Music Video Final.

Ancillary Task

Digipack

Poster

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

My group all undertook some audience feedback by fellow peers and people we know. We uploaded our video to facebook for people like family and friends to comment on and to see their inital reaction to it as theyve never seen it before. Feedback by friends and family outside of school were more useful as it was their first time seeing it and had their opinions set after watching it, however fellow peers in media know what to expect and can be more critical and know what they are looking for. Our audience feedback was  mainly focussed on the lip synching and the meeting of conventions and forms. We wanted peoples first reaction to be that it was a Hip Hop video and we wanted them to comment on why its Hip Hop and what makes it Hip Hop. We also wanted to find out on what people felt about the lip synching and if it was realistic and in time. The feedback we got was quite good and fair and was constructive and useful. Much of our feedback mentioned that we met the conventions however some parts could of been portrayed better than others and that perhaps the audience could feel more connection with the artist. Other ways in which we gathered feedback was to ask people to watch it and than to film them giving their views on the video and what they thought of it. We managed to film a couple of friends who didnt do media and get their natural reaction about it.This proved effective and really gave us an insight of how our film came across and how it made people feel. Many people commented on the great use of shots and the unique locations we used and how the scenary worked well with the genre we were trying to create. Also mise en scene such as props and costumes were commented on and many agreed that the props and costume Luke was in fitted the genre as it was very 'Street' and 'Urban' via the Gucci hat and Nike trainers. The feedback gave us a real insight about a film and how hard it can be and how vital it is to meet conventions

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

When planning our production we had to ensure that our music video would link to our ancillary tasks. We had to do a lot of planning and research as a group to come up with a connection of our video and our ancillary. We sketched out many ideas and made many drafts and all put our input in on what should be changed or what we liked etc. As a group we worked hard and was all thinking on the same wave length as our group all enjoy the Hip Hop genre and know a lot about what it needs to have as an audience ourself. We decided to make the artist the main focus in our ancillary and video, making him stand out and making him the main focus off our production. This showed the status and power of the artist which is one thing an audience expect from a hip hip video. Also another factor was graffiti, filming up Southbank in the skatepark gave us chance to get some great footage of graffiti and add the urban factor to our film. We used rosehill skate park as another location with graffiti to shoot some extra footage and get some more pictures for our ancillary tasks. I think they incorporated well as in the music video you can see footage of graffiti from both Southbank and Rosehill and in the ancillary tasks you can see that they are located in one of those locations making the connection between the two. As our ancillary task is promoting our 'Number 1' song we wanted to make the link between the advert and the music video and felt that the poster should be in one of the locations where the music video was filmed, reinforcing the link between the two. Our digipak is linked with our advert and video as the panels and pictures were took in London of the bridge and scenary and also in places where their were many people reinforcing the link of 'Face in the crowd'. This linked the 3 well as even though the digipak is an album not a single, we decided to base our digipak on our main single as it was the number 1 hit.

Luke creating eye contact with the audience, as well as making hand gestures, all factors and conventions of a music video

London Southbank- Luke is wearing Hip Hop clothing and is based against a graffiti wall

Our Final Digipack Design

Costume used is the same as in the music video

How did you use media technology in the construction of research, planning and evaluation stages

Throughout of filming we have used a variety of new media throughout the different stages of production. Firstly, we used an editing software called final cut express to produce our film with editing, effects and music all in a timeline. This was a big change from i-Movie which we used at AS media and is a more professional software to edit with as it is a lot more technical in terms of the cuts, the effects and the general overall production of the film. Counter-acting with this program we also incorporated softwares such as photoshop to portray our digipak and advert. Photoshop allowed us to play with the different effects and come up with a unique advert for our product, we used unique effects such as 'Gaussian blur' on the advert to fade out the background and for our artist to stand out, this worked well as our album is called face in the crowd which makes it fit well with it. In our planning stages we drew storyboards and made an animatic which gave us a basic idea of what our film would look like. This worked well as it gave us the chance to see it in an animated version and allowede us to either make changes or add more in before actually going out to film. When researching we needed to make sure we gathered vital information which would allow us to get the right conventions for our genre, we used a software called 'Bubbl' which allowed us to create a spider diagram in bubbles with all our initial ideas. This proved effective in our group as well our worked on it together and gave an input to our individual ideas and than worked on these ideas to come up with a final idea we all agreed on. Following on from this we than decided how to attract our audience, we used Google docs to produce a questionairre which we sent to people to fill out for us. Our aim of this was to see what people thought Hip Hop should be like and what to expect in a hip hop genre video. We managed to get a good amount of people to do this and based our work on what they wanted as ther audience. Factors included, money, status, power, cars, graffiti, hand gestures. We managed to work with the factors which were possible to act out and reinforced them to make it viewable for the audience and for them to understand that it is Hip Hop.

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

My music video is based on the genre underground Hip Hop. Having a genre as complex and interesting as this i feel that we can portray forms and conventions well with a variety of styles. We created research and planning blogs to gather important information which is key to meeting conventions. Starting of with the location we decided to choose London South Bank. An urban underground area situated on the thames with plenty of great scenary and facilities to show our conventions, these were the graffit walls and the skatepark area. Starting  with mise en scene we decided to go with an outfit which would suit Hip Hop conventions. Luke was suited in Hip Hop clothing with a Gucci hat, Dark jeans and Nike trainers which we felt suited the convention well as through our research we watched many videos of artists in our genre and tried to suit those conventions. Whilst watching our videos in research we picked up on little effects and styles which we can use in our video such as hand gestures, eye contact and the general focus on keeping eye contact and making a connection with the viewers. We feel that these specific factors will make our video suited to the genre and will meet forms and conventions. Whilst up Southbank we needed to take into account getting the best footage to reduce wasting time and going back. Through our research we found out that close ups and medium shots were the best shots. Having such a unique location with a lot of potential we decided to get some really good shots will plenty of scenary in the background. Being a hip hop video we needed to make sure there was plenty of shots as the beat of the music was quite flowing we needed to make sure the shots cut to the beat. Close up shots were very important in our film as it makes the connection to the audience and it gives the Hip Hop effect of status. We had a mixture of shots types which was framed in mind to make the shots effective. Each shot had to be framed correct to show potential and meaning to the video and had to prove effective. Having a natural busy-minded and fierce environment we had to try and get in as much footage as possible. I feel that we developed and used forms and conventions well and showed this through our music video.

Here are some conventions in which we tried to portray through our video. We watched videos in the genre which we knew about and artists we knew about such as Drake, Jay Z, Kanye West and N-dubz, all with a 'High status' act. We felt looking at these will allow us to get as many conventions as possible as these are well known worldwide rappers and feel that there videos will show the most conventions usefulk to use. As you can see from above we have tried to demonstrate these through our own work, but baring in mind that our genre was more urban therefore perhaps had to be a bit more subtle than the videos we have looked at.

Assessment 7/2/2012