A2 Media Evaluation

By Krishna Pindoria

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of a

real media products?

I am going to be discussing the ways our media product uses’ and/or challenges’ the form and conventions of real media products. Firstly I am going to be discussing the ways in which we follow or challenge the codes and conventions of a music video. I will be doing this along side Chris Browns’ With You video. Here you can see a shot from Chris Browns’ video and shots from our video. Here we can see that we have challenged the conventions of a typical video as you can see that in the beginning of Browns’ video the first thing you see is Chris Brown himself but in our video we have opening credits and the shots of the skate park. Also, the fact that you don’t see our artist is giving it a mysterious feel and we don’t actually see him until 38 seconds into the video.

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Eye contact is an important convention in all music videos. It’s a type of way in which you can interact with the audience. In Browns’ video he doesn’t give eye contact to us even when the camera is faced directly at him for quite a while but then when he sings the line ‘with you’ he gives eye contact. Whereas in our video, Leyton doesn’t give eye contact throughout the whole video until the end, and we end on him looking into the camera. I think that when Leyton is looking into the camera it doesn’t give an inviting look but if Leyton was to look into the camera with a little more passion and not had such a serious face on then maybe it would have made it less intrusive.

The most prop that is used in most R&B videos is cars. Cars have been used in both our video and Browns’ video. The car in Browns’ video is a bright red Mini and stands out a lot from the dark scene, whereas the motorbikes kind of blend in with the background. In our video we have used a black BMW, therefore this shows that we have followed the conventions of a music video, the car also stands out from the light scene. The car in our video is in nearly the whole shot and we can’t see the driver or anyone sitting in the car creating a mysterious feel. A convention that we have challenged is the presence of a girl. Browns’ video shows many girls. This is obviously because he’s talking about being without someone, whereas in our video we haven't got any girl, obviously because the song isn't based around heartbreak or anything to do with girls.

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For our music video we decided that we wanted a narrative and a performance. The narrative is in black and white whereas the performance is in colour. We decided that they were going to be different so the audience can distinguish between them. We have followed the codes and conventions of a typical music video. Even though Chris Browns’ video has a performance throughout the whole video, there are clips that are slowed down which shows us that those clips have importance in the video. In our video we have shown the importance by making the relevant scenes black and white.

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Mise-en-scene means ‘everything within the frame’. I think the key aspects are: setting, costume, figure behaviour and lighting.Our music video was shot in South Bank Skate Park and in a house in Greenford, whereas Browns’ video is shot in Los Angeles, California. The main difference between both videos is that one is shot in the day and the other in the evening. Another difference is that our video was shot in two different places. We have extended our control by using two locations to give meaning to our narrative and performance. We have used props in the video e.g. iron, TV, teddy, white board, pen, headphones etc. In Browns’ video they have used the bus, guitar, motorbikes and cars for their props.

I think costume plays a big part in the music video. Leytons’ genre of music is R&B and soul, and although the codes and conventions of the way a R&B artist should dress is in baggy clothes and hoodies (like in Chris Browns’ video), we told Leyton to wear smart shoes, jeans and shirt because he is a soul artist as well and therefore the clothes he is wearing fits into both genres. Leyton has two looks in the video, the other look is when he is dressed in a simple T-Shirt and a normal pair of jeans. We told him to dress a certain way because we were shooting the narrative which was to show abuse from his step-father. Chris Brown also wears two different costumes, both costumes were used for both the performance and the narrative.

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I think lighting can play a important role in a music video. Too much or too little can make your video unwatchable and/or boring. By manipulating the quality and the direction of the light you can change the quality of the scene. Different lighting setting can mean different moods in scenes for example, high level of light mean happiness whereas low level of lighting can mean sadness/grief. When shooting our video we had all natural lighting because we were filming outside for the performance and there was enough light in the house when we were doing the narrative. When we were filming the scene at south bank we had shadows forming. If we compare this to Chris Browns video, we can see that they may have used artificial lighting because it was shot in the dark, but there was some light coming from the street lamps but we don’t know whether they were real or artificial.

Framing also plays an important role in the video because it shows things that scenes that go with the music. We used many shot distances such as close ups, long shots and medium shots. A close up is a s hot of his face and shoulders. Both our video and Chris Browns’ have close ups. Close ups may shoe facial expression and how or what they are feeling. We have also used long shots for the shots for the shots of the skate park and when Leyton is looking out to the sea.

Final Digi-Pack

These are our final digi-pack. We decided to choose Kavitha’s pack because we thought it created synergy and therefore it would be easier to tell that it was from the same artist. Even though there is a little difference between the inside and outside of the CD we can still clearly see that it’s from the same artist because there's a picture of Leyton on all of the pages.

How effective is the combination ofyour main product and ancillary texts?

I think that there is synergy between all our products. An example of synergy is Disney. They have a Disney channel then Disney movies and then Disney DVD’s and then different merchandises such as t-shirts, mugs and toys. This is where everything within a franchise promotes everything else. Our video was set half in a skate park and half in a house. The main theme was to show the struggles of Leyton growing up, being family problems and the place where he grew up. We decided that we wanted to use a skate park because it represents the area in which he grew up. There is synergy between the video, CD and the advert because Leyton is in/on each thing. While shooting the video at the skate park we did a photo shoot from we used picture in the advert and the CD cover. There was a certain way we wanted Leyton to look on the day (smart), we did this to show that not everyone from a rough area wears hoodies and baggy trousers, also by doing this we have challenged the codes/conventions of a typical R&B artist. Because Leyton was wearing the same thing in the video as he is in the advert and CD cover, it make it easier for the audience to spot e.g. when looking for the album or single. When I took the pictures I realised that the pictures of Leyton looking away from the camera worked better rather than the photos of him giving eye contact, although eye contact is important because it helps you interact with the audience I thought looking away almost make the audience ask themselves ‘why isn't he giving eye contact?’. Another way to identify the synergy between the products is the font that has ben used. The font is the same on the CD cover and the advert again making to recognisable and the audience will instantly be able to tell that this is Leyton's album. Andrew Goodwin has said that in music videos there is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. I think this applies to our video because we have used the lyrics in the song to create a narrative and I think that narrative and performance work together to make it easier for the audience to watch it over and over again without losing interest. Because Leyton is the narrator and the victim in the narrative it make the video more authentic and the audience need to see it as being real.

What have you learned fromyour audience feedback?

For our audience feedback I made a questionnaire and distributed them to the target audience which is 12-15 year old females, also as a group we uploaded the music video on to YouTube. I showed the target audience the video and then told them to fill out the questionnaire. I sampled 15 people for the questionnaire. I asked 5 questions (4 closed questions and 1 open question) and the results were as follows:

Yes

No

After watching the first part of the video, did it make you want to carry on watching the video?

67%

33%

My first question was ‘After watching the first part of the video, did it make you want to carry on watching the video?’. The pie chart shows that 33% felt that the video didn’t draw them in, but 67% said they wanted to carry on watching the video. They may not have been drawn in because of the quality of filming which we could have improved by maybe using a tripod when doing steady shots. On the other hand they may be drawn in because we followed some codes/conventions of a R&B/soul music video.

Yes No0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Se-ries1

Did you like the video?

27%

73%

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Yes

No

After watching this video, would you go and buy the single?

47%53%

The second question was whether they liked the video. 73% liked the video and 27% didn’t. They may have not like the video because of the quality of the video or they may have liked it because of the narrative and performance in the video, but we asked the audience to write any comments they had about the video in another question.

My third question was if after watching the video would they go and buy the single. 53% said they wouldn’t buy the single whereas 47% said they would go and buy the single. I got mixed responses as some said they wouldn’t buy it because they didn’t like the singing but others enjoyed it and they said they would and the video helps encourage people to go and buy the single.

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Do you think that the video fits the codes and conventions of a pop/soul artist?

Yes No0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Se-ries1

80%

20%

The last question was to write any other comments that they say about the video. The one comment that people mostly wrote was about the length of the video, saying it was ‘too long’. The original song was 4:52 minutes long, and we had to cut he song down to 3:28 minutes. I think the audience thought it was too long was because music videos now a days have cut down to 2:30-3:00 minutes long, but there are some pop music videos such as Lady GaGa’s music videos which sometimes run for 10-12 minutes. There were also negative comments on the artists singing and when looking at the questionnaire the people who said that were people that said they wouldn’t buy the single (question 3).

The fourth question was whether they thought the video fit into a pop/soul video. 80% thought so and 30% thought it didn’t fit the codes/conventions of a pop/soul artist. There are certain places where we have challenged the conventions of a typical music video such as not have a girl in the video, or not wearing typical clothes of a R&B artists would. These issues may have made the audience think that it wasn’t a typical R&B music video. On the other hand, 80% said that the video fit into the convention/codes of a R&B artist. They may have said this because of the ‘flashy’ car in the video as there are many R&B music video where there are cars as such.

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This feedback is from ‘YouTube’. We posted our video on the 19 th January 2012 an up until now the video has got 432 views. We have comments that are positive and negative. There is a comments stating that ‘the video isn’t doing it’. This maybe the quality of the video, one way we could've improved it was by adding more cuts where there are longer shots. There were also a few negative comments about the artist. We obviously couldn’t do anything about that. I also looked at the statistics for the video and it shows that the video is most popular with males aged 13-17 and females aged 18-24. This audience is completely different to what our target audience was which was females aged 12-15. the statistics also shows where in the world the video has been watched in this case in the UK and in the USA. The fact that the video was played in USA broadens the target audience even more because we thought that the video was going to be watched in the UK.

How did you use media technologies in the research, planning, construction and

evaluation stages? During our research, planning, construction and evaluation stages I have used software, hardware and different types of research. There different software's we used which are: InDesign, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint and Wordpress. We used different hardware’s which are: Video Camera, SLR Camera and a Computer. For our research we used: Google, Phones, YouTube and Social networking sites. To gain most of my research I used Google to research the artist I also used it to research comparable artists such as Chris Brown and Amy Winehouse. I used Google to also look for CD covers and magazine adverts to help give ma an idea of what the codes and conventions of a soul/R&B artist is. We used YouTube to listen to the artists other songs which helped us to determine what the target audience was and we used YouTube to put up the final video and we got responses from users which helped us to learn about what we did good and what we could improve on. YouTube provided us with statistics on who was watching the video and where in the world they were watching. Social networking sites helped us put our product out to get people to watch the video. As our artist has a Facebook account, the video being put out on Facebook will help him build a bigger fan base. I used my phone to help me contact my group for meetings or shootings and I used to record what some of the target audience thought of the video and if there was anything we could improve on.

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To take pictures of our artist we used a Sony SLR camera. The settings were an issue because I didn’t change them when I needed to which meant that I had to Photoshop to change the picture to what I wanted it to be. To film the video we used a video camera, which we borrowed from the college. To get used to using the video camera we made a chase sequence to help us improve our skills and help us film properly. A final piece of hardware we used was the computer, we used this in our research; to help us research comparable artists, planning; used software’s to write up our treatment and to write down any research we did and we used it to edit our video and create the digi pack, and evaluation stages; where I am writing up the how and why we made the video the way we did and analysing the feedback we got.

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I have used many software’s throughout the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages of making the video and the digi pack. I have used Microsoft Word when doing research to write down everything I research and when writing the treatment for the video as part of the construction. I have used Microsoft Excel to draw up the bar charts and pie charts to help me analyse the findings on my questionnaire this makes it easier to analyse. I have used Microsoft PowerPoint to write up my evaluation which tells you what we had to do create a music video and a digi pack. It also tells you what we could have improved on and what worked well. Final Cut Pro was used to edit the final music video. Initially we had difficulties using the programme but then we got used to it and Kavitha had used the programme previously therefore it helped us when we were editing. I used Photoshop to edit some pictures we took of the artist. There were times when it got difficult to use but I kept on practising with photos and therefore getting better at Photoshop. I used InDesign to create the digi pack which consists of a CD cover, CD booklet and a magazine advert for the artist. One problem I had when using InDesign was the sizing of the CD cover, sometimes the cover was too big sometimes they were to small. Wordpress is a online blog and we had to put everything we researched, planned, constructed and evaluated on the blog. Putting things onto the blog helped because it was easier to see what we had done and learnt from the beginning of the year.