1. In what ways does your media project use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of real music products?
There are many ways in which our media project was
specifically created to both challenge and develop the conventions of a typical
music video. Where development is concerned we felt that we would combine the
music video conventions of both performance and narrative, as it would devise a
broader scale for which we could film our actors where both angles and
storyline were considered. In some ways we felt that we challenged the codes
and conventions of a typical music video through the fact that we had only two
main locations in which our scenes were set. We filmed the two environments and
edited them so that they contrasted with each other, linking also with the
change in which our two main protagonists go under. During the party scene
sequences there is a much warmer lighting hue as the two leads especially,
transform from alienated party crashers into the centre of attention. Within
our performance scenes our two leads are filmed within a cooler hue that almost
creates a sense of realism, as here we see the characters for what they really
are- typical high school nerds.
Throughout our discussion of the plotline we all decided
that we would challenge convention through the ambiguity of our storyline. As
in our end scene a shot of the two leads awakening on a sofa is shown, resembling
an earlier shot in which they both fall asleep on the sofa. This leads to
several possible endings that the viewer is left to decide themselves; either
the protagonists awake from a great night of which they are accepted, or they
fell asleep during the party and dreamt half of the sequence.
As
the official music video to ‘Mamma Do The Hump’ (our selected song) had
elements of humour, we wanted our own to have its own comical elements. Being
teenagers ourselves, we thought that we would base our music video on something
which we can relate to, topics such as parties, drinking and social groupings
being highly relatable towards the demographic.
Similar
to the typical music conventions of the narrative music video, we had our two
lead protagonists, Matt and Ryan, to mime along with particular sections of the
song as we felt it would complement the actions of the plotline. These scenes
would be alternated between that of action, almost as if the song were playing
in the background of the people at the party.
2. How effective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?
When
considering our created print artefacts there are many ways in which we associated them with our music production. Our final two
products consisted of an album cover for our Rizzle Kicks ‘Stereo Typical’
album and a HMV poster advertising this. The album cover consists of 2 sides
and 3 separate segments and we wanted our album cover to look distinct and
unique so that the audience would be able to identify it visually.
Our
final album cover is a mixture of screenshots of our music video and edited
collected images of landscape scenes. Within the inner section of the cover we
also included lyrics from several other songs on the album so to link more with
the artists themselves. To use the conventions of a regular album cover we
ensured to include features such as a barcode, the ‘Universal Island’ records
logo and also a list of people that the Rizzle Kicks inferred in their original
‘Stereo Typical’ album who they liked to thank. We used Photoshop to construct
this artefact as it allowed us to easily manipulate the images selected for
use. Our theme selected was that our a seafront as well as a compilation of
urban landscapes as it created a variety of bold colour tones for our
distinctive cover. The inner section is composed of screenshots from our
production itself as then it had a definite link to our final piece; Something
which before our audience feedback form it lacked.
The
second print artefact we created was for a poster/ billboard associated with
the popular media franchise HMV. For this we had to assemble previous models of
their adverts so to notice their similar design features. In this artefact we
also decided to infer qualities of our own album design into the background so
that they integrated nicely. For the characteristics of a HMV advert we had to
use their colour style of pinks and purples against black and white texts,
something which I felt we created successfully. The colour scheme also allowed
the piece to stand out significantly; therefore meaning that our aims in being
eye caching with our pieces was effective.
Before
we decided on our final print artefacts we decided to experiment with many
different styles and appearances to see which we felt would look most effective
for our final design. Especially where our album cover is concerned as we
wanted it to appear as aesthetically pleasing as possible. After several
changes in our selected covers we eventually settled on the one design
described beforehand. Our audience feedback also gave us a variety of things in
which we could improve on.
3.What have you learnt from your audience
feedback?
After approaching ten fellow media students and asking them
to review our completed footage and print artefacts we used the feedback to its
best potential so that our products would appear to be at the best of their
ability.
Upon
reading the reviews, we listed the criteria in which the volunteers felt needed
to be altered slightly, which overall benefitted the final editing process as
we could see an alternate viewpoint to our production. The most common point
which several people included in our feedback was that during our character’s
miming scenes they appeared to be slightly out of synch. From this we added
jump cuts into the framework and carefully reworked the shots so that they
would fit better with the rhythm of the song. We felt that as it was evidently
the most obvious flaw to our production we would concentrate on making it
perfect as synchronisation is an important principle within a music video. As
well as this, we also edited several of the dancing sequences to ensure that
they befitted specific moments of the song and added to the dance-like feel.
Another comment which we took into a lot of consideration was that of
amplifying some of the more basic scenes with colour and lighting effects.
Through this knowledge, selected scenes were given flashes of muted colours so
as not to be too garish; mostly in the dancing sequences flashes of light were
added almost as if the characters were in a nightclub or disco. After editing
the sequences with more colour and general effects we as a group noticed a significant
and positive change to the video, making it much less bland and a lot more eye
catching. However, there were a small amount of improvement comments which we
could not adhere to, this included character number 2, played by our companion
Ryan miming within more scenes. This was not applicable, firstly as there were
not as many lines for his character to move compared to Matts, and secondly we
felt that the more miming scenes we added in would create in imbalance between
the locations shown.
When
gathering the information about our print artefacts we also received a mixture
of positive feedback and suggestions of improvement. With our album cover the
majority of feedback suggested that the cover have more of a link with our
music video, as there was barely any link involving the shots of our video or
video’s theme. From this we added screenshots and added additional lyrics from
several songs on the Rizzle Kicks album, almost like a taster of what was
included. From the feedback of our HMV advertisement we received very positive
feedback as many commented that it appeared to look professional and fitted the
conventions of a typical HMV advert. We also integrated some of our album
artwork into the background of the poster, so to link the pieces together
somehow.
Overall,
much was learnt and came to be useful from our audience feedback, without
knowledge of other people’s opinions we would not have been able to change our
products into something more aesthetically appealing. Also, it gave us a brief
idea on areas of our production which worked well and more which we should
concentrate on.
4. How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Within
our production we used many different forms of technology, including various computer
software programmes and media related websites.
During
the opening stages of our group work, we relied on the popular broadcasting
channel of Youtube to research similar music video products. In this process we
also analysed the original RIzzle Kicks music video for ‘Mamma Do the Hump’
noting down anything which inspired our product. As the song is fairly recent
and is of the Hip-Hop genre we also looked at the work of artists Tinie Tempah
and Labrinth who pose a fairly similar style of modern hip-hop. Another website
we used for planning and construction was that of website ‘az lyrics’ as we
needed to collect the lyrics in detail and annotate them to fit into our shots
somehow. Throughout gathering research we also recorded our finding son each of
our blogs, so it acted somehow like a base to collect our concepts and ideas.
When we
filmed footage for our music production we used James’ own Sony HD Camera, as
James being the cameraman thought that he would feel most confident with his
own home camera, as well as being able to adapt to filming situations more
(having learnt previously how to change the camera’s functions). With the
camera being HD it also meant that our footage was often caught in high detail
and therefore would give the project a cleaner, more professional appearance.
Subsequently, the camera stored all of our data into its SD card and we had to
make sure that we brought it in within every lesson, the SD card was of a 16
gigabyte capacity so it also gave us freedom that we could film many shots
without worrying about lost memory. The advantage of using one SD card meant
that all of our footage stayed in one place too, so we did not have to fuss
over several other devices. As an extra to make our filming a lot smoother and
more steady we required the use of a tripod stand, which meant some of our
tracks, pans and tilts were a lot more controlled than our hand held footage.
After
collecting all of the footage we felt we needed we downloaded it straight onto
the Media Departments I-Mac computers which contained a variety of software
programmes for which we could edit our music video. The video editing programme
in which we used was Adobe Premier Pro, which allowed us to freely manoeuvre our
footage into a necessary order, later adding in the song itself so we could
synchronise the scenes to the best of their ability. Later we also adjusted the
brightness and contrast to make scenes cooler and cleaner. The colour was
adjusted slightly in several scenes also to create a more dynamic effect.
Our
print artefacts also required us to use several programmes on the I-mac
systems. For our album designs Photoshop was used to manipulate the pieces into
looking believable in their appearance. We collected our album artwork from
photo publishing website Flickr, which regularly post images, we also edited
these so that they were our own.
