AS - Evaluation

Question 1 Forms and Conventions

Using Goodwin’s framework (Dancing in the distraction factory, 1992) we can deconstruct and analyse the music video. The genre of our music track is rap and we believe we have conveyed the characteristics of the genre in the video.

We have used costume to represent the protagonist, the artist – look “normal” and “cool” compared to everyone else in the video. His plain clothes make him hard to be identified and look neutral to all the social groups. This can give the illusion he is the only “normal person”.

The relationship between lyrics and visuals is very apparent in our music video. The lyrics of the social groups are directly related to the visuals. As the social groups appear in the lyrics the social groups appear in the video. For example when he talks about “Trendies” the camera cuts to people cutting his hair and this is related to the lyric “They told me to get my hair bleached”.

There are many close-ups of the artist in our music video and this supports the visual motif of the artist in all of his other videos as they all have close ups of his performing in a neutral environment. In most of the video the artist is breaking the fourth wall and is addressing the audience. This builds up a  para social intimacy between the artist and the audience which is vital of the sale and advertisement of the video. 

We have one instance of the notion of looking in our music video when one of the subcultures is looking into a mirror and we can see the subculture in the mirror and directly from the camera. This allows the audience to consume the subcultres in a voyeristic way.

I believe our music video to be performance and narrative base and the performance is interlinked with the narrative. This gives our video and in-depth feel about it and the humour in our video will make the audience switch from ambient to focused viewing as the video contains a social message for the audience to decode.

The form of a music video is apparent in our video due to the construction of our music video. We have used many of the techniques seen in music videos including the artist breaking the fourth wall, and the first person mode of address. Secondly it is apparent that the soundtrack is running the whole way through the video, also the visuals are cut in with the soundtrack, this is a signifier that it is a music video and this conforms with the conventions of music videos. The video conforms to its genres conventions by making the artist seem “normal” to the audience. For example the stereotypes throughout our video show the artist in a positive light and trying to influence the way in which the world is run.

This video shows the protagonist breaking the four wall and addressing the audience.

The audience will recognise the way in which the artist is shown in a positive light and is shown to be rejecting the conformists and the other characters in the video and this is reflected throughout the whole genre. In Devlin’s videos he is shown to be superior in fashion and wealth despite him being from a lower or same class background. 

This video shows the way in which Devlin shows his fashion motif.

The narrative draws on narrative closure due to the nature of the lyrics of the song. Our ending is concluding the narrative by showing the artist talking about how he cannot find anyone he fits in with and therefore has given these groups a message that they should not change for other people and to just be themselves rather than conforming to what other people believe to be right.

Using semiotics we can see take an overall message from the video that people will try to change who they are to fit in. The video is trying to show that you do not have to change who you are to fit in a and that you should always try and be yourself.

There is discourse through the stereotypes we portray in our video. All of our stereotypes are different - one actor playing the different stereotypes - but the same. We have the same two people in all of our stereotypes but they are different in each of the cut scenes. This difference is vital to displaying the message of our video that you should not change just to facilitate other people but just be yourself.

Our video challenges the dominant ideology of rapper who do not care about other people and only look out for themselves. This video is trying to show the artist in a positive light and trying to get people to just be themselves rather than following the crowd.

Question 2  Combination of Texts

The brief was to create a music video and print media which advertises an artist. We have set out to create a cohesive artist image to promote the album through our use of the meat shot and the artist’s visual motifs being use throughout the whole of our video and print media.

Our advertisement was designed to run in NME magazine. This magazine is used to promote new talent and this is the category we believe our artist falls into. This is one of the reasons be believe NME would be a good magazine for our artist to be featured in. Secondly we believe the target audience is the same for the magazine as for our music video. This means we think it is a very good match for our product.

We chose to design a full page advert to go in this magazine that we think serves its purpose very well. We made sure the dominant reading path was taken into account and so have placed the important information over this path. We have also made the image and text relevant to the target audience. We have tried to make it relatable with some clothes the audience might wear and the text the audience may use on their computers.

The audience would recognise many things in our print texts. Firstly they would recognise the text in our print media which is the same as the font in the music video. This is very important with linking our media texts together and fully utilise our advertising potential. Furthermore the audience will recognise the cap the artist is wearing and is the only continual thing throughout the entire advertising campaign.

Our use of visual motifs reinforces the artist’s views in society. With the artist being from a rebellious stereotype the cap makes him relatable to the target audience.

The digipak conveys how the artist is very much about his music. With 3 of the 4 panes of the digipak being something to do with music with the other being a still of the video we have tried to display the message that this is about the music and not about vilifying certain people, and the soundtrack we have done is reinforcing this. 

All of the texts link to the video through two ways. Firstly the hat the artist has on throughout the whole music video and he has one through all the print media. This is a vital link as it is one we feel is the strongest as the cap gives off a specific message. Secondly the font we have used in the text has a direct relation with the music video we have produced.

Question 4 ICT

We used Blogger.com as a collaborative e-portfolio in our group throughout the planning, construction and evaluation. For example we used it for discussing our concept development helping us to contact each other whilst not at school. We also were able to talk about ideas to one another helping us to move our idea forward whilst not at school.

Blogger.com is an example of web 2.0 because it is interactive and allows for democratisation because it allows anyone to be an author, by doing this it also allows for the communication between people all over the world. This means it is a pull technology and with the wealth of knowledge on Blogger.com it pulls people from around the world aiding in a more pluralistic media landscape.

In order to plan our pieces we used Blogger to upload a technical analysis and concept development. The technical analysis allowed us to see the average shots there were in a three minute music video. The concept development allowed us to communicate ideas whilst not in our media lessons allowing for good communication within the group. Also, with it being web 2.0 it allowed for easy access from home making it easy to talk to one another.

Using Adobe Premier, we constructed an animatic through the use of a tripod and HD camera to take shots of our storyboard and manipulating the shots through the use of time stretch in Adobe Premier 9.0. This allowed use to match the cutting rate we would have with the shots we had allowing for the planning to be very comprehensive letting us see how many more shots we needed to fill the time we had. 

When shooting, we used HD cameras. The challenges we overcame were the weather, light, the public and indoor locations. The weather was probably the hardest to overcome as we did not have enough people to shoot and keep the camera dry. This meant it restricted us to undercover locations stopping us from working to full potential.

Secondly we had the lighting. With filming on different days and us all having prior commitments we had a variation in the light we had. One day we went filming it was sunny and this showed on the shots we had. A weeks after when we went again it was overcast and halfway through it started to rain again.

The indoor shots we found to be very grainy and this restricted us to what we could do. We had to adjust the exposure and white balance to try and correct this. Lastly the mise-en-scene was also very hard to get right. Members of the public would walk right in front of the camera delaying the start time of a shot and sometime ruining an otherwise good shot.

To edit the video, we used Adobe Premier 9.0. Some of the key techniques we used were: 16 point garbage matte. This was used to move the shots for the screens into place and adjust the size of them. We also used image control to adjust the brightness and saturation of some of the darker shots we had from the overcast shooting day. This tool was very good and helped our footage to look good. Lastly we used the transition fade to black. This helped us with some of our shots that did not look good at the end and we also had a shot that started pitch black so this was a very good help moving into this shot. 

In this video it shows the 16 point garbage matting that was used to put the shots on the screens.

We used a still SLR camera to take our digipak still pictures we were going to used. This helped us with our quality of shot. This will also allow use to have our digipak and advertisement looking professional and help us to achieve the look we want.

In Adobe Photoshop, we manipulated our shots we took with the still camera to help create the digipak and advert designs we wanted. We did this by using he filters provided by the version of premier the school had. We found these to be very effective and helped us to create the design that we had wanted. We also used the image control on the software to help take the colour out of the shots we needed to create this illusive effect.

To carry out the audience research we used Survey Monkey to make the survey and Facebook to distribute the survey. This was useful as with these we were able to reach a mass market and the target audience for our product. It allowed us to create the type of questionnaire we wanted and allowed us to distribute it in the way we wanted.