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.