Georgias Final Evaluation

Georgia's Evaluation 

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Question 1

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

For our music production video we decided on using a grime hip hop artist Dizzee Rascal that aims his music in the same age group as us so we could relate to the type of video we wanted to create. His usual use of lyrics on his other songs within the album was based on sex money his life style and girls however 'Bonkers' with producer Armand Van Helden had a more electro/house beat and lyrics took a more pop style with a fun vibe which we could experiment different camera techniques and editing styles.The music video we created does not show the follow in conventions which the usual rap/grime artists we researched many videos such as Ndubz, Lethal Bizzle, Wiley Etc however our lyrics did not link to the usual showing of money that they have drugs or surroundings linked with street crime. 


We began by researching other artists by watching the usual technique of the same genre whether it looked successful and if different techniques would fit  well with our own music video. and studied theories based on conventions that usually happen  during music videos e.g. Andrew Goodwins. Researching artists and learning how to analyse music videos through theories helped us to gain a better understanding to how they work. 




We also analysed digipaks which also gave us a greater knowledge of the type of digi pak to produce by helping to create rough ideas around our artists star appeal.


We therefore took a different approach as there was a part of electro and house linked in to the song. Our video is lyric performance and narrative driven. The performance we used throughout the video we believe created more of an interesting concept relating our artist video and the consumer with a typical day. We were inspired by many artists videos throughout our video expanding on each idea which would flow with the lyrics the song using intertextuality.


 'Barbara Streisand' and 'Rockstar' where we would approach different people and get them to sing part of the lyrics making it more affective as the video was aimed at all ages and them two videos were proved very popular.


 We also used the video 'all of the lights' by Kayne west and Rihanna to add in certain buzz words as throughout that video the only use they use was text flashing which we believed looked very affective for parts of the video which we needed to fill.

 We also used a male character as the main artist substitute this created a less 'random' look other than the 4 girl characters and also relates to Godwin theory of star power. By using Goodwin 6 point plan analysis on our music video which was inspired by watching low budget videos on Youtube 'Basista Skank' he music was the same upbeat tempo as ours and included a bedroom scene at the beginning which was incorportated hugely in our music video.

We created a narrative relationship by using the lyrics to create a story line of a person waking up ' wake up everyday is a day dream' of our four main characters waking up in the bed creating an effect between lyrics and visuals. 

We then created a effect between the music and lyrics as the speed of the song increases the cuts of the editing the video was more frequent building a suspense as well as using stop motion at the slower parts of the song.

We decided on shooting our video in different locations for a more 'Bonkers' affect however we could not find many places which would have the graffiti on brick wall affect that we wanted we there fore used green screen a lot of the time whilst shooting for our music video. The filming was shot in 3 different angles for most of our shots as we wanted variety and the ability when filming to choose the best place for this. Most our shots of quick editing was inspired by electro house music which we found would benefit the beat of our song we chose.

Our style of video we had to chose was wild and comedy as our lyrics were humorous and we would not been able to create a serious or boring video with the lyrics and beat of the song which usually goes against usual grime artist videos however I believe this made our video unique and interesting to watch.

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

We have used branding to create a image for our production company and create a unique look and consistently used a theme throughout so that our brand is instantly noticed within the Digipak and poster. By researching different types of digi paks in the same music genre as Dizzee Racal this helped us to distinguish a type of look we had to aim for that would attract the same audience. I researched rap artist Lil Wayne this digi pak and analysed the approach they took I also looked at..... That helped to give an insight of what direction we should do our own Our music video is directly linked to our branding of using the brick-wall and bright colours which were insisted throughout the music video, as Dizzee rascal has been known as grime and urban feel to the song we believed that a casual brick wall can become a statement as being bland to 'bonkers' by changing the colour to bright and in your face to attract the consumer. We also used graffiti style text in our branding which also connected to our video as a parts in the background was graffiti based walls and flashing text which helped to expand our own branding to create a more grime artist feel to maintain the audience which Dizzee rascal wants to attract. We believe that the brickwall urban feel can become a trademark technique for Starlight Productions.

Our digipak incorporated many ideas which we used for our music video so that the audience can easily notice that the digipak belonged to the artist. We used the brick wall theme as the main background to every part of our digipak in different bright colours to make sure it was different and stands out. In the clothing which we wore for the filming of the music video we also took pictures during the days of filming which we could embrace into the digipak by standing a certain way pretending to hold something which we could then replace with a graffiti letter which I believe looked different to most digipaks I've seen and is interesting It caught my eye and which the audience we aimed is my age group. We included a split screen which we had also used in the music video of the four main characters which the brick wall background of them pulling wacky faces which also went well with the theme we have incorporated, we was inspired for this idea with the well known artist Andy Warhol and The Beatles album covers which we believe looked affective and could fit into our theme of digipak. Intertexuallity helped us to elaborate on our own ideas and methods which have already been created but had a huge affect on us which stood out and made us want to create similar features.

Our magazine advert also used the same techniques as our digipak so that the audience can instantly notice the similarity between the two. By using the same graffiti text, bright colours and the 4 main characters this is easily noticeable and creates a big affect to our brand image of starlight productions keeping the consistency of 'bonkers' throughout as the main focus using facial expressions use of colouring and feel to keep the audience linked between the music video digipak and magazine.

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Question 3 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our main target audience for our music video was young adults and teenagers between the ages of 15-25. the Grime music tends to attract the main age group of teenagers as they look up to the role models of what they sing/rap about however we believed that the song 'bonkers' aimed at a larger age range as it was more open to a wider audience being an upbeat song which was also used in the dance/club genre which we used Armand van Helden club mix. We also agreed that the video would need to be appealing for both male and female genders as the song does. As Dizzee rascal is male we used a male character to sing part of the song within the video however 4 main characters of girls which also should aim at the female gender to balance the target audience. As we are in the aimed target age range we decided that the best advice we could get would be from our own views of what our age group would be attracted to. As our age group was easily accessible to get feedback from we first decided to inform our class mates our initial idea and see their views on it. We also gave out questionnaires to both male and female in our year and year below at school. Our statistics came back that mainly all students believed our video would be 'fun,interesting etc' and 8 out of 9 would like to see the finished video. This gave us confidence that our ideas would work as our group is based with 4 females we were unsure that the male gender would also be appealed to our video. We also took in a lot of ideas which they thought would benefit us as a whole. We researched a lot into the type of audience Dizzee rascal usually gets by viewing his previous songs viewing his websites taking into account peoples comments on his music videos on you tube which helped us to gain a better understanding of his fans expectations of Dizzee rascal music videos. We gained a lot of inspiration by looking at other peoples music videos such as 'all of the lights' Kayne west who also gains many of his fans from young adults and a popular song 'Barbara Streisand' which we incorporated into the song. Our main inspiration was 'Basisata Skank' which helped us to create a story line of waking up then becoming 'bonkers' we believed this video really attracted our age group and had the same features which we wanted to us. Comments from our target demographic after both viewings of the first trial edit and the finished reduction praised our finished music video and 100% agreed that they would watch again and that it made an improvement from previously watched and more suitable for there age group which benefitted our research of introducting our idea getting feedback and adapting to our video.

I believe our music video is a widely ranged target audience which would interest a lot of ages and both genders, I believe our digi pak and magazine also incorporates how we have targeted the consumer in the same way, our video is exciting and thrill seeking with no dull moments which would loose the interest of our consumer making it an easily watch able music video. Small independent record label would most suitable as we do not overly use the main artist and less of the star power convention. I believe our research we have done assured that our video was a success to the audience feedback and directed at the right target audience.

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Question 4

How did you use new media technologiesin the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?

Throughout creating our music videoand digipak I developed and learned new uses of media technologies enable tocreate the best for our production company within the research planningconstruction and evaluation stages.

During researching on our targetaudience, artists, genres, make-up , clothing and current music videos whichare appealing today we used the internet on different websites to collect theinformation and ideas to develop the next part of our process to creating ourmusic video. Costume and make-up ideas were inspired through well known brandsof make up such as Mac, and clothing websites which were in the same type ofgenre that the artists wear. Dizzeerascals website helped to develop the main target audience, clothing he usuallywears in his music videos. You-tube was one of our main resources which we usedto collect most research on previous A2 videos how we could create a videowhich would be different to previous.

Throughout this project we have been using blogger to record all our planning, research, and construction of creating the music video adding group meetings, images and youtube videos whichhave inspired us to visually help create an overview of how we will create the music video.

We used final cut express to edit thevideo using and developing our skills in editing this was one the main partswhich brought our whole project together by experimenting with different toolsand effects to create a music video which varied from others.

Photoshop was used frequently when creating the magazine advert and CD cover. As most of us had not used photoshop before to develop our skills on different tools we watched step by step videos on youtube and researched them on how to apply the skills on to the photos to create the best possible digi pack and magazine advert. Creating our digipak would have been impossible to do without the use of photoshop, as we decided we wanted a poster and digi pak which stood out this meant a lot of editing had to be done to every aspect. When creating the digipak for one of the sides we had characters pose pretending to hold letters there fore thorough use of photoshop we was apple to slecet the part we needed through magic tool creating new layers and adding text to make sure each lettering was different this become tricky as layers were confusing to control and being able to fit all characters into the sized area, this took a lot of time but however it paid of.

During the filming of the production we used the schools camera and tripod to film in our chosen locations, before filming we had to have lessons on using the cameras to make sure we could get the best quality footage, for each part of the filming we had to ensure that the white balance was set up there for the right coloring.During the planning of our music video we decided to implement the technique which we had learnt about 'stop motion' by researching videos we incorporated the method to do this and created a scene of someone on a roller coaster which was inspired by 'Peter Gabriel, Sledge Hammer'

The main problem during the filming process was the commitment to turning up for the filming days, we had to make sure that we were all available as we were the main characters in the music video. As well as the weather conditions made this a problem when filming in the forest we was unable to film on various days due to the rain as our filming was in the winter and it got dark early, our first few scenes of our video had to be re filmed due to the lighting problem.

Please look at my Multi Media Evaluation on Wix

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Alice Piner Evaluation Question One

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

Our productions created a music video for the artist Dizzee Racal for the song titled ‘Bonkers’ produced by Armand Van Helden. Dizzee Rascal is a grime and rap artist however ‘Bonkers’ has more of an electro/house edge making it upbeat which still includes rap. We began by researching other artists videos and looking at how certain genres where portrayed and whether it was successfully and if we would like to incorporate some of the ideas in our video. We looked at a range of different directors such as Mark Romanek. A long side this we studied theories based on reasons behind certain conventions happen during music videos such as Andrew Goodwin’s and Laura Mulvey’s star theory. This help us as a group understand the history of music videos and what we need to include and gave us more of an understanding as to how they work. While researching I wrote three different essays on music videos using Goodwin’s theory to help analyse them, these where on Hype William’s videos, Christina Aguilera and Griminal who is a grime artist. I also analysed one CD cover and one poster on Rihanna to gain an understanding of the conventions of music products how they link with the videos. I also researched into Grime music video conventions which helped us understand what is expected of that genre of music.

Our music video for ‘Bonkers’ is mainly concept driven and includes performance and narrative by the video following the four characters showing their ‘Bonkers’ lifestyle. Which links to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of the lyrics matching the visuals. Although most Grime music video include women in a sexual way we deviated  away from this as we didnt feel it fitted in well with the concept of the song.By using narrative, conceptual and performance our music video deviates from other grime music videos as it includes all three when usually grime videos include performance and narrative. By including all three our music video can appeal to a range of audiences as well as our target audience. Through studying the songs lyrics there is a story behind the lyrics about how someone wakes up and there life is bonkers and how that’s normal for them but insane for others who aren’t living that lifestyle. This is typical of Grime music as its usually written from the artists point of view and about how they are dealing with fame and comparing where they are now to where they grew up. Therefore from looking at Goodwins theory we created a narrative from the relationship between the lyrics and visuals. When the lyrics read ‘ I wake up everyday’ it shows the four characters waking up which is effective in the typical conventions of a music videos of relating lyrics to visuals. 

There is also a relationship between music and visuals as when the music gets faster we used quick cuts of photographs to build up suspense for the beat and also when the music becomes slower we used slow motion shots of the characters running around. By editing the footage in slow motion to relate to the music tempo it follows music video conventions of matching the music with visuals and follows conventions of electro house videos. We used performance throughout the video of the main artist as well as the four characters as we felt it gave our video a base and related more to our target audience rather than it being all conceptual and not making any sense.

We decided to include a ‘look alike’ male character of Dizzee Rascal as having the artist present is what attracts the audience and also relates to Goodwin’s theory of star power. Our whole style of our music video deviates from other music videos as it doesn’t include a main location as lots of different locations are used which don’t relate to each other. This is effective for our music video as its suppose to be crazy and different so by repeating the same locations it would become boring. Therefore to make our video interesting and exciting we edited it by using quick cuts to cut in time with the music like Goodwin’s theory of relationship between visuals and music which looks effective. Our style is presented as comedy which challenges music conventions as comedy isn’t used when portraying a grime artist as they are usually represented as ‘hard’. When creating a bonkers and wild style and editing the footage it was shown as humorous by people wearing different costumes and pulling funny faces which makes our music video unique and interesting.

We included intertexuality from looking at videos such as ‘Barbara Streisand’ and ‘Rockstar’ by Nickelback that we found humorous were different people would sing a line of the song. 

We included this in our video and also asked the people to dance as well as sing to relate to the concept of ‘bonkers’ which made it more interesting and funny.  We took inspiration from Kanye West ‘All of the lights’ where at the beginning of the video the background is plain black and neon words light up on the screen reading the lyrics. We felt this was effective and related to the type of music which would be played in a club and the flashing lights related to disco balls and lighting in clubs.

 We also mainly took inspiration from Mr Basista’s music video ‘Basista Skank’ the music was the same upbeat tempo as ours and included a bedroom scene at the beginning which we felt would work well with our song. By using intertextuality we were able to take inspiration and create our own spin on an idea and make it work for us rather than completely copying.

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Alice Piner Evaluation Question Two

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

Our production company needed to create our own branding for our products. Branding is when an idea or image is marketed so that is easily recognised by the target audience this is done by creating a specific branding and then advertising it. It is important for our company to have its own brand because this helps sales increase as the audience can easily recognise the product and creates uniqueness for our products. Due to our song title being called ‘bonkers’ we had a huge range of ideas for our video, cd cover and poster which would relate well to our song title which would make our product unique and create a branding for our production company. As a group we brainstormed ideas of what we felt would be appropriate to include in our video and we also researched other artists CD covers and poster. Through this we were able to gain an understanding of the conventions of how the products are displayed. I personally researched Rihanna's new album 'Talk that Talk' although she isnt a grime artist she branded to be quirky and different which is what we want to achieve with our products. Through this I learnt what is effect in branding an artist by using larger font for my important details such as the album title. Through researching Rihanna I found that close-ups worked well as audiences can easily recognise the artist In our music video. I also learnt that Rihanna's styling in her music video to her new album was similar to the album cover therefore there was a link between the two products. 

We decided to do the same as we used a lot of colours, brickwalls and flashing words in our music video so we aimed to brand our products incorporating the same so the audience would create a link between the products. All of these elements are used in our products and are our trademark for our brand.

After a group meeting we decided we wanted to incorporate a brick wall as the background and having a close up of ‘Dizzee Rascal’. I took some photos of the brick wall and played around experimenting with different edit techniques and colours using photoshop to see what works and what doesn’t. 

Through doing this we brainstormed some more ideas as we felt our digipak wouldn’t be effective if the main character was just standing in front of the brick wall. I then took more photos of people screaming we felt this showed expression and craziness which was the concept of our branding. Through being inspired by Andy Warhol and the Beatles of the four repeated images we decided to include the four characters on our digipak. 

We used bright neon colours and included the brickwall and wore the same crazy outfits as in the video. Below shows pictures of different types of concepts we experimented with to develop to the final poster. We decided if we had all four of the characters shouting the words 'bonkers' it may be too much  as every picture would look the same. We tested this by using picnic which is a website that helped us edit quickly. We editied the same picture of holly yet it created a spilt screen of four with different backgroundsfrom this  we was able to get a feel of how the digipak would look and we didnt think it looked original enough and was too boring.

We used graffiti text which linked into the concept of an urban grime genre. We also used a split screen in our music video using close ups of the four characters with the brick wall behind them which resembles our Digipak by having four repeated images. These main ideas link throughout our products and help make our branding for our production company. Below shows our digipak main idea although we experiment by using star stamps on two of the backgorunds as we thought it could look too plain. However when re-evaluating it we felt it looked too busy and didnt link with the concept.

 

For the digipak we linked the idea of a split screen from our video and used the same idea for the back of the digipak. We felt this looked really effective and by repeating the same elements but in different ways created a trademark for our production company.

For the magazine advert we followed on from the original idea of bright colours as we felt this would catch our target audience’s eye. Originally we took photos of us on each other’s backs and thought once edited and put together it would appear as though we are all piggy backing each other, although after evaluating this idea we felt it looked almost childlike and wasn’t a strong concept. 

Therefore used long shoots of us dancing crazy and screaming and being happy to relate to the concept of being bonkers. 

We changed the colour for each of us and used instead of incorporating the brick wall we used a black background to make the bright colours stand out which follows on form our Digipak by using different colours for each character. We also felt the brickwall was too busy for a background and didnt show the information on the poster very clearly. Once nearly finishing the poster we thought It could look effective if we were to re-take photos of us to make it appear as though we were holding up the word 'bonkers'. We felt this looked humourous by us holding up the album title and linked into the concpet of 'bonkers' and crazy.

We used the same font which was used on the Digipak to show the branding of the product so the audience would recognise the text and associate it with our products. We followed magazine advert forms and conventions by making the artist and song title bigger font size to catch the audience’s attention as there the most important information. We also included information on release dates and critic’s opinion to help market the CD and the artists’ website for further information. We used a smaller image of the CD cover so the audience knows what the cover looks like when buying the CD.

Overall I feel our main product and ancillary texts work well together and we have created some consistent ideas to help brand our products.

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