Group - Evaluation

Alasdair Sharp

Question 1, 2 & 4

Question 3 - Audience Research

Callum Bennett

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3 - Audience Research

Question 4

Joshua Marchant

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3 - Audience Research

Question 4  

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.

Group - Question 3 Rough Cut and in-production concept development.

Rough Cut

We tested a rough cut of the video and the feedback was that some of our footage was very strong but some of it was very weak. After this we decided that we would re-shoot some of our footage. The testing of our rough cut to the audience was vital to the success of our music video, and because they are the people who would watch our video their input was very important to us. 

I



In-production Concept development

During the production we also had alot of feedback from our peer group about how we were able to improve the work we did. One of the most major of these was the reshoot of over 30% of our footage. We were reluctant to do this but did it on the advice of a few people. We realised after this that we had to listen to the people around us for advice and we may not be the most critical of our own work. 

In this video we are seen discussing the concept development for our video.

We were also told that the rough cut was sometimes unclear and they had sometimes got lost while watching. This helped us to introduce the lettering infront of all of the sterotypes to stop this from happening.

Group Evaluation - Concept Devlopment

- Testing the concept towards a target audience before pitching was vital, it helped us understand what was expected of our target audience, allowing us to give the music video the theme and style needed to portray the conventions towards the target audience.

- We asked questions to the audience in an informal manner, we hoped for a similar response, we did this to help maximise honesty rather than a questionnaire which can be boring and lead to dishonesty. A face to face approach worked a lot better.

- The feedback we got was mostly aimed at sticking to the conventions of rap, which included;

• urban locations
• creating a meta-narrative
• appropriate clothing style
• addressing the camera
• artist prevalence throughout

- More feedback was suitable for the conventions of a music video, allowing us to differentiate it from other media texts such as films, our results were;

• beat interlinked with cutting rate
• visuals appropriate to sound
• movement of camera
• interesting
• length

- After speaking about the humorous style we wanted to convey, the results we got back were that it would be hard but very unique if we were to pull it off. However this very important information allowed us to get the greenlight in the final pitch, this information proved vital to our success as we could use it as evidence to prove the quality of our concept.

CB - Evaluation Q1 'Forms and conventions'

- The genre of our music track is rap/UK hip-hop and this is evidently reflected in the music video. In terms of Goodwin (Dancing In The Distraction Factory, 1992) we share similar codes and conventions of the rap genre including the clothing and style of our protagonist artist. The style of the cap has strong references to the rap genre, whilst the hi-top shoes also show a code that reflects the artists’ rap/hip-hop approach. Many rap videos also share the same narrative performance in a literal way; artists such as Eminem use this as a convention. Furthermore the usage of ‘breaking the fourth wall’ is a strong convention of this particular genre and can be seen in other rap music videos.

- The relationship between lyrics and visuals of our music video is performed in a very illustrative and literal way, following the narrative of the lyrics in an amplified manner. This can be seen through the narrative in which the artist (Dr. Syntax) attempts to fit in with the subcultures of society. The relationship between music and visuals is more subtle, however it can be seen when the protagonist is addressing the camera, and when the beat of the song matches with the cutting rate.

- We have many close-ups and star image motifs in our music video; throughout our performance shots we have the meat shot of the artist breaking the fourth wall, giving the artist an aural grain of voice. Our visual motifs can be seen through his constant clothing and hat; these represent his constant relation to rap. This emphasises the artist and his voice, as seen in many rap music videos.

- Furthermore our humorous type approach is emphasised within our use of 'stocky text', this is also conveyed in our print media aswell, this helps converge all our forms of media together allowing the target audience to gain the main conventions of the genre, but also get the uniqueness of the artist and the amusement he conveys. Similar artists include Eminem, this can be seen in his music video 'Without Me' in which the comic book style text conveys humour, and creates a meta-narrative.

Eminem, Without Me (J. Kahn, 2002)



Our text styles:






- The form of our music video is evident, it is easily established as a music video through lip syncing, throughout the video with the artist rapping, it is easily evident that it is him that is rapping. The breaking of the fourth wall is also another convention of music videos, excluding it from media texts such as films. Also the length of the video is much shorter than of a film or other forms of media texts. The relationship between music, lyrics and visuals is very clear, making it obvious that it is a music video, something that cannot be seen in other forms of media. The movement of the camera and fast cutting rate differentiates itself from films and keeps the video interesting throughout its short time period. Furthermore the performance and narrative interlinked together brings all aspects of the visuals and track together further emphasising the music video.

- Our narrative does draw upon binary oppositions, throughout our music video there is only one particular subculture in which a women is evident. This perhaps indicating the all-male domination of the rap genre, we do not challenge this stereotype but reinforce it as nearly all of our music video contains male figures only. Furthermore binary oppositions also occur in the subcultures of society, we reinforce this through differentiation of the subcultures, stereotyping them so there is a clear difference between groups in society. Binary opposition also appears through the artist and all the subculture groups, we make it clear that he cannot ‘fit in’ with any other social group, following the lyrics, showing his uniqueness and individuality. This is emphasised as he is alone at the start of the video and at the end.


End



Start





- There is also narrative closure, mostly in concern to the artists’ meta-narrative, at the end of the track he explains how he cannot fit in and socialise with subculture groups such as Hippie’s.

- In the music video we have created the artist in a very energetic and playful way. We can see this through the out-going attitude of our artist and the narrative based storyline in which the artist attempts to fit in with different social cultures. This particular theme which goes on throughout the music video conforms to the youthful manner of which they are energetic. We also have an evident playful attitude of the artist, taking the lyrics and visualising them in a humorous way.  We took influences of this idea from the famous introduction to ‘Fresh Prince of Bel air’.

- The artists playful attitude also rejects the idea of stereotypical cultures within society as at the end of the song the lyrics state ‘none of these subcultures offer me a place to be myself’, implying his inability to fit into any social group, considering himself as an outsider.

- In our music video we have created an ideological discourse in which the idea of subcultures is celebrated through their differences and uniqueness, offering particular people to fit into a particular social group. We maximised this through the lyrical based visuals by stereotyping the subcultures in an amusing way, giving the artists rap conventions, uniqueness in the entertaining lyrics but also giving meaning and a message to the song. However the music video also reinforces individuality, as the artist does not fit in with any subculture rejecting the idea of splitting up people within modern society and also supporting the idea that you cannot stereotype people. 

- However the irony of the music video is conveyed in a more humorous way, this idea comes through the same actor representing all the different subcultures. Also the ‘comic book’ style text when introducing the subcultures gives a further amusing style. The non-verbal language of each stereotype is emphasised to give each subculture and clear difference from one another.

CB - Evaluation Q2 'Combinations of Texts'

- The brief of our print media is to ultimately sell our product; we set out to do this by creating three different pieces of print with a consistent style throughout all three pieces. These would produce consistent similarities creating cross media convergence and synergy. 

- We have created a cohesive brand image where possible as we have included basic promotional information. We used key information including tour dates, a record label, a website and a track list. This will connote to the viewer the artist’s success and significant information. We create a clear visual link across our print media. This is evident through our use of colour and text.  Many artists such as Kano (see below) create this link across their different media texts. The similarities across the media prints are similar, both showing the meat of the artist, conveying conventions of the rap genre through the clothing style, text and look of the artist.

- The background colour is a dull red colour which carries across all the print texts. This will connote to the reader the three different texts, allowing the reader to link between album and the artist’s tour dates. The use of text is also a clear similarity across the print texts; the same text will connote to the reader an evident link across the texts, giving them all the key information for them to purchase the product.

- We set out with the idea of creating the music video in a more traditional US hip hop way, using one long shot throughout our music video, as seen here;

The Pharcyde, Drop, (S. Jonze, 1996)




- However we instead conformed to the mainstream tendency to include lots of close ups, create a meta-narrative, visual motif and give the artist a lot of prevalence in the music video. This idea can be seen throughout our print media, we have created a ‘meat’ shot in all three print texts, as seen here in the Kano album cover and advert. However a slight change of effect has allowed us to also differentiate the artist from rap in a unique way changing his appearance in a simpler and unique way. 

- In terms of Dyer’s critical framework, the star image is constructed through the conventional use of the meat shot used by many rap artists to promote themselves. We have put an artistic style to create an obvious uniqueness within our artist. This is used to differentiate the artist from other rappers and promote himself separately as his music is separate from the rap genre. 

- The use of web 2.0 is now a daily activity for many people, the creation of sites such as ‘Youtube’ and ‘Facebook’ have created a new form of communication across different countries, different interests and different markets. ‘Facebook’ and ‘Youtube’ have made it much easier for music artists to locate their target audience, allowing them to promote their music in a much easier way. Smaller artists such as ‘DR. Syntax’ have benefitted hugely from this, now grabbing viewers’ attention through different music and promotional texts. We have also conformed to this style by creating a postmodern theme to match with his new form of rap music but also kept the main conventions of the rap genre to allow browsing viewers to quickly understand which form and genre the artist’s music is.

- The text of our print media anchors the meat image in all of three of the texts, the text used differentiates itself from the image, allowing the artist to be seen in the conventional rap manner and also the unique humorous approach which he also conveys in his songs. This idea can also be seen in Eminem’s album ‘Just Lose It’, the same idea of the meat shot and the implementation of humour through the text (and image in this case) suggests his uniqueness and ‘funny’ style in which some of his songs are written. 

- The print media of our artist is polysemic (open) offering a variety and depth of meanings, all conferring to modern society and the way people are structured within it. The preferred reading of the text accumulates to the changing of people to ‘fit in’ with a particular social group and the celebrating of individuality as seen through Dr. Syntax.  However the music video can also be read in an alternative way, mostly through ambient viewing, it can be seen to celebrate social groups, giving people a refuge and separation from others.

CB - Evaluation Q4 'ICT'

- During the creative process web 2.0 applications helped us inspirations from other music videos of the same genre; the website Youtube helped us get the conventions of the rap genre whilst also looking at Dr. Syntax other styles of music video such as ‘Hire Me’ another humorous video which visualises the lyrics in an amplified way.

Dr. Syntax, Hire Me, (Unknown, 2010)

- Using Blogger had great advantages but also challenges that we had to overcome. It gave us the opportunity to get all the information and ideas down in a structured format, and the easy accessibility allowed us to draw upon ideas and inspirations quickly and efficiently. Furthermore the blog also allowed us as a group to communicate with each other and enabled ideas to expand in an ordered style without confusion.

- However as the blog was on the internet we had to have access to web 2.0 to use it, this became a problem when we were on shoots in Brighton, we did not have the information or ideas at our reach to fully full fill our music video. Also the blog itself restricted the amount of forms of media we could put on it, for example putting any program of Microsoft onto the Blog had problems and was very time consuming, and in some cases copy and paste of writing and images was restricted. 

- Other packages used to communicate our ideas included ‘Prezi’, a PowerPoint program which expanded our ideas in an informal way, allowing us to speak at the same time when presenting. Also, survey monkey enabled us to put our questionnaire in a survey format which we could then put on social websites such as Facebook. Youtube also helped us get inspirations from other rappers and gain the genre’s conventions. Youtube also allowed us to put links onto the blog so we could develop our ideas and also explain the styles which we wanted to create.

 

- The animatic was very significant as it gave us a very structured narrative and specific shot list to follow, this prevented us from getting too confused on what we were shooting. However the locations used in the animatic were not any specific location, just general places around Brighton and other locations, therefore we found it hard when trying to find places to film.

- Web 2.0 really helped us reach our target audience, we did this through social networking sites such as Facebook, over Facebook we could invite specific people or share the music video and questionnaire publicly. Other online sites such as Youtube also allowed us to reach a very specific audience, and other fans of Dr. Syntax and the rap genre.

- The program Photoshop was extremely helpful in creating our print text; we used fonts, filters and effects to create the print we wanted. The text was similar throughout all the texts creating a defined link between each print. Personally I used the filter ‘cut-out’ to give the artist an art style drawing effect, this enabled us to convey the protagonist with the conventions through the meat of the image but also in a unique way through the artistic style. We took inspirations from a number of album covers and one illustrator. The Grives album cover represents the style we were trying to create, whilst the illustrato Paul Willoubhy had an artistic style which we also wanted to convey.

 - When editing our group had many problems associated with the program Premiere. We constantly had to render the footage as the program could not cope with the amount of editing techniques and complexity of the footage, making it very slow and hard to keep progressing. We overcame this problem by rendering short bits of the footage that we had been working on; however this was still slow and restricted growth of the music video.