We have finished all of our media coursework now as we finished our video completely today, burned it onto a disc and handed it to our teacher. I feel like i have developed my media skills in many different ways from techniques of filming to the hundreds of editing effects i had not seen before this year. This helped me improve my standard of work and my expectations got much higher making me much stricter on myself. This was good and prevented me from becoming lazy this year when at the same point last year, i might have laid back a bit, but as i was so hard on myself it made me focus on the task ahead and got exactly what i wanted out of the project and my overall learning experience.
In what ways does your music promotional package use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of existing music video/ promo packages?
Conventions of music videos are difficult to explain when you generalise them because each genre has different styles although a lot of different genre’s may still sometimes use the same filming techniques.
As i have mentioned at the start of my blog, there are 3 different types of music videos that all different genre’s of music use including our music video. Both our digipack and our poster are used for promotional use and these use what is similar to a performance based video but it is instead a performance based poster and CD cover.
We’ve adapted our look and representation to challenge with the competition of other professional record label’s videos. This involves the props we have used such as “american” baseball caps and locations we’ve used so we look like big time rappers such as Kanye West.
The other two methods are narrative and concept but are not involved within my project.
Our credits in our video and text in our promotional packs use the conventions of existing media as they are bold clear and stylish for a big audience. Having bold letters is important as it should be eye catching, this also matches the rest of my video through the boldness jump cuts and our presentation.
For our editing I feel like we used developed and challenged the conventions of the hip hop genre of the music industry. By using so many various effects and transitions to give the jump cuts a better flow, i feel like we have improved uon what can be sometimes be portayed as lazyness by music labels who just use simple jump cuts with no real passion their videos. By mixing video clips with quick still images i feel like we also improved upon the example i used earlier which was “empire state of mind” by Jay-Z as he only used images in his video. Quick camera shots are big influences on the success of video and whilst we have that, we have maintained the ability to keep fairly long clips of lip syncing going strongly without the viewers become bored and uninterested.
they rely heavily on jump cuts, fast cuts and moving cameras. Because the song is pretty quick we have tried to increase the pace with our jump cuts which puts our own spin on it and makes the watching more enjoyable for all that is suitable.
Although no instruments used such as Lil’ Wayne using a guitar in his video “On Fire”, I feel like our passion going into the lip synicng and dancing more than makes up for a instruments so we developed on that part in my opinion.
My CD digipack has developed from my inspiration of artists like Nelly and Jay-Z as i feel like i personally decided of the 4 pcitrues i wanted in my digipack whereas these rappers probably pay someone else lower in the music industry such as producers/editors to do it for them. Two pictures of me and Josh also would stick in the mind more of a typical hip hop album that will involve usually one or even no images or the performer, this looks more personal from producer to consumer. My digipack and poster were both closely related to my music video to give a sample of what the music video will look like and will also attract the audience more. This definitely challenged conventions of random album covers such as this:
My poster uses conventions of the hip hop genre as it includes a clear picture of the performer aswell as the title of the album, name of the artist and tour dates. If i were to make my poster again i would probably spend more time on research and look to see how i could challenge the competition more by putting my own unique selling point onto it. One thing i do feel could be beneficial towards my poster over others is the reviews i have taken from some of the Uk’s top music websites and magazines, this is because audiences familiar with these companies will trust what they hear and will be more persuaded to take a listen or go see a live concert than before.
How effective is the combination of your main product and the two ancillary texts?
Now being an artist, i would need to transform myself into a commodity which is making products promoting myself just like i have done with the poster. Representing my media products to make a company image is the aim to get the video, digipack and poster to look efficient. Whether it is a music record company, TV company or film company, marketing is crucial towards a successful campaign. This is synergy which is where different types of media are used to all play their part in promoting a product. The poster is more of a promotional package towards the product which is the digipack as well as the music video. As our music video uses the black and white theme throughout, to make our whole package professional and effective the cd cover and poster had to be the same. The fact i am trying to present the product in different formats of media attracts a bigger range of audience and gives me and josh a better image. Our idea has come from many famous people and one example is rapper Nelly who released his video for “Just a dream” in black and white to keep it relevant with his album cover for “Brass Knuckles” which was also in back and white.
Sticking with the content of promotional packages there were things we legally had to include in both our digipack and poster such as the record label representing the artist, a copyright warning and a bar code. The branded record label representing our artist T.I. was Atlantic records so we had to include their logo on our products.
Consumers may see this logo around on other artists records or products too and their aim is to spread their brands image to gain more success. The American marketing association believes that for success in branding, it must be understood how important it is to integrate the artist through synergy at every point of public content eg. my poster. I purposely kept the black and white theme the same as well as reusing images to stick in the audiences head. The one thing i changed was turning my adverts font colour to gold, i felt that this was intruiging and gold represents money/wealth just like the conventions of hip hop follow. I feel like this works effectively by itself and as a whole product with the two ancillary texts aswell.
Here is the album name presented in gold.
Hopefully with the way my products are repeatedly presented in the same style it will attract consumers and stay in their memory and then they would tell others using word of mouth. This is why i feel like all 3 of my different formats of media have effectively combined to create a successful product!
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
The target for my audience was late teens to mid 20’s so my school was an ideal location to trace down people for feedback throughout the making and finishing of my music video and digipack. This was helpful to me because I am the same age so i found it comfortable to understand their decisions on my feedback.
Audience feedback can be collected in many ways such as surveys, questionnaires or face to face . After our first draft i sent it on the social networking site Facebook to some friends within the age of my target audience and asked for their feedback.
When receiving feedback saying things like “your lip syncings good but the cameras shaky” and you need different angled shots”, I learned that developing my filming techniques was my first priority and that even though this could be time consuming the final product will prove the effort i have put in. I also received comments from Mr Zaidi and listened a lot because he has experience of seeing many students videos with some being better quality than others.
This first section of feedback got me to research more and looking at media websites such as http://www.mediaknowall.com/camangles.html and http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/ which basically increased my range of knowledge on how to improve my filming.
Throughout the duration of editing I asked for feedback from different students as well as the same people, this helped because it gave me a bigger variety of feedback and took it constructively to motivate me get the best out of our clips. As i have already posted, i got Jason Grandidge to give me feedback when i was about 3 quarters of the way through my music video.
Taking his comments on board, we did infact add still images to our piece proving that i welcome constructive criticism if thats what i need to improve my work. After finishing my music video, I decided to show fellow media students and ask their views on my final piece.
“Best lip syncing I’ve seen this year.” – Lewis Jackson
“The locations are effective, and the black and white makes it look cool man.” – Ryan Jones
“I like how much energy you put into it, it shows passion” – Libby Holman
“Effects look awesome!” – David Piper
“I love the train with the credits at the beginning, gives it a professional standard about it”. – Mr Zaidi
“More locations could have improved the jump cuts but overall impressed.” – Jim Sparry
The feedback was positive although i do agree with the negative comment, if i could do it again, i definitely would spend more time looking more cool settings to film in. Overall, i achieved my objective my reaching to my target audience which is very good news. Again, if i had planned a bit more even before filming i would have not needed the audience to tell me more footage of different places was needed and we would have only received good comments to say. I have taken these comments positively though because you always need negative comments to motivate yourself to be better next time.
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
My main source to find research was the platform of the internet to access all types of research from text to images to videos. When needing to know about hip hop i used Google as a search engine to research “most successful rap artists” and then searching YouTube to view the variety of videos that they had created. For example when searching this on google i visited ‘hiphop365.com’ noticed Jay-Z in the top 5 rappers therefore viewed many of his video’s on YouTube.
I then discovered jay-z has done many songs in black and white such as “99 problems”,”niggas in paris”, “on to the next one” and “young forever”. This became an inspriation to then make our video a black and white themed video.
Although researching online, I preferred to do a lot of my research my hand and in previous posts you can see I’ve uploaded my planning of props, locations, structure and more. 
After a lot of planning, the technologies involving my filming were obvious, a HD digital JVC camera was our filming equipment along with a tripod.
The camera became easier to use after spending time learning how to use it and it was pretty hi-tech as it even had such features like night vision. I spend a bit of time experimenting with it so we knew how to film and not just guess then discover problems like we did in AS media studies.
The program we used to edit our media clips with was final cut pro. This was again on a mac. Because of our school’s internet security we knew to get everything off the internet, such as the soundtrack, off a normal computer because the macs can be a hassle. Generally Mac’s are very technical computers that can do much more than other computers around school or my computer at home. Many niche and mainstream film companys have used final cut pro as a editing software such as companies who made high profile films such as “The Ring”, “Napolean Dynamite”, “300” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. This proves to me and other members of the audience that lower budget film makers can now compete with the Hollywood block busters that have dominated world cinema since records began. The quality of final cut pro helped with this lip sync task as we would have to crop the sound track as well as add effects, distort/crop clips, change colour and more.
For the evaluation part of my project i used computer technology and simple writing methods to record audience feedback data. I used Facebook to message potential watchers within my target audience to get their views on my clips during my project and at the end. I also again used my JVC camera with the SD card to upload my footage of Jason’s feedback onto YouTube and then linking it back to my blog for people to see what Jason thought of my video and blog, this would hopefully persuade others to also watch my video.
Technology has developed so much in the last 10 years and as I have shown you can make decent media projects without any funding, this proves my dedication and effort going into projects in the last 2 years and also shows others in the same position as me that money is not essential for quality pieces of filming, it is about the time you put into it.
Last editing
We finished today by scrapping 6 seconds of lip synced footage and adding in a shot of a forest we had filmed that lasted the same duration. As we wanted the consistensy still i changed it to black and white, to make it looked effective i experimented with a few tiling effects and decided that the kaleidoscope effect looked best this also works as we have used it for one another clip too. So we have now officially finsihed and just need to burn the disc to compelte our coursework.
Update
So with the video almost finished, my digipack completed and my poster done there’s not much else i can do except add as many improvements as i can with feedback from people such as Jason Grandidge. My video’s duration is exactly 2 minutes and 25 seconds.
Here is an image of the jump cuts and the short video at the end just before i have had my last editing session.
I need to make sure when i have finished my video, the video stops there and does not carry on with a black screen for a odd 20 seconds or so like what happened in my AS media preliminary task.
Editing more jump cuts
For the last chorus, the duration is about 15 seconds so we decided to add lots of images again, like the video “Empire state of mind”. Ours are quicker and we took a big variety of pictures that cover such areas like region, culture, crime and people’s upbringing.
As you can see these pictures of the church window and graveyard relate to rappers obsession with religion so i am makig sure that i keep all these jump cuts relevant and to keep the flow of the clips consistent they are still all going to be in black and white. At the end I added a short clip of confetti and fireworks that i filmed at a recent concert i was at. This gave it a kind of closing few seconds showing the song is over which makes it finish more smoothly than a sudden ending. I also editied the sound so that the song fades out which is like many professional videos.
Comments
I’ve received positive comments on my blog and digipack and have received 4 comments on my blog.
With 4 positive comments I feel i am obviosuly heading in the right direction and once i upload my completed music video i hope to get much more positive feedback. Feedback helps motivate me to spend more time focusing on what to do to interest the audience. I asked Jason Grandidge for his feedback on my blog and what he has seen of my almost completed music video. What the audience thinks is important because if you receive no feedback throughout your project and only at the end they might think its not that good and you may have to delete some footage or scrap your concept idea altogether. Here are his thoughts.
Advert
To promote our music video and the CD cover I made a poster advertising us as the artists clearly stating what the product was and that we would also be going out on tour. I kept the image of the poster relevant as the setting was used in the actual video and obviously me and josh being in the poster is relevant to the project. Using gold as my heading and sub heading colour contrasts well to the poster whilst still making it look proffessional. Also, the colour gold, represents the item gold, which is very expensive again helping with the representation of the codes and conventions of a hip hop video. I gave the poster ratings that were offically given my some of the top magazines around the country.
With good reveiws and tour dates it looks like artist is backed up well by record labels and music companys making us look more professional. Here is the final poster I made :
mikeylepore 