1) In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge the conventions of real media products?
My product uses many conventions of a real media product in terms of Goodwin's points. These points were preposed by Andrew Goodwin in the 1990s notable for Music Video theory book “Dancing In The Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture” These points are the common conventions which music videos usually follow, these points are; Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics, a relationship between lyrics and visuals, relationship between music and visuals, The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work (a visual style), themes of voyeurism, and intertexual references to other real media products or consumer products.
We tried to think about the music video’s genre as much as possible during our research. We made our research around R&B, soul, rap and hip-hop music videos because we decided that the song “Melt my heart to stone” would best suit the conventions found in the music videos of these particular genres. One of the way our music video represents these types of genres because of the way our music video presents the female artist in an almost sexual context because of the way costume is used to make the ‘Adele’ character look attractive to the audience. Also the the costume of the ‘Kanye West’ character is a suit which is a common convention of costume for R&B and rap music videos.
We challenge conventions by the way costume stays consistent throughout our music video.
We decided not to have frequent costume changes (Seen in music videos such as Beyonce’s Who Run the World music video - directed by Francis Lawrence who also known for directing music videos for Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and the Black Eyed Peas). However upon watching Adele’s Rolling in the deep music video (directed by Sam Brown) we decided we would follow the conventions used in that particular music video of staying in a single costume throughout the whole video.
One of the way theme theme of voyeurism is conveyed is by the use of mirrors in our music video. In the hotel scenes. This makes our audience feel as if they are watch the characters from inside the room for example when you see the ‘Adele’ character put on make up you feel you are just watching her from inside the room. A similar effect is produced where the “Kanye West” character walks-out the hotel room past mirrors you feel in a way you are watching him through the mirrors.
One of the ways which we have challenged conventions of a typical music video is our decision to portray both the artists involved in the song very strongly and equally, for both the character’s the importance is never focused on either one of the characters for the whole of the music video and both characters seem to have equal amount of “screen-time”. We found that the usual conventions for this style of music video was to focus the importance on one character during a music video and have the other occasionally appearing in from the ‘sidelines’. I believe our decision links to Goodwin's point of “the demands of the record label” because we attempt to sell both artists equally to the market/audience therefore increasing chance of the audience buying future products from both the artists.
We have have strongly followed the conventions of using lip-syncing in our music video. This is a convention which is highly used in music videos. The use of this conventions is follows Goodwin’s point of “a relationship between lyrics and visuals” because the audience see the lyrics portrayed being sung from the character. However we develop this convention by the use of a strong narrative within the music video which is not a a very common convention found in music videos, However we took inspiration from The Beastie Boy’s “Make some noise” (also known as “Fight for Your Right - Revisited) Music video which can be more accurately described as a short film rather than a music video because it has a weaker focus on lip-syncing performance of the characters than the focus on it’s strong narrative, it’s cinematographic techniques and it’s strong acting talent involved in the video, on the Director, Adam Yauch’s IMDB profile the video is in-fact described as a ‘short’(film) rather than a music video. In taking inspiration from this and using it in combination with the lip-syncing technique. However we break from Adam Yauch’s approach of splitting between lip-syncing performance and narrative, Our video shows the artists lip-syncing from start to finish with the music and lyrics providing the bases of the narrative.
Overall using Goodwin’s points has been helpful to the construction of our music video because it has helped us to have a structured plan to what is going to be included in our music video, using Goodwin’s points has made us think about each element of a music video individually and how they fit into the music video as a whole. Looking at each convention independently has made me and my group think about what they represent in the music video and how the conventions can be used effectively.
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary products?
The combination of my main product and ancillary texts is very effective because of the conventions they follow. One of these conventions is the use of a consistent colour scheme throughout our both the main product and the ancillary texts, I.e. The blue tinted colour scheme which appears in the hotel scene in the main product and the blue tinted photographs used in the ancillary texts. We had set up lighting in the hotel scene to look quite moody and theatrical. These enables the market audience to identify the Ancillary texts and the Main music video together so it would be recognisable to the buyer when they purchase the digi-pack package.For the Hotel scene we used Final Cut Express to add a light-blue tint with a high contrast to the video and used Adobe Light-room for the same light-blue effect to make the mood of the scene more moody and emotional. This makes the Main product and ancillary text look like a more complete product. This adds consistency to our product and overall makes it more recognisable and rememberable to the audience/market so if they see the magazine advert they’ll recognise the Digi-Pack, the advert will be drawn into the market/audience mind and they’ll be more likely to buy the product.
The main product and ancillary texts help create a celebrity image for the artists. The ‘Kanye West’ character is presented as in a “gangster” hip-hop style which is represented by the suit which the artist wears in our music video and the photos used in the music videos and is a common costume convention used by similar artists such as Akon. The audience and consumers will be encouraged to buy our product because they’ll recognise similarity between Kanye West and similar artist so they’ll be able to tell if it is a product they would enjoy.
The ‘Adele’ character is presented in an attractive and sophisticated style which is represented by the black dress which the artist wears throughout our music video and our ancillary texts. This costume is similar of a similar style to Amy Winehouse who was a singer of the same genre as ‘Adele’. This is used much to the same effect of Kanye West’s costume of presented the artist to be similar to artists which can be related to Adele and Kanye West because the audience will be able to tell what genre this music video possibly is before they see the music video or hear the song and possibly therefore being more encouraged to buy the product.
I believe that the combination of our main product and are ancillary products are effective in selling the artists and selling the music video on the market because of the way it utilises familiarity in it’s genre. People can be drawn to artists because of the way they dress if they dress similar to artists who they are also similar and can be compared to. The similarity in styles between our music video and our ancillary product helps to create a cohesive package where each product can be identified together which helps the audience recognise the product if they see the magazine advert and then see the digi-pack in a shop.
3) What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
The feedback we’ve received from our peers and teachers has helped me and my group develop and examine aspects of our product by the amount of positive feedback telling us what has been good about our product and the positive criticism telling us what can be improved in our product and whether the aspects in our music video works together as a whole. We received feedback in three different stages of progress in the creation of our music video; The Pitch, The Rough-cut and our Final Edit.
The feedback we received for our initial pitch was positive. Our pitch was a summary of our main ideas of what we wanted our music video to be and how we were going to put the music video together. Both our Peers and our Teachers said that we had mostly thought through our music video quite well in terms of Narrative, Locations, Cinematography and Lighting. However they suggested that we think more about How we were going to gain access to the hotel and whether we had a 2nd plan just in case the hotel didn’t let us film there.
They were also concerned who were going to the actors in our music video, However we assured them that if we could not find suitable actors to be in our music video, We (the members of the group) ourselves would be acting in the music video.
The feedback which we received on our rough cut could have been better in the terms of the value the feedback has given us in terms of positive feedback and criticism. This is because we had not finished editing our rough-cut together and therefore we were only able to show a short part of a music video. Because of this, there was concern of the quality of the music video and the speed of progress we were making on our music video by our peers and teachers. I feel that if we had shown a more complete rough-cut we would have gained more valuable feedback from our peers and teachers to help develop our music video in the post-production process instead of the main criticism of our feedback on our rough cut which was that we needed to continue editing our music video together. However whilst the rough-cut was short, we had gained some usable feedback. Our main positive was how we had used lighting in our music video, they noted that it had looked professional and well-done. They also noted that the actors we were successful in bringing in to act in the music video had performed well in the music video and it had been lip-synced very well.
The feedback we received for our just before and after final edit was mostly positive however there were a few criticisms. One of our main criticisms was that we had not used a wide enough variety of shot-types within our music video, this made some parts of our music video look quite bland and boring. However this was noted just before our final edit, so we tried to amend this by the use of split screen and tint on the rapping part of our music video to make our music video look more visually interesting to our audience. Our peers noted that the costume that the actors wore in the music video had made the actors look professional and believable, which is the feedback we were hoping.
Overall the feedback has been helpful to us in developing and improving our music video during the process of it’s creation. It has made us spend more time focusing on aspects of the music video we otherwise wouldn’t have done. However our feedback was stunted by the fact we had not shown a full rough cut. I believe if we had shown a full rough cut; our final edit would have been much better because we would have known we needed to add more shot-types and the editing would be much more natural and consistent.
4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The use of new media technology has been vital to the successful research, planning creation and evaluation stages of our music video project. In our research stage of our music video project, we used the internet, more specifically YouTube, to research the common conventions of YouTube videos by watching music videos and noting what conventions and trends we see across multiple music videos. We had also used YouTube to research how to set up lighting for the specific purpose of filming a music video, without viewing this video we wouldn’t have seen the value in using extra lighting for our music video and our music video would have looked less professional as a consequence. We also used ‘Blogger’ to organise all of our music video project. This mean’t all of our groups research and planning can be accessed in one place. The main benefit of this was if one of our group’s members who had drawn the storyboard was absent on the day of filming, we would be able to access the story board from the blog and see what was shot was being required.
In the construction of our music video we used High-Definition Camcorders to film the footage for our music video. This enabled us to capture professional-looking footage which in comparison to camera’s we have used in our AS level Children’s film project, the camcorders we used now were much superior in terms of image quality. Another benefit of the HD Camcorders is the in-built hard-drive feature. Which meant we didn’t have to rely on tapes for our music video which limits the amount of footage we can take, it also speeds up the process of transferring the footage to the iMac computers for the post-production process. We also used small still image cameras to take pictures of our storyboard and shot-list so we could post the images of these items to our ‘Blogger’ blog.
We also used a tripod and a dolly in the filming process of our music video. The tripod has helped us create a profession product by helping us achieve better steady, static shots which in the music video looks very professional in comparison to our test-footage of an unsteady static shot where a tripod was not used.
The dolly has helped us capture steady moving shots in our music video.
During the Post-production process of the creation of our music video, We used a semi-professional video editing program “Final Cut Express” which is the ‘Lighter’ version of “Final Cut Pro” which is the video editing software most commonly used in the media, TV and Film industry. Using this software has enabled us to use professional editing techniques used by professional video editors in our music video such as the lip-syncing, split-screen, the use of fading between clips and the tint/colour correction effects we used in our music video which are usually present in professional media products.
We also used lighting during the filming process of the creation of our music video. We decided to use lighting in our music video after watching a youtube video explaining how to set-up lighting and the benefits of using lighting in the music video. We wanted the lighting to be used to make our music video look moody and theatrical which would benefit the mood of the hotel scene of our music video. We also used this lighting for the creation of ancillary products during our photo-shoot of the actors for use in our digi-pack cover and our magazine advertisement.
For our Ancillary Product’s photo-shoot we used a DSLR Camera which enabled us to take high-quality professional images for our ancillary products. These photos were then edited by Sam using Adobe Lightroom to give the photographs the a similar effect used in the hotel scene of the music video (the blue tint and the raised contrast). These edited photographs were then imported into Adobe Photoshop to create both ancillary products (by all group members). Using photoshop had allowed us to manipulate the images to look like a professional magazine advert and a Digi-pack cover.
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