Rob's Evaluation

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

As are music video was of a hip-hip genre normally there would be typical characteristics that conform to this type of genre. But we chose not to conform to these characteristic. It challenges the way a stereotypical hip hop video looks by the way we have chosen not to objectify women or have expensive mis-en-scene, both these aspect being of the stereotypical hip hop genre. For example in the music video ‘Candy Shop’ by 50 Cent, this has a lot of objectified women. Looking at good wins points there is a large contrast between the music and the visuals, this being that the song is rapping about something complete opposite to where we have filmed, this being a school. The locations as well is not very conventional as most rap videos are situated on the streets or in some pimped out club or mansion. The idea of the school was just to empathises it being a normal situation for the nerd character(artist).

We thought it would be a good idea to differ the iconography that typical hip hop music videos uses for example the hoods and chavish clothing. We wanted to represent the artist as a normal everyday character. This was so the audience could relate to the character in the video as it is similar to most teenaged audiences. The artist is represented as a nerd not very social or attractive, we wanted this as we didn’t want to conform to the hip hop genre, though I feel doing this attracts the audience in a way that is more funny. The idea of the nerd was to make the audience laugh, this again is why it relates more to a teenaged audience because they would find this odd immature character funny.

Also through the video it doesn’t always have the artist rapping to the audience thought we did put a small amount of this in. In some parts we chose to conform to the genre by the way we had the artist always on screen, this being the nerd. We did this as we thought it be best to give some sort of idea to the audience that it was a hip hop style song but with a cheeky fun twist. Not serious gangsters rapping to an audience giving impressions of toughness and glamour. Our music challenges these conventions with a more comic video. Typical hip hop video have a variety of shots that stick to the beat of the music as well as lots of main close ups of the artist , our video conforms to this characteristic as well as we kept a lot of the editing linked to the beat of the music as well as the visuals in the video also kept with the beat of the music, this conforms to the stereotypical characteristics. There are many close ups of the nerd character in the video this conforms to the genre and the audience are able to identify this character to be the artist as he is the main character on screen.

The choice in making are character funny gave the video a sort of comedy element we wanted to keep this thorough the whole video, this differs from typical rap videos for example, “ok, you’re right” by 50 cent. This video starts with a cops and robbers shoot out. Very different to how we started are video with a comic start.

Are video meets the demands of the audience by the way we have tried to make the audience laugh as the video start the audience can guess its going to be funny by the way the nerd starts dancing to the quirky start of the song.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

There are a variety of links between our digi pack ad music video for example we have keep the same clothing from the main artist character ( the nerd) in the video and used images of this same character in the dig pack, this keeps continuity through are products, this I feel is very effective. Another thing we did to are dig pack was to have a ongoing theme of colour, this colour was purple as it was the main colour on the artists top, example of this theme being that the images and colour of fonts were all purple this again was to keep some sort of link between each piece, I thought this was effective as the combination between all of them worked well and have made each product stand out more , empathising them. This empathise on each product in the dig pack promotes the artist well which would enables album/ gig sales. Similar image were used one both the DVD cover and magazine advert this empathised the artists on the front, selling the artist to the viewer, this was the effect we wanted. To keep with the comic side of our video we also choose to have funny pictures of the main artist on the dig pack this was to empathises the products as funny. This challenge normal conventions as we wanted it to be funny not serious. The magazine advert promotes the DVD cover by the way the audience can relate to the cover as they would recognise the artist( nerd image on front), this enables the promotion of the artist and as well this would then attract new audiences. It would appeal directly to the audience by the way it shows similar images from the video plus as well we have tried to make the product and a comical element to them by the way we have chosen the images of the artist to have very comic expressions.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Looking back I have learnt alot about how our audience thought about are video. With there ideas and comments made we have been able to edit are music video to improve it in ways our audience felt it needed be. Also feedback from audience showed us what aspects of the video worked well and whether we had continuity in our dig pack. Other feedback criticised our work which I feel was also need as then from the criticism our group was able to improve of things that weren’t so good. For example are video had gaps and our audience wanted more footage so we went out and filmed more. Audience liked are pitch however they thought it would be hard to film in Cambridge, this we to into account and changed our idea so it was more easier so we chose to film in college. Our rough-cut people said it was funny though we had major gaps this was letting us down to we had to film extra bits. Once we had done that and finish most of our feedback was good, our audience said it was funny. If there was anything that I could change about our video it would probably be the way we chose to edit the video, if we had longer I would of tried to put some kind of effects on it to inhanse aspects of the video just to make it more stronger and comical.

　

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Thorough the project a variety of media technologies were used. In the construction and planning stage, we used internet blogs to record are daily work so that people could see it and give used feedback this being useful in the evaluation stage. Editing software was used in the construction stage this was useful as I learnt how to create and used different tools on Final Cut to adapt and change the effect of our groups camera footage. I learnt to uses different transitions and ways to make clips of our video move whilst playing. Another part of Final Cut I used was how to change the filter of a part of footage so that it emphasised colour to make are video brighter. Final Cut software was a major part in the construction and editing stage. When make the dig pack I used Photoshop to create a magazine / DVD advert , here I made images by creating layers and using different filters and tools on Photoshop. For example the image of the nerd on the magazine advert its half cartoon half normal this was done using two layers and a filter on Photoshop. This I found to be most useful as it enable our group to create a attractive dig pack that would catch the eye of a viewer which is what we need for our dig pack.

Since the projects we did in AS and the preliminary task I feel I have improved my editing techniques as I have learnt a variety of way to inhase colour etc. these tasks help me get use of the software so that when it came around to my final project I found it easier to use the software and create a music video.