1.In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge the conventions of real media products?
When starting our music video project, we learned about genre conventions and Goodwin’s points for a successful music video. Once we had learned this, we had to make our music video challenge or develop the norms of a music video. I believe our group both followed and challenged the norms in a music video. I believe we followed the conventions when we included seeing the Artist and seeing the artists lip syncing. We researched both Adele and Kanye West’s previous music videos and built up an overview of their character, which led to our group using similar costumes for Adele as we believed we should follow a similar theme throughout her videos. Our song ‘Melt my heart into stone’ was an R+B song. We portrayed this by the choice of acting styles and costume. We chose to use a dramatic break up scene in our video which is also seen in other videos from other artists in the same genre. We also chose to lip sync most parts of the song in the video, which again most videos in the R+B genre do. Although, we lip sync through most of the song, which could also be seen as challenging the norms as not many videos nowadays lip sync throughout the song. Lip syncing proved to be difficult for my role as Kanye West as the rapping section was quite hard to learn. We researched Kanye West’s and Adele’s previous music videos and in most cases for Adele and some of Kanye West songs lip syncing occurred, and this therefore shows that we chose to lip sync because the majority of their videos did so, which showed we were sticking to the norms. Also, it was essential that we sold the artist through the narrative of the song. Adele’s previous songs did this extremely well, and showed her emotions very successfully; therefore we needed to film a realistic scene of an argument to portray the emotion and to keep the story flowing rather than having random shots. The lip syncing has a direct link to one of Goodwin’s points about Visuals and Lyrics, as our lyrics are very closely intertwined with the visuals, and what is being said is shown in the emotions of the character. The hotel location for the first section of our music video also followed the typical conventions for an Adele music video. In many of her previous videos, she is shown sitting either in a room or just sitting on her own. We then used the hotel room to show the argument scene as we believed this looked the most professional, and was easier to control the lighting and was easier to film. The use of artificial lighting also helped significantly as we were able to create an image that we would not have been able to do outside, and added to the professionalism of our project.
When starting our music video project, we learned about genre conventions and Goodwin’s points for a successful music video. Once we had learned this, we had to make our music video challenge or develop the norms of a music video. I believe our group both followed and challenged the norms in a music video. I believe we followed the conventions when we included seeing the Artist and seeing the artists lip syncing. We researched both Adele and Kanye West’s previous music videos and built up an overview of their character, which led to our group using similar costumes for Adele as we believed we should follow a similar theme throughout her videos. Our song ‘Melt my heart into stone’ was an R+B song. We portrayed this by the choice of acting styles and costume. We chose to use a dramatic break up scene in our video which is also seen in other videos from other artists in the same genre. We also chose to lip sync most parts of the song in the video, which again most videos in the R+B genre do. Although, we lip sync through most of the song, which could also be seen as challenging the norms as not many videos nowadays lip sync throughout the song. Lip syncing proved to be difficult for my role as Kanye West as the rapping section was quite hard to learn. We researched Kanye West’s and Adele’s previous music videos and in most cases for Adele and some of Kanye West songs lip syncing occurred, and this therefore shows that we chose to lip sync because the majority of their videos did so, which showed we were sticking to the norms. Also, it was essential that we sold the artist through the narrative of the song. Adele’s previous songs did this extremely well, and showed her emotions very successfully; therefore we needed to film a realistic scene of an argument to portray the emotion and to keep the story flowing rather than having random shots. The lip syncing has a direct link to one of Goodwin’s points about Visuals and Lyrics, as our lyrics are very closely intertwined with the visuals, and what is being said is shown in the emotions of the character. The hotel location for the first section of our music video also followed the typical conventions for an Adele music video. In many of her previous videos, she is shown sitting either in a room or just sitting on her own. We then used the hotel room to show the argument scene as we believed this looked the most professional, and was easier to control the lighting and was easier to film. The use of artificial lighting also helped significantly as we were able to create an image that we would not have been able to do outside, and added to the professionalism of our project.
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary products?
I believe that our Ancillary Products are reasonably successful in combination with our main product. I believe this for a number of different reasons, firstly Kanye West and Adele appear in the media product and both the DVD and the magazine advert. This therefore shows that the ancillary products are combining well with the main product as there is a direct link between the 3 as the artists are visual in the ancillary products and the video. Also, the dark coloured attire in the music video is replicated in both ancillary products to give the whole project a memorable theme. The ancillary products are based around a black background, which allows the target audience to recognise the product and link it to the specific music video. Also I believe they are very successful in attracting the target audience as you see both characters on the ancillary products, therefore fans from both Adele and Kanye West would be interested in purchasing this album. The smart look of the products also matches the songs Adele sings. This is because there are not many upbeat, jolly songs made by Adele, and for this reason it was appropriate to make the products much darker and sophisticated, rather than colourful. Selecting certain pictures was also important as this captured the emotion in the Album/song. There is a particular focus on Adele in the ancillary products as this is her Album and only one song features Kanye West, therefore we chose to make the ancillary products more shadowed than a Kanye West product. A key aspect of the ancillary products is that the characters Adele and Kanye West are wearing the same costumes in the pictures as the song we made a video for. This portrays the album as serious, and emotional. The link between the hotel scene and the cover is very important as it is capturing the emotion of the album/song and shows that this album contains songs that are meaningful. The dark looking products link directly to the hotel scene in the video, and links to the deep emotion in the album. When looking at previous ancillary products from Adele, we noticed that there was little emphasis placed on text, although there is a similar font in each of her previous albums. Seeing this we researched what font we could use and found a similar font which links very well to her previous albums. It is key that after looking at her previous products, there needed to be a particular focus on the character as this is what happened in previous products. The choice of picture was vital as we had to capture the emotion and still make the album look exciting, rather than dull. Linking back to Adele’s previous products also enables us to keep the same target audience as it is very recognizably Adele’s product so many of her fans would buy the album, and for Kanye West fans as he is still on the cover for the album. 3. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
When we made our initial pitch, we were asked a number of questions on cost, costume, time and acting. This enabled us to develop ideas answering these questions and to face any problems that may have arisen at a later stage earlier because the feedback had told us the problems they noticed. After our initial plan had been discussed, we then developed a rough cut of our video. We received a number of different comments from the audience that we could work on for our final product. These included comments about needing more of the argument scene, quicker shots of the male character and more variety in camera angles. As the rapping scene was weaker than the hotel scene, we needed to make it more exciting by using quicker shot types and varying between lip syncing and not to make the video look more effective for example the use of a split screen in the latter stages of the video. When not lip syncing in the video we chose to move between the Adele character and the kanye West character, this again linked to the narrative and showed more clearly to the audience that they had had an argument and that it was a very emotional time. We chose to not lip sync when the lip syncing didn’t seem to work or where the rapping section was very hard, this therefore helped our group keep professionalism as we didn’t have someone lip syncing the wrong words in our video which helped keep our music video successful.
From this we knew that we had a number of things we could work on to drastically improve our video. Using this feedback we then worked on our final product and presented this to the class. We received great feedback from the audience and this was mainly due to the improvements we had made from the audience feedback from the rough cut video. We still had a small issue with the lip syncing in the video but this is only a tiny section of the video. Audience feedback is very important and was essential to us completing our video with minimal errors and looking as professional as possible. Teacher comments were also very important, for example we had a comment that said we could improve the last section of the video to make them more exciting as it seemed to tail off. We then improved this by including a flashback effect of the argument scene which played underneath the footage near the end of the video. This helped increase the level of professionalism in the video and helped make our video unique. I believe that the vary in slow shot types at the beginning of the video and fast with the rap was very effective in creating the atmosphere of the argument. I believe that if we had stuck to one way of editing, the argument scene would not have looked as effective and maybe would have confused the audience.
4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
We used many different types of software to help us construct and plan our product. For example we used Blogger to plan our music video, and to post any research we did on the project on to the blog. Blogger was essential to us finishing the project as everyone in our group could see what work needed to be done and what everyone else was doing in the lesson. The internet was vital in researching and watching previous videos from Adele and Kanye West , without the internet we would not have been able to research in the excessive detail we did for our project which would have led to a weaker music video as we would have had no influences and no clue about Adele and Kanye West themselves. Final cut was used for editing the footage we had filmed. This is the most important piece of software we used and enabled us to make a professional looking music video. One key aspect of final cut is that it enabled us to make a flashback scene very successfully, and this worked very well within our video as it made our video look more complex and unique. Final cut also allowed us to insert the dark blue tint across our hotel scene, this was important as it added to the footage and made it more interesting as well as showing the emotion. We used light room to edit the photos we had taken which we would then use in our ancillary products to make them look more effective and more presentable to the real world. We also used Photoshop to make our ancillary products. This was in my opinion the hardest piece of software to use, and it enabled us to make ancillary products to the best of our ability. I believe it is the hardest as there are so many things that could be done to do the same thing on Photoshop, which was very confusing for me personally to use but in the end it proved to be very successful in changing font types and generally making our ancillary products look very catching and memorable for the target audience. We filmed using a HD camera and this offered a high quality, professional looking image when filming. The high resolution camera, enabled us to look at shots we had made in high detail and then see if they were effective, and due to the image being much clearer it was easier to tell if something had gone wrong or if something was just not quite right. We thought about using a dolly in our music video for the tracking shots, but after looking at our location we realised that there was a minimal amount of flat flooring for us to use the dolly as it would have looked tacky and unprofessional as it would have been extremely wobbly. Sam used a extremely good camera to take the photos for our ancillary products. This was very well done and helped make our ancillary products look very professional.
We used many different types of software to help us construct and plan our product. For example we used Blogger to plan our music video, and to post any research we did on the project on to the blog. Blogger was essential to us finishing the project as everyone in our group could see what work needed to be done and what everyone else was doing in the lesson. The internet was vital in researching and watching previous videos from Adele and Kanye West , without the internet we would not have been able to research in the excessive detail we did for our project which would have led to a weaker music video as we would have had no influences and no clue about Adele and Kanye West themselves. Final cut was used for editing the footage we had filmed. This is the most important piece of software we used and enabled us to make a professional looking music video. One key aspect of final cut is that it enabled us to make a flashback scene very successfully, and this worked very well within our video as it made our video look more complex and unique. Final cut also allowed us to insert the dark blue tint across our hotel scene, this was important as it added to the footage and made it more interesting as well as showing the emotion. We used light room to edit the photos we had taken which we would then use in our ancillary products to make them look more effective and more presentable to the real world. We also used Photoshop to make our ancillary products. This was in my opinion the hardest piece of software to use, and it enabled us to make ancillary products to the best of our ability. I believe it is the hardest as there are so many things that could be done to do the same thing on Photoshop, which was very confusing for me personally to use but in the end it proved to be very successful in changing font types and generally making our ancillary products look very catching and memorable for the target audience. We filmed using a HD camera and this offered a high quality, professional looking image when filming. The high resolution camera, enabled us to look at shots we had made in high detail and then see if they were effective, and due to the image being much clearer it was easier to tell if something had gone wrong or if something was just not quite right. We thought about using a dolly in our music video for the tracking shots, but after looking at our location we realised that there was a minimal amount of flat flooring for us to use the dolly as it would have looked tacky and unprofessional as it would have been extremely wobbly. Sam used a extremely good camera to take the photos for our ancillary products. This was very well done and helped make our ancillary products look very professional.
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