1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Starlight Productions, as a group, created a music video for the song, ‘Bonkers’ by Dizzee Rascal ft. Armand Van Helden. With Dizzee Rascal being a creator of Grime genre music and Armand Van Helden a producer/DJ of electro and house music, the two merge together to create a more lively, different feel to many of Dizzee’s other tracks. However, our music video doesn’t follow the conventions of a rap or grime video, it instead follows more conventions of the electro house genre that isn’t typical of Dizzee Rascal himself. Our video was concept driven, following the same idea throughout and was performance and narrative based to appeal to a wider audience range.
To link to Goodwin’s Theory, we used the performance side of our video, to connect the music and the visuals as well as the narrative side of the video, following a day in the life of these characters, to connect the lyrics of the song to the visuals. Other examples of this include David Guetta and Calvin Harris whose music comes under the genre of electro house and whose videos are both narrative and performance based, following the same conventions that our music video has.
We also used intertextuality as a main part of our music video, using ideas from Kanye West, Nickelback and Peter Gabriel, incorporating similar ideas to ones from their music videos. The changing words with different fonts, sizes and colours from Kanye West’s, ‘All of the Lights’, inspired us to use a similar technique for specific buzzwords in the lyrics of ‘Bonkers’ that we felt would benefit from being expressed in this way. Nickelback’s song ‘Rockstar’ inspired us to use different people in our video, as well as the main characters, to dance or to sing to parts of the song and Peter Gabriel’s song, ‘Sledgehammer’ inspired the stop-motion technique of a changing background to give the illusion of someone on a rollercoaster.
Another convention of electro house that I believe we have incorporated into our music video, is how the edits and use of different camera angles was sympathetic to the music. For example, when the music sped up, we increased the amount of edits and cuts we made to make the music more fast paced and when the music slowed down, we used slow motion and a stop motion blur, to fit in with the tempo of the music. We also went against this in some places, slowing down footage where the music was at a faster tempo, to create a contrast to what would normally be expected, so that the video followed conventions but also went against them as well.
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http://www.wix.com/holly_elizabeth_x/hollylizmediaevaluation#!q.1
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Branding is an element that we have used throughout both our main music video and our Digipak and poster. It has helped us to keep a consistency within our work and create an image for our production company. Branding is the process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers' mind, mainly through advertising campaigns and consistent themes.
One of the main features we have used throughout all our products are vibrant colours and brick walls. We felt we should add in certain urban elements to relate to Dizzee Rascals urban feel to the song and so we have used brick walls and graffiti style writing to stay consistent with this idea. I also think that the fun, lively vibe that is included in our video, with the costumes and colour, is another image of Starlight Productions and something that would be associated with them if seen elsewhere. 
For our Digipak, we incorporated similar ideas to those within the video so the audience can easily relate the two. We included a split screen of all four main characters, as we had done in the music video as well as the graffiti style writing that is included in both the video and the magazine poster and can therefore be linked much more easily by the audience. This graffiti style writing is another way we have stayed consistent within our branding techniques and something that can be easily related back to Starlight Productions. 
The main inspiration behind us choosing the four split screen was the artist Andy Warhol as well as the band Blur who produced an album with this style on their front cover. The iconic images that both Warhol and Blur produced are known by the majority of people and so to have this style on our own front cover would stand out to people as it would be something they recognised. We also kept the theme of ‘Bonkers’ consistent through our main product and ancillary texts, to literally reflect the main focus of the song. We used costumes, facial expressions and body language in ‘bonkers’ ways, to stay consistent with the title of the song so that our audience can link the wacky title and the music video more easily as well as adding more humour. We kept the same costumes and used similar facial expressions in both our Digipak and poster to keep the main idea of ‘Bonkers’ consistent and so linking all three of our products together in an effective way.
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3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
For our music video, we decided that our target audience was that of young adults and teenagers of around 15-25 years of age. A younger audience tend to enjoy listening to grime and dance tracks, so ‘Bonkers’ seemed to fit in with this audience profile well. We also decided that our video would appeal to both genders equally, but for different reasons. The artist of the song, Dizzee Rascal, is male and so would appeal more to male audiences, but we have included female characters within our video to balance out the target audience to females as well.
To gather audience feedback from our target audience, we gave out questionnaires to both males and females in our year at school, after presenting them our idea, as they were the right age and easily accessible. From this we found that people thought our video would be ‘fun, interesting to watch, had very good ideas and entertaining’, helping us to feel more confident about the ideas we had chosen as they were suited to our target audience. 8 out of 9 people said that they would watch the video if it came on on a music channel, as well as all 9 people believing that the video would be successful. We also offered them the chance to put forward their own ideas for our video, so we could get our video to appeal to our target audience as much as possible.
Some of the responses from our audience feedback were as follows:
'Like the designs, experiment with more image'
'Emphasise being crazy even further through costumes and actions'
'Love stop motion and lip syncing'
'When the music speeds up, fasten editing'
'Entertaining to watch'
'Original. Love it'
'Clever editing techniques'
We also did some research into music channels and music videos that appeal to the same target audience as our video. ‘All of the Lights’ by Kanye West, ‘Babara Streisand’ by Duck Sauce and ‘Basista Skank’ by Mr. Basista are just a few of the examples of videos that we used for inspiration. The bold, changing fonts in Kanye Wests video and the different characters and costumes in ‘Babara Streisand’ will keep our audience interested and not get bored, as well as keeping them entertained with the small humour element that the different characters and costumes adds. The range of different locations we used also help to keep our audience interested and leave them to wonder what location we will be using next and if a new location will be getting used.
Using the website, 'BARB', we found that our music video would most likely be watched on Clubland TV, Flava, Kiss TV and MTV. These channels share a similar target audience to that of our music video, as well as being the main channels to show this type of genre. Mainstream songs and videos are more likely to be played on some other channels, but a song like 'Bonkers' due to its genre and characteristics would be an exception to some of these channels.
believe that the music video is mainly suited at a small, independent record label as the artist is not the main focus in the video, which is what major record labels like to focus on. We have main focuses throughout our video, such as brick walls and bright colours that could be used to promote the single or album in other ways. Overall, I believe that the music video, digipak and magazine poster have appealed to our target audience well and we have done suffice research into assuring that this has been made possible.
This is a rough cut of our music video in its earlier stages:
Please look at my multimedia Wix website:
http://www.wix.com/holly_elizabeth_x/hollylizmediaevaluation#!q.3
4. How did you use new Media Technologies in the Research, Planning, Construction and Evaluation Stages?
For the research on inspiration for some ideas for our music video, we mainly used YouTube to watch our own artist and other artist’s music videos to get a mixture of different ideas. Using our artists own videos gave us an idea of what his genre of music would include in a music video and a look at other artists to include different ideas from other genres to make the video a lot more interesting. We also used this to look at previous A2 students, to see what ideas may have been used before and more often, to try and steer away from this direction to make something more different and memorable.
We also used the internet to research ideas for our costume and make up, using images of unique artists and make-up websites, such as MAC, to gain some ideas for the styles of make-up we could use on the characters on our video. We looked at some artists including, Jessie J, Lady Gaga and Ke$ha, as well as looking at Dizzee Rascal himself and to see if we could incorporate his style into some parts of our music video.
The website ‘Blogger’ was used by us to record our progress and show our work from start to finish in an online scrapbook style. Our whole group used the same blog, so it was easy for us to keep up to date with each other’s plans and ideas when we weren’t together to discuss them and to keep us altogether on the plans for our video, so that we weren’t going off in separate directions.
When it came to filming our video, we used the schools camera and tripod and had lessons on how to use them correctly to give us the best quality footage, including how to set up the white balance to receive the best colouring. We encountered a few problems with everyone in the group being available for filming at the same time, so we tried to film as much as we could during weekdays and in free time at school. Due to it being winter, we also had issues with lighting, as after school it became dark quickly, but we managed to re-film the beginning sequence of our video and the rest of our footage during holiday times and weekends that we were all available for. For the pictures for our digipak and magazine cover, we also used the schools digital camera and also the green screen, as this enabled us to change the backgrounds as often as we liked, instead of being stuck with one background if we changed our minds.
For the research on inspiration for some ideas for our music video, we mainly used YouTube to watch our own artist and other artist’s music videos to get a mixture of different ideas. Using our artists own videos gave us an idea of what his genre of music would include in a music video and a look at other artists to include different ideas from other genres to make the video a lot more interesting. We also used this to look at previous A2 students, to see what ideas may have been used before and more often, to try and steer away from this direction to make something more different and memorable.
We also used the internet to research ideas for our costume and make up, using images of unique artists and make-up websites, such as MAC, to gain some ideas for the styles of make-up we could use on the characters on our video. We looked at some artists including, Jessie J, Lady Gaga and Ke$ha, as well as looking at Dizzee Rascal himself and to see if we could incorporate his style into some parts of our music video.
The website ‘Blogger’ was used by us to record our progress and show our work from start to finish in an online scrapbook style. Our whole group used the same blog, so it was easy for us to keep up to date with each other’s plans and ideas when we weren’t together to discuss them and to keep us altogether on the plans for our video, so that we weren’t going off in separate directions.
When it came to filming our video, we used the schools camera and tripod and had lessons on how to use them correctly to give us the best quality footage, including how to set up the white balance to receive the best colouring. We encountered a few problems with everyone in the group being available for filming at the same time, so we tried to film as much as we could during weekdays and in free time at school. Due to it being winter, we also had issues with lighting, as after school it became dark quickly, but we managed to re-film the beginning sequence of our video and the rest of our footage during holiday times and weekends that we were all available for. For the pictures for our digipak and magazine cover, we also used the schools digital camera and also the green screen, as this enabled us to change the backgrounds as often as we liked, instead of being stuck with one background if we changed our minds.
For the editing of our footage we used Final Cut Express and for our CD cover and magazine poster designs we used Photoshop. We were unsure of how to use the software at first, but after some practice trials with different footage and techniques, we were able to edit as we wished. The equipment and software available to us helped us to produce a better quality video and more professional looking CD cover and magazine poster. We also used LiveType, a piece of software that enabled us to include the flashing words that we incorporated from Kanye Wests video, 'All of the Lights'. We created and edited the words on here and then imported them into Final Cut to become part of our music video.
The internet was also a major part of our evaluation. We used the website Wix to create our own websites in which to include all of our evaluation along with relevant pictures. The website enabled us to create and edit the website the way each individual wanted and also allowed us to link it to our main music video and digipak. For example, using the digipak cover picture as the background picture for the home screen on the website, making a quick and easy link to our media products.
Please look at my multimedia Wix website:
http://www.wix.com/holly_elizabeth_x/hollylizmediaevaluation#!q.4
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