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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Alice Piner Evalutaion Question Three

-What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

As a group we decided that we thought our demographic was male and female young adults/teenagers ranging from 15-22 . To make sure we was certain on our demographic we researched the audiences of music channels which feature grime music. We looked at viewing taken from www.barb.co.uk which informed us of daily viewers, weekly and monthly. The five channels which are most appropriate for our music video of 'Bonkers' are Clubland TV, Flava, Kiss TV, MTV and Smash hits. These are the music channels which play similar music to the genre of Bonkers which are rap, electro, hip-hop and house. Most people who watch the above channels are between the ages of 16-30, the people who would listen to the song Bonkers are also between these ages. Although most of the music channels play recent music video's they would also play big hits for instance Bonkers.

Some of the radio stations that Bonkers would be played on are Kiss 100, BBC Radio 1, The Hits and Choice FM. Again these type of radio stations typically play rap, electro, hip-hop and sometime house. The magazine our music video would typically be featured in is a magazine called Spin. This is a magazine that focuses on new music scene and the youth culture. Gives the edge on film, art, and music, including ska, pop, R&B, rock, hip hop, and rap. Wonderland is another magazine in which our video could be advertised. Dizzee has already been on the front cover of the magazine, shown below.

  Dizzee Rascal is a male grime artist the song is most likely to appeal to male audiences although females will also like the song as well due to it being up tempo. Through being aware of Dizzee Rascal’s previous songs we thought our audience would enjoy going out on the weekends and going to dance at clubs as his music fits well with the type of music played at clubs. We decided on this from our own opinions as we are the target audience and what we know people of our age like to listen to.

As our target audience was so accessible to us we explained our ideas for our music video to our class using powerpoint and gave out questionnaires to see their opinions to gain audience feedback. 

As a group we created several questions which we felt would be most helpful in getting feedback the questions included what would you expect an electro pop/ alternative dance music video to include?'  and ‘would you usually watch this type of music video?’ and enquired whether they were male and female to see what our main demographic was. We found that everyone answered yes to whether our music video will be successful and they would watch it if it came on a music channel. They also gave their own opinions to what preferences they liked and disliked. 

• Person number one said include 'fast pace edits' and 'wild behaviour'.
• Person number two said  'Like the designs, experiment with more images'
• Person number three suggested 'Good use of markers very effective but start filming more clips anything and everything'
• Person number four said 'More green screen of people mouthing lyrics to camera and develop cover into finished drafts'
• Person number five said ' When the music speeds up fasten editing'

therefore we knew what to include to target or audience from our audience feedback being so suggestive with ideas. After creating a rough cut of our music video we then showcased this to our class along with our digipak and CD poster to gain more audience feedback and to see whether they liked what we had created so far. Overall we received positive
Feedback from our questionnaire from asking the question 'what are your initial comments on our ideas?' was mainly positive with some people saying 'video will be fun, interesting to watch, very good ideas and entertaining'. From this we know as a group that our video will be interesting for our target audience. When asking 'would you want to watch our music video if it came on a music video' eight out of nine people said yes. This confirmed to us that our music video would be popular and would suit our target audience as the main aim is to get our target audience to watch and enjoy our video. 


After gaining out first audience feedback we went out and shoot parts of our video and showed the rough cut to the class to see whether they liked it so far. We mainly received positive feedback for example 'Like the designs, experiment with more images' although some comments were more critical stating ‘ use more green screen’ and ‘when music speeds up editing should speed up’. By gaining audience feedback it really helped us as a group to be aware of what are audience expects and whether they like what we have created so far so therefore we could improve our products. Our audience liked the bright colours and crazy costumes we used and found it really interesting to watch by it being edited quickly and locations changing often.

Our Digipak and CD poster received positive feedback also by using bright colours and linking them with the main product of the music video. They found it eye catching and creative and liked the use of close-ups and big text to clearly see the artist’s name and album title.

Our video is exciting and interesting due to the editing and mise en scene therefore audiences will want to watch it again as its interesting. I think it would be suited to a small independent label as its more artistic and different and the artist isn’t focused throughout the video which is a convention of major record labels to gain star power. Our unique selling point would be the colours used throughout each of our products and the use of graffiti font which could be used on t-shirts and posters which could be created as artwork. Overall our audience feedback suggests that our products created are successful as our target audience enjoyed it and said they would watch it again.


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Alice Piner Evaluation Question Four
-How did you use new technologies in the research, planning, contrsuction and evaluation stages?

Our production company mainly used web 2.0 during our production process which allowed us to use the internet for researching through the use of YouTube, Blogger, Google. Through using new technology we were able to access all the information we needed in order to create a good project by researching for our target audience and inspiration for costumes, makeup and loactions on different websites that focused on what information we needed. This helped us gain ideas for our video which we included such as costume and makeup ideas. We also used the website wordual where we was able to use key words such as ‘crazy’ and ‘bonkers’ and put them all together in a creative design to visually show our ideas and show the feel of how our music video would be portrayed. 

We used google to research Dizzee Rascal’s lyrics to help us create a narrative for our video and also printed them off and read them out to people when filming parts when they needed to lip sync the lyrics.

After gathering our ideas we created a powerpoint to showcase to the class to gain audience feedback on our ideas. Through using new technologies of projecting our powerpoint onto the smart board the whole class could clearly see our ideas visually therefore we was able to gain more crictical feedback as the class had more of an understanding of our ideas.

For our video production we were able to use a Sanyo HD camera, Nikon D40 and a tripod. We used the Sanyo HD for filming and used the Nikon for stop motion and for taking pictures for our digipak and CD poster. Through using the equipment we were able to produce good quality work and use cameras that professionals use. Therefore this made our work look realistic and professional and we wouldn’t have been able to achieve this quality on our own cameras.

For our post production stages we used Apple’s Final Cut express to edit our music video. By using this software we were able to create special effects and apply them to out video to make it more interesting and unique. We used stop motion, split screens, slow motion, used text on the screen and learnt to edit with green screen which looked made our video look unique. Without the use of Final Cut Express we wouldn’t have been able to develop most of the ideas we had originally thought of so therefore we was able to push the boundaries as we knew we could create any type of effect even on boring footage. 

We also used Abobe’s Photoshop for editing our CD poster and digipak which was challenging at first as I had never used the software but through experimenting I was able to understand it and therefore speed up the process of editing. We began by using the magnetic wand tool to separate the figure in our photos from the background which made it easy to experiment and change colours of certain things without changing the whole thing. By clicking on image and adjustment I was able to change the colour and use different effects on the background such as ‘artist’ and ‘blurred’ effect. When creating the CD poster I went through the process of detaching the figures from the background re-sizing them to fit onto the A4 white document. Once all the figures fitted I selected parts of their clothing for example the leggings and cut them away from the figure using the magnetic tool and changed the colour of the rest of the figure and like a jigsaw placed the leggings back on the figure. I went through this process for all of the figures although it was time consuming the finish product was what we had imagined it to look like and felt it looked successful. I then created separate boxes for the text and changed the font to match the digipak. Overall photoshop was a challenge for me but through experimenting and learning from mistake I understood how to work it and it enabled us to produce quality work which we couldn’t off achieved just by taking a photo.

Our production company relied on the use of technology from the beginning through using it as a tool for research and planning and posting our work on the blog. To continuing on to production and using equipment and then editing the footage on professional software. Without the use of new technologies our project would have been more time consuming and wouldn’t have been of the highest quality.


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Poster and Digipak

Below is our Digipak and our magazine advert cover