evaluation question 1

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

our finished A2 music video:    
                                                The Black Eyed Peas - Where is the love

During the Research and Planning stages of our production, we spent a lot of time as a group looking into the conventions of our chosen genre. This was difficult as we felt that The Black Eyed Peas crossed multiple ranges of genres - from Hip Hop to RnB and even Pop, which were therefore challenging classify it into one specific genre. I therefore decided to try and merge conventions associated with these genres and analyse them.

The first video that I will compare with our production is:

akon - ghetto

Immediately it is clear that this song is suited towards the R&B genre. It shows that just by observing this screenshot of  the music video Ghetto, we have met the R&B genre which shows how similar the conventions in both music videos will be.

This video falls into the RnB genre. Immediately we can see conventions here that were also used in our own production:


Location was very important with my video. I utilised urban locations with the majority of my shots being filmed in Market Rasen and Lincoln. In this video of Akon " Ghetto", they have acheived a similar outlook and have merged these locations within his performance to establish and emphasises his iconic status whilst showing his 'ghetto' roots - often seen in the genre. Even though we have also used an urban setting we decided to challenge the convention by using it to give a realistic perspective of these urban locations and imply the clear lack of wealth within our video, fitting in with the title 'Where Is The Love'.

There are also frequent use of tracking shots of the singer walking in Ghetto which have appeared in other numerous music videos. This indicates that because the artist is in the middle of the shot, all the focus is on him and what he is doing which is promoting himself but also with regards to the narrative, creating thinking space for the artist. Our video has developed this convention and used this shot to establish the situation he is in, allowing all the focus to be fixed on him but also leading the videos narrative.

In 'Ghetto', natural lighting is used throughout the video similar to our video in terms of open areas where no artificial lighting is used. This convention is used in many R&B/rap video, however it is almost always accompanied by artificial lighting used inside locations such as in clubs or studios. We attempted to develop this convention whilst trying to balance it out so it can suggest that in these urban locations, not everything occurs outside.

Another camera shot frequently seen is a handheld shot. At 1:52 in the video, you can see the one of many handheld shots of the artist's direct performance to suggests a rugged scene portraying the artist and shows that he is not formal and quite rough.

Whilst some of our performance shots are still, the vast majority of them are handheld. We used this convention to portray the artists rough personality and to increase the pace of the video to make it more dynamic.

Akon-Ghetto

Our music video-Where is the love

I will now compare our video to this next music video:

Eminem - Lose yourself

What instantly makes this artist and song stand out is that Eminem himself challenges the convention of black males dominating the R&B/Rap/Hip Hop industry. This is something we challenged too, with the same outcome which is to create a more unique approach towards our R&B/Rap genre. Costume was vital towards the authenticity of our urban style music video. In Eminem's video of  "loose yourself, he wears quite run down, plain clothing all throughout the video, again similar to our video. We set to use only plain, quite scruffy clothing to portray the main character's lack of wealth and to relate it to his background experiences and personality. When looking back at our video we had certainly met this convention for the main character/artist however in terms of the other artists this was more difficult which meant we had to try to develop this bringing in costumes for the artists and characters to help to the realism of the video.

Another convention  we met is of the main artist performing in front of crowds of people at various gigs. At 2:25-2:26 in Eminem video lose yourself; I admired this particular performance because of the energetic vibe it created which inspired us to use this type of shot. We had to be specific on the amount of people the artist is performing in front of, however we established that any amount over 5 people are thought to be a crowd

Throughout the video we notice the convention of an urban setting, similar to our video. By looking at these R&B/rap videos that included the run down areas motivated us to finalize our choice to shoot in urban locations:

50 cent - In da club

In this video of 50 cent - in da club, it highlights numerous Hip-Hop conventions that we chose to challenge. For example, we challenged the convention of black males and glamorous girls that are so frequently used not just in this video but throughout the whole R&B/ Rap industry. We wanted to stand out from other R&B artists and a simple change in the lead performer demonstrated especially for the artist "Eminem" how much attention it can create.

comparison of white and black rappers

We challenged the convention of RnB/Hip-Hop race by using all white characters. This tally basically demonstrates the comparison of white rappers to black in the music industry. I have only chosen one professional white rapper artist. This indicates that he is a unique individual compared with the other black rappers which makes him stand out. We have partly used this for a similar outcome. 

50 cent

Akon

Jay-Z

Rizzle kicks

Snoop-dog

Will-I-Am

We also noticed that nearly all of the lead male artists within the RnB industry are strong muscular males connoting power and strength. Again we challenged this convention as the character in our video is not as muscular .compared to the other lead artists. The convention of R&B genre videos being set in urban locations is one of most common and perhaps most important convention in a music video relating to the realisation of the young and old generation living in these conditions. We analysed the locations we saw in this video of " In Da Club" and other various R&B genre videos, and developed a perspective towards where and how we are going to finalize our location. The characters from "In Da Club" are wearing a vast amount of jewellery or "Bling" indicating the large wealth that they have. We challenged this convention and insisted not to use any jewellery within our music video because we wanted to promote the lack of wealth characters have which added to the authenticity of our video.

Rizzle kicks -Down With The Trumpets

In Rizzle kicks "Down With The Trumpets", there were more or less even amounts of conventions we have used and challenged. Firstly with the use of natural lighting frequently used throughout the video. The vast majority of lighting is natural and when looking back at our video, the use of lighting between the two is very similar.

The video however like ours has balanced it out with artificial lighting. This is something with have developed over time when concentration on the lighting aspects of our video, and looking at Rizzle kicks video, the even ratio of lighting helped us understand the wider ranges of lighting used in a production.

A convention which is very common and what makes the R&B music unique is the upbeat tempo of songs with editing in the videos to match. In this video there is the distinct fast paced vibe created by the tempo and is reflected onto the amount and length of shots used. This is very similar to our video as we too related the fast paced, short shots to match with the fast tempo of the song. The reason we came together as a group was for our passion for the same style of music which in our case is R&B/ rap and particularly admires songs that are very upbeat. This song "where is the love" reflects our personality which is why we chose it. We wanted to create the stereotypical outlook on upbeat songs with fast paced short shots and not to challenge it to be slow paced at times because; firstly it would dampen the mood which we agreed would probably create a depressing feel towards the video which is not what we intended to do, and secondly we felt that simply if the ratio of slow shots overwhelmed the fast paced it would clearly end up making the video boring which was not a risk we wanted to take.

This video is very similar to comparison with Rizzle kicks videos get down with the trumpets with regards to the ratio of narrative to performance. The video consists of very little narrative in the video and almost all performance shot. We noticed that almost all R&B/Hip-Hop music videos consist of a ratio of narrative to performance shots, however we decided to challenge this convention partly due to the fact that the majority of the videos we had seen with-out an equal ratio of narrative to performance shots, made the video become very drag and boring and didn't get me emotionally involved within video. In our video we created it so that both the narrative and performance shot are levelled with equal importance including the right amount of focus on the band as well as the focus of the storyline, location and characters.

Wretch 32 - don't go

Within this video of Wretch 32 - "Don't go", we have challenged the convention of the amount of narrative used in comparison to its performance. As previously described, our video contains a vast amount a narrative but not too much to ruin the structure of the video, whereas this music video of Wretch 32 has no clear narrative but a series of cutaways. The lead male artist is smartly dressed which implies he is formal and wants to promote himself as a high class rapper to the industry. Again we challenged this convention to allow us to show to the audience the realization of people living in the urban locations. 

We used close up shots for a lot of the performance shots which this music video has also included. This is mainly to promote himself , be familiar, and express their importance towards the video., 

here we have a close up shot of the artist to indicate that we have met this convention within the specific genre:

Jay Z - empire state of mind

kayne west - all of the lights

In comparison to these two music videos, we have challenged certain conventions of the R&B/ Hip/Hop genre. For example, lots of R&B music video uses black and white effects to mainly give it a nice finish to the music video and to make it look more formal. We have gone against this effect and challenged it due to our simple dislike of the effect. These videos of "all of the lights" and "empire state of mind" included industrialised locations, whereas ours is quite urban locations throughout the whole video which challenges the convention.
Again the convention of the lead artist wearing excesses amount of jewellery appears in these videos, compared to the character's lack of it in ours. We wanted to promote the lack of wealth characters have in our video and not promoting the artist's reputation.

Digipaks.

Before we were able to create our digipak we firstly had to recognise the conventions used within the RnB/Rap genre towards advertisement. We found that an RnB/hip-hop digipaks included such conventions as:

• Record label
• Bar code
• Track list
• A image usually the artist
• The artists website
• Release dates
• A sticker saying 'Featuring..'
• Copyright logo
• Producer
• Artist's name, and song title also seen along the spine of the digipak.

For the front cover our main conventions we had to meet were the title of the band and song. We met this by editing the title on Photoshop to give it an authentic look with regards to our urban style video.
Utilising a powerful picture of the artist's face was a trend in digipack covers that I noticed straight away. In comparison to this digipak we see that the artist 'Eminem' has challenged the convention of an image of the artist. However despite this challenge the majority of the digipaks included this convention,which is why I choose to utilise this convention on my front cover. Our digipak portrays the artists as strong and powerful figures from the location they come from; Market Rasen. With comparison to Eminem's digipak, the track list and parental advisory is on the front of the cover. Firstly our digipak did not need the parental advisery because our video did not contain anything that could be offence to the audience. Secondly we decided to go against the track list on the front of the cover mainly due to our intentions to promote the band more than the songs.

We used all of the conventions we gathered from analysing various RnB/Hip-Hop genre digipaks. Perhaps the most vital was the back cover of our digipak which is where we found the majority of the conventions. The first convention we found and used was of the frequent use of the bar code. I used this convention by having to create my own bar code which gave the back cover a more professional finish. i went on  http://www.barcodesinc.com/generator/index.php to create my own customised bar code.

The next convention we found and met was the use of track listing. we met this convention by editing the track listing onto the back cover using Photoshop to make our digipak look more professional and to show what tracks are on the album and in what order. We tried to develop the font of the text so that it matched with the title of the front cover, however we thought by doing that it takes away the recognisability the title gives out and could create a common and uncreative outlook which could result in it not being as exciting and memorable.

The record label was another important convention we met however we did not choose the same record label that The Black Eyed Peas signed to partly due to the fact that we wanted to add a bit of customisation and not to make it too similar to the actual back cover of  the Black Eyed Peas album.

Magazine

The magazine advert was very similar with regards to the convention that we kept regularly noticing, these were:

•          Same or similar image to the digipak
•          Record label
•          Same font/colour scheme
•          Name of artist/band
•          Sticker saying "includes the single"
•          Name of song being promoted
•          Release date
•          Website

I decided to compare my magazine advert with one of the new 'The Black Eyed Peas' album magazine advert because it gave me a better insight into not just what the RnB/Hip-Hop genre would use, but what the actual band we are imitating use towards a magazine advert.

We met with the convention of using a similar or the same picture as to the digipak. We edited it however so that the background is dull yet the artist stand out with colour. We did this so this image which is used for the magazine advert can promote the artists more than the song because we wanted the audience to know what the band looks like to make them more recognisable.

One of the major conventions that set it apart from a digipak is the release date. We did not see any release dates on the digipak which led us to think that this convention isn't normally used within the RnB/Hip-Hop music advertisement industry. However apart from The Black Eyed Peas magazine advert, it was a very common conventions used within all genres. We wanted to use the same font as the title of the front cover of the digipak because even though i previously described how we didn't want the font to be used too often, we felt that because this was a different advertisement, it should include something to make the band stand out and be recognized which in our case was the same font.

Another convention we met was of the website. We met this because we wanted to give some leading information to the audience if they wanted to know more about the album or the band as a whole. Not only that but we felt by imprinting this onto the magazine advert it would give it a more professional finish, which it did.

Update on filming, 30th November 2011

Today are plans to shoot the concert sequence were going to be put into action. This was by far the biggest, most difficult and eventful filming we had done so far for the video. We were sceptical on how it would turn out because of so many problems that could occur and the shear unpredictability of the shooting. We were very determined to add this as to the video as it would empathise our creativity of shots used in the video, and also it is a vital scene within the narrative of the video. The lunchtime on the day we were able to gather around 60 students from years 13 and 12 and take them to the drama studio to start filming. There were three camera men filming and it was vital that they didn’t get in the shot of the others. Despite a few problems occurring such as people messing around and a broken microphone, we gathered enough footage to compress and observe the footage to decide whether to finalise it into sequences of events or re-shoot it. We were very pleased with the outcome of the footage and decided to finalise it into our video.

update on filming, 29th November 2011

For the last few days, I and the group sat down and had a serious discussion about the last gaps that were missing in our music video. What we had achieved so far was brilliant however there was something missing. We all had to try to figure out what it was and how that could turn it from great to brilliant. We watched back what we had already put together and there was a noticeable difference in the comparison of narrative to performance shots used. We therefore had to try and create unique way of shooting these performance shot compared to the shots already used. We are all a huge fan of Coldplay and throughout the lesson, decided to watch the song “paradise" to see what performance shots are used and whether it could inspire us to form some of our own performance shots, which it did. We saw an obvious idea that we never thought to include which was of a concert performance. We agreed that this is just what we needed to fill up the gaps, so we organised a date on Tuesday the 30th to create this concert scene for our video. We also further added this idea to fit in with the narrative of the video. We decided to lead the character into a concert where he is chosen by the band to come up on stage and sing. The band realises the potential he has and decide to let him join the band.

We had to dicded where to choose the location for the concert, and because i took theatre studies we used the downstairs drama studio to film. We adjusted the lighting and added some steps to replicate the stage of the concert:

i took a rough video to get a perspective on what type of shots we could possibly use for this scene.

final magazine advert

This is my final magazine advert we created. We found that by observing this there is a clear sense of importance from the artist which works well in relation to the urban background as it creates an effective contrast of dull and bright. We also noticed the brand identity between this magazine advert and my digipak cover and also the music video is noticeable and all has a similar aspect of urbanisation identification of the artist as we have set out to try and achieve a memorable looking band. I felt that the text 'The Black Eyed Peas' in gold combined with the background of the four artists works well and makes the magazine advert stand out towards audiences. The use of black and white and the artists in colour also stands out and makes it clear who the artists are and shows a clear relationship between one another.

editing our magazine advert

When we agreed to use this photo as the magazine advert, we spent no time wasting and went straight into Photoshop to see how we could edit this picture. We were advised by our teacher to not over do the photo on the editing perspective, and to keep it simple, clear but effective.

We loaded the image up onto Photoshop. After doing this, I decided to attempt to create my initial idea previously thought for the front cover of the digipak which was by using different effects, to enhance the artist announcement for the upcoming album and instantly make them more noticeable as a band to empathise that we are promoting them. By doing this I wanted them to stand out in the foreground to create a more direct address to the audience. First, I used the history brush tool to create a dim grey background but keeping the artists in colour artist we were promoting therefore making them stand out. We then used tools to give the magazine advert a professional finish which included the same font ‘praetorian’ used for the digipak and created stars using the shapes tool to create a rating for our advert.

The font added to the authenticity of an urban appearance however as we are also trying to promote the band, the text as a whole looked too bland and didn't stand out enough to grab audience’s attention. This led me and my group to using another font with a bolder colour effect to achieve this. After choosing the appropriate font, we used a gold highlighted colour effect to portray a wealthy symbol to create a contrast between the wealth and the clear lack of it (empathised by the grey colour) from the urban background.

We then had to create information about the band and upcoming album we were promoting. We took the iTunes logo and made it clear as to where it is available on. to make it stand out we used the brush tool to gently highlight in white the surrounding areas around the logo, then using the blur tool, effectively added a professional and smooth finish to it.

The development was fairly simple yet we believed the outcome showed us an effective advert which stood out because of the contrast of colours, customised logo to add our own style to it, and the creative compositing of the artists. 

Ideas towards our magazine advert

With regards to the creation of our digipak, some of the ideas we originally thought of didn’t get used for the finalised digipak. This however made the idea process of creating a magazine advert much easier as we already had some creative ideas.

At first, we decided that the idea of the band as a whole stand evenly in a line with the lead member standing forward to empathise his importance. we also would have them stand on a train track which creates an authentic urban background. However when we observed this picture in greater detail, concerns was raised as to where we would be able to fit all of the information and advertisement reviews. This led us to discard the image as a whole and perhaps base our image on a similar version to one of the digiapk images.

We decided to choose the inside cover of our digipak, except add some creative effects to set the two images apart so that the audience can gain a clear insight into which advertisement is which. We wanted to create a large amount of thinking space when creating the inside cover of our digipak and this allowed the image to have a lot of space to indicate reflection and room to breathe so that the focus is purely on the artist and nothing else. Because of the large amount of space we thought it would be the easiest image to fit as much information that we wanted.

We uploaded the image onto to get a general perspective on how it would look in term of composition and where to place all of the advertisement information.

magazine advert analysis

The artists of this music poster advert are from the Black Eyed Peas. They are promoting their fourth studio album “Monkey Business” The bands as artists are unlike what we see in the music world today. As you can see, the artists have their own individual style of appearance to the advert. They have purposely shown themselves to be rebellious as they are all doing what they want to do. Taboo who is the rapper in the lower middle is creating more of the focus on him because of his noticeable   hand gesture. They present themselves as a fun and diverse band to the audience which indicates that they are promoting they’re album and representation as pleasantly and widely to all audiences as possible.

The colours that have been used for this magazine advert have been chosen for a particular reason. The specific colour of red is used in the background with subsidiary colours of black and gold which signifies a broad persona of royalty. These colours are quite fresh and look like they belong to a circus theme. To justify this suggestion further the album name is called “monkey business” which adds to the wildness and excitement of the band. The colours consist mainly of quite dull red and yellow which are so it doesn’t take the attention off the information about new album and them as artists. The bands clothes are not wearing anything particularly vibrant, just similar colours to the background however the majority of the colours in which they are wearing are black which creates an attractive eye catching contrast of the red background.

The font is quite stylised to fit the bands stylised image. The artists name and the album name is in the same font style which implies that there is an equal balance of promotion. The ‘Y’ and ‘A’ are in particularly stylised as they have been joined at the middle to make it a cross sign to signify that they have created their own flavour of style to the text.

The composition is not a usual poster that we see on billboards and magazines. This could be due to that they are a contemporary RnB/ Hip- Hop band with conventions of different genres of music to try and appeal them as a band to a wider audience. The only female singer of the band Fergie is placed on the side of the band however her expression and use of different personalised costume especially carries the attitude as she is representing a role model for all women that The Black Eyed Peas give the impression that they are here to introduce a different style of music.

The magazine advert does not provide a lot of information for the audience. The main information that they have included is the title and album name. The font has been made very bold as this is very important information for the audience however there is no additional information about the album such as; release date, availability, website etc.

This poster seems to just be an up scaled version of Jay Z's album Kingdom Come. All urban adverts seem to have an empowering image of the artist, utilising a convention that shows off the genre for example with Jay Z he is modelling the NY cap this connotes the idea of the 'hood' and urban life.

The face of jay-z is very clear and noticeable which gives him an iconic status of importance for the audience to recognise. This is a vital aspect of advertisement especially within the industry of RnB because the majority of artists are soloists and compete for the most recognisable face. However this is what makes the Black Eyed Peas unique and stand out from others.

We can see the use of dark red, black and white colours. The colours from this advert are simplistic yet effectively as it creates a persona for what the music from the album is like. As they are much muted colours it could signify quite deep and emotional music but not hugely upbeat.

The layout from this advert is very detail with information provided for the upcoming album. The Again this is a key convention

The artists of this music poster advert are again from the Black Eyed Peas. However they are promoting their new style of music and advertising to show this, they’re new contemporary style album “the beginning”. As you can see, the artists have their own individual modern style of appearance to the advert. ‘will-I-am’ is dressed in a noticeable white suit which empathises his importance and leadership as the leading band member.

The colours in this image are plain and bland using mostly white and grey white which could signifies that they no longer fit into the genre of RnB because of their new genre they are appealing to categorise into which is mainly Hip-Hop/techno. It also creates the sense of excessive wealth and purity with regards to each individual, and the band as a whole.

The magazine advert does not provide a lot of information for the audience. The main information that they have included is the title and album name. The font has been made very bold as this is very important information for the audience however there is no additional information about the album such as; release date, availability, website etc. 

  The font, though quite small, creates a futuristic persona for the band and perhaps indicates the new uses of technological devices to help influence and combine with their music.

The last four letters of the word Billboard has been filled in with different colours which symbolises a unique style that the band has and that they are trying to set out being different by how their medium looks.

conventions of a magazine advert

Conventions of music mag advert

View more presentations from Sam Benzie.

update on filming, 26th November 2011

Today myself and one of my group members Aaron went into Lincoln to film some footage for the second verse. This footage is of the different events that occur as the main character walks past them. We were  limited again to the amount of people we could use for the video on that day,therefore I came up with the solution to simply gather lots of different clothing so that each person can wear a differnt costume but still be in different shots  indicating a different character in a different event. However this was providing that they covered they're faces for other events if they had already appeared in. We solved this problem out by already bringing clothing to cover the face such as:

• scarf's
• hooded jumpers
• large hats/caps
• glasses

magazine advert

After finalising our digipak, we then had to move on to the creation of a magazine advert. This was so we could all be introduced to another in depth technique to promote our music video and explore this type of advertisement. We had to create a promotion package for the release of an album and creating magazine advert was an effective way of promoting our video. Here is a list of the features we had to include with regards to promoting our video:

• music promo video
• a cover for your music video's release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
• A magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).
• Optional-word of mouth advertisement.

final digipak

This is our finalised digipak:

what I admire about this front cover is the clear unity of the band which signifies a strong relationship between each other. the long passage way works effectively as it indicates that they have all experienced a journey and the close up  and direct address of the artist suggest that they have reached that goal and have overcome the journey. the font works well too as it sets an urbanised perspective for the band.

 The inside cover for the digpak i feel that we wanted to create a large amount of thinking space when creating the inside cover of our digipak and this allowed the image to have a lot of space to indicate reflection and room to breathe so that the focus is purely on the artist and nothing else. We also noticed the clear brand identity from the digipak cover and also the music video is noticeable and all has a similar aspect of urbanisation identification of the artist as we have set out to try and achieve a memorable looking band. Overall though simple, it works effectively as it demonstrate the reflection from the characters.

This is perhaps my favourite image really empathises the artists emotion and suffering well and that he reflecting about his life and looking out towards the distance and in a sense searching for help. I felt this image worked well in terms of the location and the over the shoulder shot and also the lighting of the image. I admire the sense of searching for something from the character with the scale of the huge city next to him. It is overwhelming to notice the intense reflection of awareness from this image and shows the realism of what the modern society to become.

final idea for front cover of digipak

The deadline was become a concern as it was drawing nearer and nearer and we still had no finalised front cover, I decided to gather the band member and take the still camera and get George to drive to the market rasen library. This was in all honesty the first location I came up with regards to considering what we were going to do for the front cover. Another concern was that break time was the only available time I could gather the entire band members enable for me to take some still photos and we only had around 15 minutes to achieve this. None the less, we took some creative photos of the whole band and one in particular caught my attention the most.

final idea for back cover of digipak

We concluded that this was the finalised back cover. Soon after we encountered difficulties towards making it look like a professional digipak back cover album. We started off by creating a bar code for our back cover. We used a bar code generator website to customize our own bar code. Soon after we created our professional bar code,which we then added it to the back cover of our digipak.

http://www.barcodesinc.com/generator/index.php

Our next task was to add a copyright logo and label to the back cover to simply to portray a profession finish. We personalized our own copyright label and simply extracted the logo from Google images.

After this, we added all of the additional information such as a website and copyright details. The last convention we had to achieve which was vital for the creation of a back cover digipak was the track listing. We researched actually songs from one of the Black Eyed Pea’s album for us to further use. We noticed that there are frequently only around 8 songs in an album which lead us to create only 8 songs. We realised we had a lot of space at the top of the back cover which allowed us to put enough songs on yet, still retaining the view of the city.