Banke AdebolaA2 Music Video Evaluation

Question 1

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

In my music video I have used real forms and conventions of a house/dance music video. The main convention of many music

videos is fast cut montage and I have incorporated that throughout my music video to keep it pacy and keep viewers interested. I also used split screen twice in my music video to give a variety of shots and also to enable the concept of the

video. The split screen also helped in cutting down some footage that would have taken longer if they were not used as a split screen

shot. I also used slow motion effect on some footage in my music video. The slow motion was used to create the convention used in many house/dance music videos. A

code convention of a house/dance music video is to have a performance by dancers in a club freestyling and the

club is usually dark and heavily lit with strobe lights.

• The main codes&conventions of a House/dance music video is that it usually has a message about dancing or love. The song we chose for our music video has a message about dancing and that is why we chose a dance theme for the concept for our music video. Another codes&conventions of a house/dance music video is that the video will be centred around the club, where a DJ will be performing and this is usually a reference to the home of house/dance music; Ibiza.

• We tried to incorporate that in our video by using a dark room and special lighting to get the effect of a club. We also added a relationship between lyrics and visuals when the lyrics of the song says ‘grab me a partner’ and one of the dancers grabs someone to dance with her.

Relationship between music and visuals ‘grab me a partner’

Use of bright lighting

I have also incorporated the idea of people dancing in a club in my music video.

Another code&convention of a house/dance music video is that the DJ does not frequently feature in the video. His/her are not shown as the main act. Also they usually have a female sing the vocals of their song. In our music video we chose not to reveal the DJ until the last scene of our music video which was the club scene. We thought this scene would be the most appropriate to introduce the DJ in. We developed the idea or using logos to represent the DJ before he was revealed to our audience in our music video. This is an idea we developed because most new artists or bands have clos-ups of their faces in their new music video to establish them as an artist and it is also something requested from the record labels. So we decided to use a logo to establish DJ DELIRIOUS throughout the video, instead of having close-ups of his face.

Question 1 continued…

Question 2

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?The digipak and poster I have made to promote DJ DELIRIOUS works well with the music video. There is use of repeated theme in all three products. The use of bright colours in both the poster and digipak is a code&convention of a house/dance album and poster.

I used a black background for my digipak and use of bright colours which is reminiscent of strobe lights in a club. The digipak also establishes the DJ more than it does in the music video, this ensures that out target audience knows who he is. The images on the digipak also illustrate that it is house/dance genre digipak through the images I have chosen to put on it and the way they are lit. The song choices also follow codes&conventions of a house/dance music genre. Some of the songs include, ‘Dance with me’ and ‘She likes to dance’. Most of the title of the songs on my digipak are songs that our target audience which is males and females from ages 14 onwards would be able to identify with.

Question 2 continued…

• The poster also follows codes&conventions of house/dance magazine release. I included the conventions of a magazine release poster such as links to social media like Facebook and Twitter which would be essential to promote this artist to our target audience. Also the poster has a unifying theme with my video and digipak through the use of bright colours which I have used to promote DJ DELIRIOUS.

The unifying theme I have used in all three products in the logo for DJ DELIRIOUS this allows the artist to be identified easily by target audience. On the poster the date I decided to release the digipak was on the 18th

February. This is significant because most new songs are released earlier on in the year to generate a lot of interest and publicity within the audience before summer. In particular, house/dance music albums are released early on in the year in preparation for the home of house music, Ibiza in the summer.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?After the first screening of our music video we got a lot of feedback from our peers and teacher. The main criticism that was made was that the narrative was not evident in our video because we didn’t show the final edit. Another criticism was that the shots needed to be tighter and we needed more cuts because they weren’t fast-paced enough so people got disinterested quickly. After hearing this we added a lot more cuts especially towards the end of the video and the middle. We also added a variety of shots. Once we finished editing the narrative of the video was definitely clear to viewers. When we showed the final edit of our Music Video to our class they all thought it had improved from the first time we showed it. There were a couple of changes suggested like more noticeable shots from of the logo, cropping the shots in the church because they could not be filmed again and including the name of the song and artist at the beginning of the video. In my opinion the things that worked are the dancing from the dancers

because it made the whole thing believable. The slow motion effect used at the end because it gives it a club feel and lastly the logo helped to build the narrative and create a sense of anxiety at who the DJ was.The things that didn’t work were the lack of varied shots to keep it even more pacy. The people in the club dressed in school uniform because it makes it less believable and the location we used didn’t always go so well with the video.

Question 3

Question 3 continued…

• The general feedback given for my digipak was that I had put the images in the wrong places on the panels and it needed to be changed. Also another feedback before I had done any changes to it was that it I need to add more original images to it.

• Some of my peers thought the digipak does resemble a house/dance music style album and elements that are used in house/dance album such as bright colours and big and bold typography are obvious on digipak.

The magazine release poster was also criticised for not having an original image on it. However I decided to use the logo I created as the logo for DJ DELIRIOUS because this allows the audience to be able to identify with him easier and it establishes him as an original. Again, the bright colours and bold typography attracts an audience easier. The things I thought that didn’t work on the poster was that I didn’t add an effect on the image that represent the DJ on the front. I think adding an effect to make it glow or instead of the DJ been black and white I could have changed it to colour.

Poster

Digipak

Question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Firstly for my research into House/ Dance music genre I used Youtube to search fro videos and artists that produced music in that genre. This helped us to know what the codes&conventions of the genre we chose and it influenced our music video to an extent.I also used Prezi to make a presentation on the Lyfe Jennings Digipak and also to do a research into what sort of images and themes I wanted to include in my Digipak.I used I-movie to edit my animatic storyboard we used i-movie because we thought I’d be easier and quicker to use I-movie and we weren’t really confident then on Final Cut pro so i-movie enabled us to have a choice. I also used Google calendar to make a schedule for when my group will be filming. The form of new media was really helpful because showed our teacher that we were organised; we knew what we were doing. It also helped us to remember when and where we will be filming next and who needed to be reminded.

Question 4 continued…

• Another form of new media we used was Youtube converter. This helped us concert our track from youtube so we could put it on our phone and helped us a lot when we were filming. We used youtube to find the track we wanted and there was a lot of different edits of the track to the original that had been made so we had a lot of choice there too.

• Social networking sites were used for our evaluation feedback to see how our target audience felt about the video; what worked and what didn’t work so well.

• Photoshop was also used in various stages of research and planning my music video. I used photoshop to make our audience research, logos, digipak and magazine release poster.

• I also use a basic digital camera to take pictures and record all the times we went out filming to show evidence we filmed those scenes ourselves. The digital camera were also used to take pictures of the locations we thought of during research and planning stage to see if our peers and teachers thought it suited the genre of our music video.