Thursday, 15 December 2011

Evaluation Activity 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product has used, developed and challenged different kind of forms and conventions of real media products. We have researched into existing music videos that have gained numerous views and recognition. We developed these ideas and compare them with successful music videos. I have gathered nine screenshot from our final music video:



1. Relationship of lyrics to narrative/visuals: This shot is on the line of "I'm just a musician on the rise" is a key lyric as it reflects the state of the artist of being a new, and upcoming musician doing all he can to rise. We presented this by showing the artist in a recording studio singing the current song. This implies that she is striving hard to achieve her dreams. As this was in the rap part of the video, we didn't want to confuse the audience so we edited this shot into black and white to present it as a narrative.

2. Relationship of music to visuals: This shot is on the line of "End of the line". The music and the visual links well through the connection of the hard beat of the music. This shot changes from close-up to long shot, colour to black and white, which aids the strong beat of the music.

3. Representation of artist with reference to record label's expectations: Our record label company is "DefJam Recordings". It is one of the biggest recording companies in America which has made fame to a variety of RnB artists such as Rihanna, Kanye West, Ne-Yo and more. We researched into the artists' music videos and have found out that they use a lot of close-up. This presents, and promotes the artist to the audience which helps gain recognition to the artist. As a group, we have decided to use this to show that we can present the artist well as how the record label present their artists. We also aided this by the mise-en-scene, and setting of the music video. We have thought about this carefully on what costume the artist would wear; we linked the costumes to the RnB, Hip Hop culture and how they dress, and how the culture changes into the modern society.

4. Genre of music and how it is defined: Our choice of song for music video is RnB, Hip Hop based, so we thought about how we are going to define and present our music video in a style of RnB and Hip Hop. We have researched into existing music videos and found that most of them use urban location such as cityscape, skateparks, grafitti locations and more. This shot shows a part of location on our music video; it shows the artist dancing in front of grafitti wall to show urbanization, as well as the culture of the genre. We strengthen this by showing different types of camerawork: camera angles, distance, and shot types which complimented the idea of the genre.

5. Setting/Location: Our settings and location relates to our music genre of RnB and Hip Hop. We chose to feature the London Eye in our music video as a lot of people knows this as one of UK's top attraction (this could also imply that the artist is representing his country to his audience) and this is one of UK's modern features.

6. Camerawork and Editing: As RnB and Hip Hop grows overtime, changing and blending to upcoming modernity, we decided to make our music video modern with cityscape urban locations, that is complimented by the editing, and the mise-en-scene. This shot shows one of the dancers in our music video "jumping" to the camera (which relates to the lyric: "And I gotta jump to the next step") which presents the camerawork in this music video. We implemented different shot types such as Establishing shot to present the locations to strengthen the verisimilitude of the music video, Close-up to present and promote the artist, Long shot to show the artist with his group, and Low angle to give the artist authority and power.

7. Lighting: Lighting is one of the main constraints we came across while making the music video. We have shots at night which has very limited light so we had to find a place where there is at least some light that will allow the artist to be seen. This is important because RnB, Hip Hop artist are always being presented and promoted. Artist who fails to promote themselves will eventually lose their contract with their recording label which is the biggest downfall for an artist, so for an upcoming artist, presenting and promoting is very essential. We chose to shoot under a car park light  which gave us enough light to be seen. We wanted to create verisimilitude as we didn't want to suddenly change from daylight to nighttime. We did this by presenting an establishing shots between them to show introduction on what scene is coming next.

8. Mise-en-Scene: Mise-en-scene is very important in any kind of films. In a music video, mise-en-scene helps depicts the purpose of the visuals and the music/lyrics. Costume is a very important feature to be considered, so in our music video, as a group we had a good discussion on what costume is the best to wear. We tried to fit it into our genre; we are pleased that our genre has a lifestyle behind it; people are living through RnB and Hip Hop. The clothes these people wear are not just any ordinary urban clothes but have been recognized as part of the culture. This made it easy for us to decide on what costume is the best to wear. The main artist wore a snapback hat, a large sunglasses (Raybans: which is famous and well-known by a lot of people especially those living in urban cities); this props gave the main artist authority, and presented him in a confident, determined artist.

9. Intertextuality or influence of other music video: This shot was influenced by a music video we research back when we were in planning stage. This shot caught our eyes so we decided to capture it and modify it in our own version. The music video we got it from presented this shot as a long shot, and for our music video we made it close-up so that it is more effective, as well as recognizable. We also used this as a transition which made it very useful and very effective to our music video.

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