Post on 24-Jan-2018
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and convent ions of real media products?
In our music video we wanted to move away from glamorous stylised videos expected and apprec iated by
main st ream audiences. We wanted to focus on a narrat ive and contrast music video making with fi lm making. We chose not to use regular c lose ups as we
challenged ourselves to c reate a promo and art ist that our audience could engage with not just on the
surface, but also musically. Our main locat ions were well known London landmarks, this creates a sense of
regularity, but i t was our choice of a t rain stat ion, park and a semi-detached house that really created the sense of veris imili tude that we were looking for. This also challenges the commonly used music video
locat ions such as a studio or performance arena.
Our art ist does not s ing the whole way through our music video, we chose for this to happen to challenge the convent ions of music videos. We felt that the art ist should only perform the rap
verses of the song to c reate a mult i-dimensional character and personality. We wanted our art ist
to have many levels like a real person as an alternat ive to the celebrity singers and
performers of today who create voyeurist ic music videos prevent ing the public from really
understanding and connect ing with their music . When the rap is performed our art ist is cheeky, confident which works well with the tone of the
song. During the narrat ive of the video our art ist is more shy and opt imist ic , and the lyrics
become more powerful.
We used dieget ic sound to remind our audience of reali ty; we are market ing our art ist as a real
person who is passionate for his music and is not a commerc ialised and manufac tured band or s inger. The graphics that we inserted and
created post -product ion show an addit ional way in which we challenged the convent ions of
music videos; this is a way in which we emphasised the lyrics of the song and the
meaning that they had to our art ist and to the audience as well. We wanted them to put
themselves into the song to reflec t a t ime in their li fe where they felt the same as our art ist .
• 3t5yBeyonce-Single Ladies, a high production music video.
Our location research in London and Worcester Park Station.
Voyeuristic music video, Shakira-Gypsy
http://www.islandrecords.co.uk
Island Records is one of the biggest UK record labels which we researched.
Pete John, rapper.
Pete John.
How effec t ive is the combinat ion of your main product and anc i llary texts?
We believe that our media products are very effec t ive, we chose to follow Goodwin’s theory of c reat ing a
relat ionship between the lyric s of our song and the visuals that we created. This is very effec t ive in creat ing
a posit ive feeling through our music video which is emphasised and made st ronger through our anc i llary
products . Our MyS pace, Twit ter and YouTube accounts accompanied with our digipak c reate the perfec t
promot ion for our art ist and his first s ingle. Our digipak represents our art ist as an up and coming,
s inger songwriter with natural talent through the relat ively ordinary locat ions edited with images of our art ist posing naturally. Our twit ter page in part icular
allows our art ist ’s fans to follow his day to day li fe and gain a real insight into J ohn Paul.
The links to s imilar art ist s and bands on our soc ial networking sights allows us to gain fans and reach a
wider audience with the psychographics which we ident ified as fi t t ing to our genre and art ist .
Another of Goodwin’s theories was that there is a relat ionship between music and visuals in a music video, this is t rue in our music video espec ially as we chose to
edit with the beat of the music , as the tempo of the song was not too fast this worked well with our narrat ive
based promo. E dit ing in this way amplified our aim to show our art ist as a real person and promote our song.
The anc i llary tasks also need to reflec t the music that our art ist is writ ing, the hybrid genre of our art ist s music
being rap, techno and alternat ive makes for an interest ing accumulat ion of styles avai lable to us for our music video, soc ial network s ites and digipak which we t ried to ut i lise to the best of our abi li ty. The powerful
images of our art ist mixed with florescent graphics and posit ive tones of his music c reates an effec t ive product .
What have you learnt from your audience
feedback? The first research task we undertook was to create a quest ionnaire to gain some feedback from our audience about our genre and what
they would expect to see in a techno/ rap music video. We then used this informat ion to create
a balance between following and challenging the forms and convent ions for a video of our genre, for example many of the people we quest ioned expected it to be set in a c lub or concert which we dec ided would be very difficult to execute to the standard that we were looking for as we did
not have access to these locat ions.
The feedback we had during the edit ing stages of our work was extremely useful; our product was st i ll in the progress of being made with many of
our key elements missing or incomplete. We originally planned not to have our art ist s inging
at all in our video, this however seemed to be too much of a challenge to the music video
convent ions and we re-fi lmed the rapping verses of our song to inc lude our art ist performing
them. This was very successful, we separated this aspec t from the rest of the promo by making i t black and white, this allows our
audience to connect to our art ist as his personali ty and passion is expressed during this
scene. We found light ing our locat ions very challenging
when fi lming outside in part icular, we re-shot a lot of our footage to improve the light ing
condit ions after get t ing feedback from our audience that the poor light ing ruins the quality
of the fi lming. We had to work effic ient ly to finish our fi lming before it got too dark.
Once complete, the feedback we received was largely posit ive, i t was commented
that our video was re-watchable numerous t imes; this was the response that we were aiming for as music videos
are played over so many media plat forms such as television music channels and
the internet . Music videos therefore have to be interest ing enough to sustain the
enjoyment of the audience for numerous viewings. The song which is about love is very upbeat and we tried to encompass this in our video which gained a lot of
recognit ion and good responses.
How did you use media technologies in construct ion and research, planning and
evaluat ion stages?Technology is vital to the creat ion, promot ion
and dist ribut ion of music videos and their art ist s . The creat ion of our product would have been very difficult without digital technology;
the advancement from analogue fi lming is extremely s ignificant . C amera equipment is
much more accessible to amateur fi lm makers and this enables us to make professional quali ty
products at a much lower cost . Our research, and in fac t every aspect of our work
was posted on our blog, this was an ideal way to display our work through linking to websites ,
taking screen shots and embedding videos which inspired us in addit ion to uploading our
own creat ive and research work in many formats .
Our MySpace, artist research, fast and slow sequence and mood board from our blog.
http://iminlovecoombe-media.blogspot.com/
The internet and soc ial network sites c reate numerous opportunit ies to promote an art ist
or band; we made Twit ter, MySpace and YouTube accounts aimed at both digital
nat ives and the forever widening audience of the internet and these s i tes . Twit ter enables our audience to “ follow” a celebrity and their
every move, MyS pace however allows us to post concert and tour dates, photos and music
videos to a typically younger and more musically interested audience as opposed to an audience focused on the celebrity culture
that Twit ter at t rac ts . I t is important to remember that this is st i ll a valuable audience and one which can be very influent ial on other user generated content si tes such as internet chat rooms and blogs which rate music and therefore can effec t the success of an art ist .
The process of convergence through technologies such as the iphone allow our audience to watch our music video on YouTube, lis ten to our song on the radio, follow their movements on Twit ter, or download the song to lis ten to
on their iphone. This is key to the dist ribut ion of an art ist and their s ingle or digipak which can be purchased from these android technologies . We made sure that our
products were therefore compat ible for these devices and that we maximised the dist ribut ion of our video over
these media plat forms.We used imovie to edit our music video in, this enabled us
to successfully s ink our music to our video and our art ist s ’ rapping, and edit to the beat of the music . We used Photoshop to create our digipak, and L iveType to
create and posit ion our addit ional graphics once we had finished the edit ing of our promo. These programmes are vital to the success of our music video as mistakes in the
miming or off-beat cuts make the video seem unprofessional and dist rac t s the audience from the
connect ion we are c reat ing with the audience our art ist and his music through our music video.