MEDIA EVALUATION

Introduction

This presentation will look at how we as a group planned and produced this music video.

It will look at the pre production, production and post production of the music video.

It will also reflect on the creative process and their experience of it

The Artist At first we had problems finding an

artist. We looked at www.unsignedacts.com and we found an act named Sounds of the Empire. They had done live gigs and seemed really committed to their music. I then e-mailed them proposing to produce a music video. The manager replied within the next day and accepted our proposal. However after a few days, the manager changed his mind and we had to find another.

The manager however recommend another unsigned act named Aunty Doubles. I emailed them with the same proposal however they never replied. So after a week of waiting we decided to use a backup artist that someone in the group knows. The artist’s name was Icon843 and the song was Here To Stay.

The song is a slow R&B song and features Jo Jordan. Icon843 raps through the verses while Jo Jordan sings the chorus. The video will be marketed to an audience who listen to R&B.

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

We analysed other R&B music videos so we can identify the conventions of an R&B music video and choose whether to use, develop or challenge those conventions while still making it possible to identify the genre. We looked at Eamon’s F**k It video and BigBang’s Haru Haru video.

Conventions of an R&B Video

Most R&B music videos follow a narrative which are usually about a man and woman’s relationship problem.

Unlike fast R&B music videos, slow R&B has a lot less minimal clothing.

There also filmed somewhere romantic like a restaurant or a park.

The characters are usually wearing Jeans and trainers. Some videos use flashbacks to show shots of when

they were better times.

We chose to follow the convention of narrative in R&B and decided to have a story about a man and woman’s relationship problems as the narrative of the video. In addition the narrative will link to the lyrics as do most R&B videos. The video will also have various shots of the artists performing therefore the audience will be able to clearly identify who the artists are.

Costume We also chose to follow the conventions of the

female character wearing less revealing clothes in a slow R&B video and decided to have her dressed casually.

The male character was a dressed casually in a red sweater and black jeans.

The artists were dressed casually wearing caps and jeans with Icon843 wearing a black jacket and a red polo shirt while Jo Jordan is wearing a black baseball jacket and a blue polo shirt.

This is what the target audience would wear and therefore would be able to identify the genre.

Location Shots of the narrative were filmed in a house and

others in London Bridge. We filmed at London Bridge because R&B videos are usually shot somewhere glamorous or expensive and London Bridge seemed like a glamorous place.

The Artists shots were filmed in the Burnt Oak area at a subway because it would represent the artists as if they live somewhere urban which would relate to the target audience.

We also chose to film most of the shots during the night because London Bridge seemed to suit the theme of romance at night more than day.

We used flashbacks for the video similar to the Eamon video as we felt it would improve the narrative and make it more interesting rather than just having a video where a man and a woman are arguing.

We used transitions such as fades to show the transition from the present to the past and to show the transition from the narrative to the performance.

We also used a slow motion effect during the fights to make them more dramatic.

Most R&B videos usually have a happy ending where the boy and girl end up back together. We followed this convention and made the girl go back to the boy.

We also tried to match the lyrics match the video for example, at the end of the video where artist sings “I’m here to stay” we can see the guy coming back to him and is Here to Stay.

Conventions we Challenged We challenged the convention of making

the man more dominant and chose give the woman the more dominant role.

For example, usually the woman would be pestering the man about her problems, however we made it so the that the man is pestering the woman

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

The music video has a lot of shots of the artist which were used to promote the artist. I did the same with the CD Cover and had a picture of the artist Icon843 and his name very easy to identify.

Photo shoot They were a few photos taken on location

some with both the artists and some with one artist. However I felt that it would be better to promote the main artist rather than both artists because most single cd only promote the main artist and we felt that one artist would be promoted more than two artists.

We did the photo shoot in the night because we felt it would show a connection between the video and CD Cover and advert.

Synergy

The same typeface and colour are carried on through the advert and the CD Cover.

The typeface is simple, easy to read and stands out. It is similar to other CD Covers with a similar genre.

The costume of the artists is the same as is the location which also help to identify the relation between the video, CD and the Advert.

Marketing Aims

We wanted to promote the artist as much as possible so we inserted the artist in every product.

We also looked at possible TV Channels the music video would be played.

Possible TV Channels We did some research at what TV channels would

show the music video and all the channels we found show R&B music videos.

Channel Aka is a British music channel that focuses on playing urban music and has helped the breakthrough for acts such as N-Dubz, Tinie Tempah and Chipmunk

MTV Base plays popular urban music and features acts such as Rihanna, Chris Brown, and Beyonce.

Kiss focuses on R&B music similar to MTV Base and is based on the format of the radio station which also allows media convergence.

Technologies used in research & planning We used Youtube to analyse similar

music videos. We used Google to analyse other CD

Covers.

Technologies used in video production We used different types of hardware and

software to produce our music video. We used Video Cameras, Camera Lights

and Mac computers to edit. We used Final Cut Pro to edit the music

video and to import the content from the camera to the Mac and also Sound... To import the audio to the music video.

We used YouTube to put it online and the internet to access YouTube.

I was familiar with using filming equipment from my AS Media so it wasn’t to difficult to understand.

I was also familiar with video editing software however I had experience with iMovie where as here I used Final Cut Pro.

At first it was difficult to understand a lot of it. I had problems with the transitions, rendering the audio for the music video.

However, I only had problems when I started editing. For producing the advert and CD cover, I had no

problems at all cause I have a lot of experience with Adobe Photoshop and InDesign.

Technologies used in evaluation

We used YouTube to upload the video online and from the comments we received on YouTube we used as audience feedback.

We shared the video on Facebook which allowed us to get more audience feedback.