music videos, we still felt this was important to feature because familiarising your audience with the singer’s face is key when trying to sell a new artist, rather than trying to make them side with the character of the storyline, especially when dealing with a new genre that the mass audience would not know of. The only social group that we tried to represent were those aged between 16 and 24 and we tried to achieve this by using an actress that looked around the ages of 20. This allowed us to connect with the audience, which is what we particularly wanted. The audience is asked to put themselves in the position of the main character because only herself and the audience can witness what the reality of her life is like. The impact this creates on the audience is that they start to understand her very bad drug habit and lifestyle that she hides behind her middle-class background. In our script development, we included the use of particular camera techniques. For example, close up shots of the actress snorting cocaine. This was helpful as it allowed us to

incorporate actions of the actress with particular camera techniques to connotate or emphasise a particular mood that we wanted to focus on.

From our audience feedback, out of our main video product and its ancillary products, the majority found the magazine advertisement and music video to look the most professional. More than half of the sample survey said that they did not understand the storyline, which was somewhat disappointing as this is what our target audience felt was most important, yet we not able to properly fulfil this. However, the majority said that they did feel that the visual effects used were a key element that helped to create a feel of disorientation within the music video. Furthermore, one person suggested, “The performance shots could have been made more interesting by using a fan to blow against the singer”, this perhaps might have helped made her look more seductive and attract more interest from the viewer. What our audience feedback questionnaire told us about the magazine advertisement was that the audience did understand that we were trying to portray a sense of disorientation, which is good was this is something we wanted to achieve from the time of planning. This would be due the change in colour and 3D visualisation used on the original image. With regards to the digipak, the majority said it did not look like a professional product. One person said how they felt that digipak/abum covers tend to look simpler and have less complex ideas. We feel that our end products successfully met the OCR brief as we were able to comprehensively follow and challenge the codes and conventions of music videos, whilst maintaining creativity and innovation. We were also able to demonstrate excellence in technical skills like holding steady shots where appropriate and editing with a meaning that is obvious to the viewer. These uses make us feel that our music video stood up well against professional products. However, looking back at the video, there were some flaws that should have been altered, for example, not cutting shots early enough and the setting of the white balance on the camera. These may have made the music video seem amateur quality. We tried to incorporate important elements of music videos, by for example, trying to sell the artist looks to encourage the audience to go out and buy the digipak, as promoting the artist’s image is one of the key reasons why record labels use music videos. Our video would be more suited to a small and independent record label, largely because it is a song and music video that is targeting a small niche market audience, yet in hope of receiving mainstream attention. Evidence from our target audience research suggested that only a small share of our sample listened to independent artists, therefore it is not

worthwhile initially targeting our music video to a mass audience. Our music video’s unique selling point would be the combination of dubstep music with the visual effects used because the two together, have not yet been used to target neither a niche or mass audience. How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages? The majority of our planning and research was achieved by gathering information via the Internet and search directories. We found out that using search directories like yahoo, as opposed to search engines like google, gave us a lot more relevant information as the websites given are actually analysed and categorised by real humans. The results given by google were collected by a computer program called robots, which just gave us results from a match of any websites that had the same words typed in the search box. Google however, also provided us images and videos to what we searched, not just weblinks. We also used youtube to help with our textual analysis. We selected the video we were going to analyse on youtube because of its wide range of music videos that we were able to access with ease. The use of facebook also helped us during our target audience research because we were easily able to gain a large sample size. This may be because people were more lenient to give up their time whilst on their computer, rather than in person because they can be doing other things whilst taking a survey at home/on their computer.

For the construction of the music video, we used the Canon XM2 camcorder. To get the best out of this camera, we needed to know how to set up several controls like the white balance so our recording would be clear and not grainy in the current lighting condition. Redhead lights were available to us through the college but we felt we did not need them at the time. Although we used its automatic white balance setting, our shots did not look as clean and professional as we wanted it. We did however use manual focus, which allowed us to capture clear shots from different distances. We used the playback feature on our camera so that on set, a recording can be played back and seen if shot needs to be recorded again. This is a very good feature, however we still

didn’t use it at the time of our original shooting, which meant we had to reshoot another time, causing inconvenience for the group members and actors. During the stage if editing, we used Apple’s Final Cut Pro. Most of the techniques used were learnt during AS. When importing our clips into Final Cut Pro, we had to use the log and capture feature whilst playing back our tape though the external video tape player. This was a very long process, but required us to watch all our clips again, taking note of any flaws in what we had recorded. After the clips were imported into Final Cut Pro, some had needed to be shortened to fit in the correct timing of our sequence timeline, which meant we were not going towards the script and storyboard at times. New techniques that we had to learn was the adding of visual effects to our clips and this was difficult to catch on as this was something I did not learn during AS. The college’s editing suite and camera facilities were very good. However, it caused a lot of inconvenience for us if we had not book an editing suite or camera beforehand. At times, there would be none available to us or we were very limited on the time that we could use them. For the construction of our digipak and magazine advertisements, we used our own camera which was the Sony NEX-10. We had access to different types of lighting, but again, we chose not to use them as we wanted particularly a night shot. We edited our photos on Adobe Photoshop, which was difficult at first because it was completely new software to me. However, we were taught the basic from tutorials given in lessons and we looked up online tutorials on youtube on how to achieve particular effects that we wanted. We had to also upload our evaluations on to blogger. Although using this can be very simple, knowing basic html which can still be confusing, would help us with the appearance of the post. However, we decided to upload our evaluations onto blogger via slideshare, which allowed us to easily upload our documents that contained both texts and images. Otherwise uploading documents direct to blogspot can be very time consuming because once text is inserted, photos must separated be uploaded which can be very time consuming.