In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When we were generating ideas for our music video, we decided to use conventions of the R’n’B music genre. We did this for various reasons but one of the main reasons was to fit into the existing R’n’B scene and gain a wider audience and feedback. R’n’B is one of the biggest and most popular music genres out there.
We fully understand the forms and conventions of R’n’B music as we have been listening to R’n’B pretty much all our lives and are fans of the genre ourselves. We compared our song and video to other R’n’B products. But for this evaluation I am going to compare it to even more. A typical R’n’B track has some piano keys or strings and bass, a simple drum pattern and an artist speaking about feeling good or sad – usually the artist will speak about the other sex and attraction too.
‘My Last’ by Big Sean has exactly these features – moreover in the song he’s talking about being able to have a good life and certainly mentions the opposite sex more than once. His video shows plenty of females around him partying and dancing. Even though Big Sean is a Hip Hop artist he has adapted the Hip Hop genre to make an R’n’B track. Hip Hop and R’n’B are very similar – so Big Sean has used a slower beat and added a singing artist but still used females as an iconic status and a statement of ‘making it’.
Another modern R’n’B track is Chris Brown’s ‘No Bull****’. The instrument on the main melody is once again a piano played in chords and there is also some strings on the outro of the song. This song also has a slow instrumental and more importantly, a singing artist. However the music video has fewer females compared to Big Sean’s video. In fact Chris Brown’s video has only one female and minimal scenes of that female. But to make up for that, the lyrical content in this song is much more explicit and focused on the opposite gender.
One more R’n’B song I would like to compare our project to is a little older and considered an all time R’n’B classic. ‘My Boo’ by Alicia Keys and Usher once again focuses on singing, string instruments and talking about attraction, care and love. This song is more of a duet and talks about the qualities they admire in each other. The song also mentions the good times they have together as a couple.
I can compare our music video and song to these examples and find plenty of similarities. First of all our song has a simple drum pattern, pianos as the main melody and moreover complimentary melodies played by strings all running together at 90bpm making it slow enough for R’n’B singing.
The instrumental was created before we started this project but we found that it was the perfect choice for what we wanted to do. It had everything we were looking for because while I was creating it, I knew that it would be better to conform to the genre rather than to challenge it. Challenging the genre conventions would make it harder to identify and possibly cause it to lose its target audience.
The lyrical content of our song is also similar. Ayo is complimenting the female he is attracted to and explaining how he truly admires her personality and qualities. On the other hand Ayo is a rapper and not a singer but we made sure we had a singer to enhance that true R’n’B sensation we were trying to develop. Sam is on the chorus and he also compliments the female. Therefore we have Sam backing up Ayo’s statements; two artists, speaking from the same perspective, but in a different manner.
Finally, our video uses various conventions to enlarge our audience. We had a large emphasis on the colour red for this project. Red is the colour of love, passion, attraction and overall is just a very attractive and vibrant colour. We wanted to enforce the feelings and emotions by using that colour – we used a red filter on the music video to achieve this. And red text and highlights where necessary.
Also we used artificial lighting from the cars in the video to create silhouettes of the actors Kashif and October. The reason why we used silhouettes was to portray the good old sayings ‘It’s what’s on the inside that counts’ and ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. In the video Kashif tells his friends he has been seeing October in the area quite frequently and that he likes her. He then gains a confidence boost from his friends and things go surprisingly well for him. By doing this we wanted portray another saying ‘If you don’t try, you’ll never find out’.
More importantly R’n’B music videos do not usually use themes of materialism like Hip Hop videos do. Instead they tend to use symbols, references and images. Showing two figures together simply defines co-operation, care and love.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Overall we used conventions of the R’n’B genre to fit in and enlarge our potential viewing audience. Using the conventions has truly paid off. Our music video has been well received and viewed by many people of different classes, races and across many different geographical regions .
I personally appreciate all the feedback we have received. We have gained over 1800+ views on YouTube. However due to the feedback we received we felt the video could be improved. We have two versions of our music video. One is what we are calling the draft, this is the first version. The second version is our final version, released after the draft and is also being called the official video.
The video has been improved and not re-done. We have improved the video is various ways. One of the main complaints we received was that the intro was rather lengthy and that it took too long for the song to start. So what we did was remove parts of the intro making it shorter.
We also made the intro sound better; the windy sound effect used in the draft was used because whilst we were recording the intro there was conversations from pedestrians and other noises that we didn’t want to include. I then found a better sound effect and replaced it with a digetic traffic sound, of cars passing by.
We filmed the music video in the night time so that there were less people and that the video had a more relaxed and romantic feel to it. Many said that the artists were a bit hard to see on the chorus.
This is because the choruses had overlays on them and also low lighting. What we decided to do was shoot the choruses in the daytime. This consequently made the lighting better and made the actors and artists seem apart from each other. The video is in narrative style but our viewers had the misconception that the artists were following or stalking the couple whereas it was really more of a story-telling flashback. Having the scenes clearly distinguished by day and night has erased the misunderstanding and solved the problem.
The previous video had terrible lip sync but we didn’t feel it mattered because the focus was more on the couple’s acting. We also used the wrong version of the song in the video meaning good lip syncing would have been impossible anyways. Lip sync is one of the features we focused most on in the official video.
These are a few of the features in the final video that have been included or improved. Having a grateful audience giving us detailed feedback via Facebook, YouTube or even word of mouth has encouraged us to output a music video of even higher quality.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Once again using the colour red has benefited us greatly; it allowed us to create a very strong link between the ancillary texts and the music video. Here is the front cover for the digipak – Red is used on the pictures of Ayo, and also on the stroke accents.
It’s not just red that I used though, I used the actual texts seen in the music video so that the digipak and music video has an even closer reference to each other. This is the ‘Lookin’ At You’ logo that Kashif and October walk past. On my front cover, it is used as the title text. This is the definition text of the word ‘Looking’. It can also be seen in the intro of our music video. I have enforced the reference between the music video and the digipak by using it as art for the inside left. I thought it would be very effective if someone was to open the digipak and be greeted by another item from the actual music video.
On the back, you can see a picture of the London Eye. The London Eye is used as an icon in our music video because it resembles an eye and the title of our song is called ‘Lookin’ At You’. Using the London Eye bonded the song and the video together. I feel it is a great concept because the London Eye is also considered as a romantic location. The London Eye is very popular to tourists and very eye-catching too. We also used this tourist attraction to further give off our location. Therefore I linked it to my ancillary task by using it on the back cover to have an impact on people who like the area or to be more specific the London Eye.
The magazine advert for the digipak uses the same concept of having red as a theme to link the two together. The advert has Ayo’s pictures in the background, less focused and than the actual digipak on top. The 5 stars and text are red ensuring that all media products of this project are consistent and come together like a family. I have combined themes, text, logos, images, symbols, ideas and concepts and I think they work well together, very effectively.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Technology played a very important part in the production of all our media products. We used a Blue Yeti microphone to record the vocals of our song, Fruity Loops to produce the instrumental we used, a Canon Legria HF 20 to record the footage, a Velbon CX-480 tripod to get stable shots, Sony Vegas to edit the video, Adobe Photoshop to create album art, the internet to research and YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to share our work.
I value the technology we used because it has given me and my team the upper hand, allowing us to picture and develop each of our ideas further. It feels good to say that we have made a song, a music video and even album art.
The Blue Yeti microphone is a high quality microphone which helped us to construct a song that could be taken seriously enough by the public. The lyrics were clear and loud enough which consequently resulted in a high quality song meaning we were confident enough to share our product. If we used a poor microphone the instrumental would have overpowered the vocals and moreover equalled in a bad quality song.
Fruity Loops is music production software, this is what I used to create the instrumental. This instrumental was created in free time. By having a beat that already existed, it cut down the time of having to make a new one from scratch. It also reduced the time of planning for this whole project. It gave Daniel who is in charge of directing, research and planning more time to generate ideas and progress towards a final product.
The Canon Legria HF 20 is a great HD compact camcorder. The most important part to me is that the camera is HD; the camera is able to record footage in 1080p. 1080p is the highest form of HD available right now. HD stands for high definition, meaning the picture quality is even more stunning, pristine and clear compared to standard definition cameras. Having a music video of such quality is something to be proud of and we have also noticed our music video appear on various websites. One of the websites reviewed our video’s picture quality.
The Velbon CX-480 is simple to use. Stanley the cameraman used this tripod to get smooth pans and steady shots. Without the tripod we wouldn’t be able to achieve special effects like the time-lapse used in verse three. To achieve time-lapse you would need two different shots but in the same position. The tripod made our video seem more professional – we compared our music video to others and the majority have steady shots unless they were aiming for a shaky camera effect.
In my opinion Sony Vegas has been the most important software used. This is because I truly feel that the music video is my favourite part of this media project. Sony Vegas is my favourite video editing software because I have been using it for over a year now. It’s powerful, up to date and easy to use. I recommend this software mostly because of its simplicity and vast array of effects. We used effects like the red filter and red tint on our time-lapse. More effects used were the crossfades, splitscreen and flashes. Sony Vegas understands plenty of codecs and formats unlike its competitors take for instance Final Cut Pro. I’m glad I used Sony Vegas because it also has a range of great abilities like the cookie cutter which helped me to achieve the effect of Kashif and October making this text fade away.
Adobe Photoshop has got to be the most popular photo editing software out there. We used Photoshop to create the ancillary products like the digipak and advert. There was heavy use of the internet to research other artist’s album art. In Photoshop I made the dimensions of the pictures 1000x1000px which makes it a square. I then gathered ideas and brought it to life. Photoshop is great to use because the possibilities are endless – the amount of features and utilities are too much to mention.
Finally we used social media and social networking to extend our work to the public. YouTube is where we uploaded the music video, we chose YouTube because we knew it was the most popular and most visited video sharing website. We then utilised social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to advance the amount of feedback we would receive.
Conclusion
In conclusion it has been a great experience to make such products of media like a song and a music video. I’m sure everyone in the team is overwhelmed by the feedback we have received and the final product itself. All in all the technology, hardware and software has granted us the ability to bring our ideas to life. Everything from the camera to the internet has been valued greatly in all stages of research, planning, construction and evaluation. We have utilised everything throughout the creation of our media products to the best potential.
I feel that each piece of work for this project is great in its own way. Our work could be better but we had constraints like time and equipment. If I was to do this project again I would definitely put more planning and development into each section of the work. Also it would be a pleasure to make another video but with technological advancements this time, like an even better camera or a faster PC for better editing.
Making the instrumental, song, video and ancillary tasks with my team has been a pleasure, a great experience and moreover beneficial to my knowledge and understanding of the music scene and various genres. Looking back at where we started and then looking at our final products makes me feel happy for my team and where we will take media in the near future. I feel that I am even more advanced in media studies. My skills feel refreshed and sharpened and I hope to look back at these pieces of work and reflect on even more experience gained.
