1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The forms and conventions of music videos revolve around what sort of genre the music video falls into. Our video falls into the genre of Hip-Hop, Rap. It’s an album track from Kanye West’s album ‘Graduation’ and this is why we chose to use it as it doesn’t already have a music video for it and hasn’t been publicised as much as other Kanye West material. After choosing the song we were going to produce the music video for, we had to research into the artist and the genre conventions of Hip-Hop/Rap music videos. We looked at two Kanye West original music videos ‘Homecoming’ and ‘Good Life’. After looking at these we realised that Kanye West’s music videos are somewhat abstract when it comes to the editing techniques used with normally a performance element incorporated aswell. Through further research into Hip-Hop videos we found that the artists tend to boast about their wealth and how well they have done, promoting their own products sometimes along with the inclusion of cars, beautiful women and nice houses. Camera shots in both ‘Homecoming’ and ‘Good Life’ include a lot of low angle shots of Kanye to show his dominance and importance in the video. This is particularly shown in ‘Homecoming’ as you can see from the picture there are various shots like this.
In our music video we also used low angle shots for example the shot of Joe Fletcher walking along the road for the chorus there’s a low angle shot which has been shot from the back of a car. Also as the song we were doing involves a breakdown of a relationship with bad feelings involved we also included high angle shots to emphasise moods and feelings, for example in one scene, we tried to create a marriage council meeting where the camera was a high angle which was meant to show the heated discussion in the room and tension between the couple, and for comic value the marriage councillor himself who isn’t helping matters even though he is supposed to be. After research into the Hip-Hop genre we had to change our approach to the making of the video with props, outfits and body language. We had to adjust by wearing clothes such that are associated with the Hip-Hop/Rap genre, for example hoodies, caps and
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We created two pieces of advertisement for the music video ‘Bittersweet’, firstly another member of my group created a CD cover and back cover for the single ‘Bittersweet’ using an image of Kanye West which has been used before, we chose not to go with original images as the actors we used are clearly not the artists who are producing the music; they are just there to make the final video as good as it can be; with the resources we had at hand. The CD cover promotes Kanye West well, using an image of him performing which has been modified by George using Photoshop using neon effects, added to this neon/disco theme the font used is retro to compliment the central image, taking inspiration with the colour scheme from Kanye West’s 3rd album ‘Graduation’ which is very similar.
Another ancillary text we produced was the magazine cover for ‘VIBE’ which was produced by myself, I used an original image of Kanye West which hasn’t been used for promotional purposes before to make the image look more personal to our magazine cover. Using Adobe Photoshop I made the front cover using a strict colour scheme of red white and black, again fitting with the Hip-Hop/Rap genre as I analysed other ‘VIBE’ magazine covers which all used the strict 3 colour scheme. During my research I didn’t come across a ‘VIBE’ magazine cover which used a black background complimented by white and red writing, with a bold red title to grab the potential buyer’s attention straight away. With the image I chose for my front cover I had to darken the original image on one side of the face to make it fit with the darker background I used for the final cover. Again, we decided to use the image of the actual artist rather than the actors we used for a more official feel; to help us appeal to our target audience I used text to support the central image making up a quote from Kanye himself which would make the viewer want to read on and see in what context this has been stated by Mr West. I integrated other big named artists such as Drake, Nicki Minaj and Dwele, which again support the Hip-Hop/Rap and R&B genre which ‘VIBE’ magazine usually supports. These two texts are very important to selling our music video as audiences will definitely buy the single to the new song from their favourite artists, and also when they see promotion of this artist in ‘VIBE’ magazine they will surely want to pick it up and read it, in addition, the things featured on the front for example ‘90 minutes with Nicki Minaj’ will encourage fans of Nicki Minaj to want to read into this, even though she is not centrally focused on in this cover, the text is big enough to catch a fans attention.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Our first questionnaire was handed out to our classmates who fit into the target audience of 16-18 year olds. We included questions such as ‘What would make a good setting for a hip-hop music video?’ and ‘Which genres do you think make the most interesting music videos?’ We found that only 3 out of 9 of our classmates enjoyed Hip-Hop music videos (up against R&B, Grime and Pop) so we had to change a few things from the original plans, to cater to the target audiences as our research showed they didn’t really like Hip-Hop videos in general so we had to make our video more commercial, which actually in a sense made it better as we then included the shots of different people holding up the lyrics in different colours, which was later shown (in our second questionnaire we gave out whilst the class was viewing the final production of ‘Bittersweet’) to be one of the most popular things people liked about our video. We aimed it at this target audience because even though the relationship which is explored in the song is of quite a complex nature, we thought that we could show this through the use of actors, camera shots and angles; also we thought we could relate the relationship explored in the song to the audience, because as it is complicated and somewhat violent, it is in actual fact quite childish so we found this easy to relate to our target audience by using myself and my girlfriend in real life recreating an argument which is being overseen by a marriage councillor in a few shots in the first verse. Later audience feedback showed also that if we were to air this music video on channels dedicated to music , we should do it on MTV Base, MTV Hits and Kiss, Due to the genre of the song and nature of the video. Finally we also found from our audience feedback from the final questionnaire that the ending wasn’t as good as it could’ve been, the general feedback was that our classmates didn’t know what was happening and thought it was all a bit last minute pieced together, which it was as we had run out of time for filming by this point.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the construction of our video we used various tools to help us, firstly we used the website blogger.com which was a base which we can post all of the work we completed over the year to do with this project. This was useful as we didn’t have to print everything out and send it to the exam board and we could save work as drafts so we could go back and change things we may have got wrong or ideas that may have changed. We used my BlackBerry Smartphone to take pictures of the cast and then uploaded them via Bluetooth to the iMac.
For the whole of the filming we used a Sony video camera which was borrowed from school which wasn’t the best quality but through lighting and editing we made the final shots used look more professionally done and of better quality even though the original shots were fuzzy and distorted, we also had to upload the actual song ‘Bittersweet’ and we did this again through Bluetooth technology from my BlackBerry Smartphone. Other technologies we used include YouTube and Google to research and analyse into pictures and other music videos from the same artists. We also got our images for both the CD cover and Magazine cover from Google images. After we had filmed the shots we needed for the video we used an iMac computer and the programme iMovie HD to edit these clips together to make the video using transitions, colouring of shots for the chorus and various other effects for example black and white. For the production of the ancillary texts (magazine cover and CD cover) we used Adobe Photoshop to produce these and due to the use of Photoshop we could create two fantastic pieces which would not look out of place in HMV or WH Smith. 
Joe Manners 13H
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
We created two pieces of advertisement for the music video ‘Bittersweet’, firstly another member of my group created a CD cover and back cover for the single ‘Bittersweet’ using an image of Kanye West which has been used before, we chose not to go with original images as the actors we used are clearly not the artists who are producing the music; they are just there to make the final video as good as it can be; with the resources we had at hand. The CD cover promotes Kanye West well, using an image of him performing which has been modified by George using Photoshop using neon effects, added to this neon/disco theme the font used is retro to compliment the central image, taking inspiration with the colour scheme from Kanye West’s 3rd album ‘Graduation’ which is very similar.
Another ancillary text we produced was the magazine cover for ‘VIBE’ which was produced by myself, I used an original image of Kanye West which hasn’t been used for promotional purposes before to make the image look more personal to our magazine cover. Using Adobe Photoshop I made the front cover using a strict colour scheme of red white and black, again fitting with the Hip-Hop/Rap genre as I analysed other ‘VIBE’ magazine covers which all used the strict 3 colour scheme. During my research I didn’t come across a ‘VIBE’ magazine cover which used a black background complimented by white and red writing, with a bold red title to grab the potential buyer’s attention straight away. With the image I chose for my front cover I had to darken the original image on one side of the face to make it fit with the darker background I used for the final cover. Again, we decided to use the image of the actual artist rather than the actors we used for a more official feel; to help us appeal to our target audience I used text to support the central image making up a quote from Kanye himself which would make the viewer want to read on and see in what context this has been stated by Mr West. I integrated other big named artists such as Drake, Nicki Minaj and Dwele, which again support the Hip-Hop/Rap and R&B genre which ‘VIBE’ magazine usually supports. These two texts are very important to selling our music video as audiences will definitely buy the single to the new song from their favourite artists, and also when they see promotion of this artist in ‘VIBE’ magazine they will surely want to pick it up and read it, in addition, the things featured on the front for example ‘90 minutes with Nicki Minaj’ will encourage fans of Nicki Minaj to want to read into this, even though she is not centrally focused on in this cover, the text is big enough to catch a fans attention.
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Our first questionnaire was handed out to our classmates who fit into the target audience of 16-18 year olds. We included questions such as ‘What would make a good setting for a hip-hop music video?’ and ‘Which genres do you think make the most interesting music videos?’ We found that only 3 out of 9 of our classmates enjoyed Hip-Hop music videos (up against R&B, Grime and Pop) so we had to change a few things from the original plans, to cater to the target audiences as our research showed they didn’t really like Hip-Hop videos in general so we had to make our video more commercial, which actually in a sense made it better as we then included the shots of different people holding up the lyrics in different colours, which was later shown (in our second questionnaire we gave out whilst the class was viewing the final production of ‘Bittersweet’) to be one of the most popular things people liked about our video. We aimed it at this target audience because even though the relationship which is explored in the song is of quite a complex nature, we thought that we could show this through the use of actors, camera shots and angles; also we thought we could relate the relationship explored in the song to the audience, because as it is complicated and somewhat violent, it is in actual fact quite childish so we found this easy to relate to our target audience by using myself and my girlfriend in real life recreating an argument which is being overseen by a marriage councillor in a few shots in the first verse. Later audience feedback showed also that if we were to air this music video on channels dedicated to music , we should do it on MTV Base, MTV Hits and Kiss, Due to the genre of the song and nature of the video. Finally we also found from our audience feedback from the final questionnaire that the ending wasn’t as good as it could’ve been, the general feedback was that our classmates didn’t know what was happening and thought it was all a bit last minute pieced together, which it was as we had run out of time for filming by this point.
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
During the construction of our video we used various tools to help us, firstly we used the website blogger.com which was a base which we can post all of the work we completed over the year to do with this project. This was useful as we didn’t have to print everything out and send it to the exam board and we could save work as drafts so we could go back and change things we may have got wrong or ideas that may have changed. We used my BlackBerry Smartphone to take pictures of the cast and then uploaded them via Bluetooth to the iMac.
For the whole of the filming we used a Sony video camera which was borrowed from school which wasn’t the best quality but through lighting and editing we made the final shots used look more professionally done and of better quality even though the original shots were fuzzy and distorted, we also had to upload the actual song ‘Bittersweet’ and we did this again through Bluetooth technology from my BlackBerry Smartphone. Other technologies we used include YouTube and Google to research and analyse into pictures and other music videos from the same artists. We also got our images for both the CD cover and Magazine cover from Google images. After we had filmed the shots we needed for the video we used an iMac computer and the programme iMovie HD to edit these clips together to make the video using transitions, colouring of shots for the chorus and various other effects for example black and white. For the production of the ancillary texts (magazine cover and CD cover) we used Adobe Photoshop to produce these and due to the use of Photoshop we could create two fantastic pieces which would not look out of place in HMV or WH Smith. 
Joe Manners 13H
