Evaluation finalll

Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our production, Rum and Redbull, is a
dancehall music video. Our style of
presentation was developed from silent
movies, almost like slapstick comedies, to
make the audience aware of the social / fun
element of drinking Rum and Red Bull.
Everything is one long party.

However, our narrative format and structure
follow the established forms and conventions
of concept driven music videos by largely ignoring the narrative element, although
our scenes are clearly related to the song lyrics. The only deviation to this is that we
have included a DJ to set up and link between all the scenes. As a further deviation
to concept driven music videos we have also included some shots of a performer lip-
syncing the lyrics, which is very typical of dance hall and music video productions
more generally. We have also adopted a voyeuristic approach regarding one of our
female actors, showing her legs and dancing to attract the male gaze. (Mulvey 1975)

Atypically, our music video did not use a group of sexy, professional female dancers.
Instead, we focused on normal, everyday people getting intoxicated and high on
Rum & Redbull. The audience can connect with these characters because they are
the same as them and not celebrity or people of a higher status.

Throughout our video the main focus is not on the men but the girls and how drunk
they are becoming. This is a convention for our sub-genre because many dancehall
music videos concentrate on women rather than men, Tony Matterhorn’s – Dutty
Wine being a good example of this. Conventionally, in our video we use many close
ups, not only of the characters, but also the product, as well as set-piece sequences,
for example in the party room and at the graveyard.

Our camerawork follows conventional technical codes by using a variety of shots and
angles to portray a sense of personal connection between the audience and actors,
long shots establishing the scene and closer shots to feature the characters and their
enjoyment of the party. We achieved this by using many short takes to keep our
video fast paced and confusing, connoting that everyone is getting more and more
drunk. Our aim was to position the audience to identify with the main characters, as
well as keeping up the pace and intercutting of sequences (from the DJ to the party
to the street begging scenes) which allowed us to create a party-going atmosphere
for everyone. Some of our sequences draw the audience into the action, by using
point-of-view shots as below.

The editing we used follows the traditional style of music video editing, with
transitions being mostly straight cuts between the beats of the music as we felt that
this could allow the visuals to compliment the music. The whole of the track has a
fast rhythm and is really energetic so therefore we could not really use any slow
gentle transitions as this wouldn’t compliment the music. We wanted to establish
the mood of the music straight away by having the party scene as the opening to our
music video as this allows the audience to establish the main reason for the rest of
the music video.

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary texts?
I feel that the combination of our music video and its ancillary texts worked well as
we learnt some of the key elements of branding such as; brand personality and
brand position. We put these elements to good use to make our main product look
professional. In our music video we tried to differentiate ourselves from what
already existed in the current trend of music videos, by not featuring dance artists
for example. Therefore we wanted to do the same with our ancillary texts. So, for
example, we wanted simple yet shocking designs for our digipak and poster rather
than over doing it with lots of text and pictures.

We also decided to have the key theme of the Jamaican flag colours (red, yellow,
green) throughout all our ancillary texts as this made a clear link between the
Jamaican artist (Beenie Man) and our products. The use of this also helped to keep a

clear relation between all the products and so there is a continuation of the mood
from the music video to what the digipak and magazine advert have; the bright
Jamaican colours complement the fast paced and lively music video. Throughout all
our products we have used a key logo which is the bat as this represents rum. This is
the logo of Bacardi rum. By using this logo we have instantly put a stamp on all of
our products so everyone knows that they are all linked together.

Our digipak follows several established forms and conventions of other digipaks for
example it has the name of the artist, the name of the song, a key theme, price and
lyrics. Many artists choose not to have their picture displayed on their digipak or
album so we didn’t feel like this would be an important factor to include. We wanted
to concentrate more on selling the song and our music video rather than selling the
artist so this is why we came to the decision to keep our digipak design sweet and
simple yet eye catching. We decided to use the ‘black splat’ on every side of our
digipaks as we all agreed that it looked like someone had just opened a can of
Redbull and sprayed it everywhere, linking into scenes of can’s being opened in the
video. Personally I thought it looked like someone had been sick which also links to
our key theme in the music video about being drunk.

Promotion was a very important part of our ideas regarding the magazine advert.
We decided that by using a snap shot of a character from our music video, people
would be able to make the connection between the image on the advert and the
video. Therefore this would attract a lot more people to watch our production. As a
group we thought that having our pasty faced Michael Jackson lookalike as the front
cover would attract a lot of attention from our target audience as he was very
famous and easily recognisable. Accordingly this would catch the public’s eye and
they would be interested to see the music video. Our magazine advertisement
follows established forms and conventions by showing the name of the artist, the
title of the song and a release date. These are all important towards promotion as
they let the public know all the details which will lead them to the digipaks. We felt it
was important to maintain a sense of continuity so when the audience see magazine
advert and then the digipak, they will be able to recognise that the two ancillary
texts come from the same video.

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
We learned from our initial research stages that our target audience would be
mostly males and females aged 13 – 25yrs. This was largely because Dancehall hasn’t
been around for as long as other music genres and has only been receiving
mainstream success since the late 80’s. We found that people of this age range
usually keep up to date with the newer artists and latest music. Our research also
indicated that the targeting particular ethnicities would be irrelevant as the sound
appealed to all the people we surveyed. However I was not surprised to get a lot of
good feedback from Caribbean people as Beenie man comes from Jamaica and
Dancehall originates from there as well. Our early target audience research also
showed us what kind of music our target audience more generally enjoyed and what
they liked about music videos. For example we found out that their favourite genre
of music is RnB and they prefer fast paced songs. We also discovered that they like
xyz and xxx to be featured in music video scenarios.

With this research very much in mind we then tried to create a music video that
would really appeal to our target age range. To help achieve this we used a mixture
of actors that were in the same target age range group and also of different
ethnicities so it would appeal to everyone. This allowed us to form a link between
the target audience and characters and also gave our music video a comical side as
we aimed to try and get the audience to laugh at the fact that similar crazy things
happen when they are drunk. In our script development, we included the use of
particular camera techniques. For example, close up shots and point of view shots to
position the audience within the situation. This was helpful as it allowed us to
incorporate actions of the characters with particular camera techniques to
emphasise a particular mood that we wanted to focus on.

(MAKE DIAGRAM BIGGER, SO PEOPLE CAN READ IT BETTER, AS ABOVE)

As you can see from above, the audience feedback we gathered was really positive
but at the same time, people still pointed out ways in which we maybe could off
improved our main product.

Regarding our main product a lot of people have said that our narrative was a bit too
confusing and that they didn’t understand what was going on until we explained it to
them. This was quite disappointing as this is what our target audience felt was a
really important convention of a music video yet we were unable to properly fulfil
this.

Everyone was really impressed with our ancillary products. They liked how we had
made a clear link between our products and would definitely be interested to

purchase the video after seeing how professional our magazine advert and digipak
designs looked. Several people told me that they liked the front and back cover for
the digipak as it was straightforward, with many artists nowadays similarly keeping
to a simple design.

Professional digipak

However we did receive a good amount of positive feedback regarding our music
video. One person said that they really liked the editing we had used on our video,
for example the speeding up of some scenes as well as the slow motion. A lot of
people have commented saying that they think Beenie man would be proud of this
production. One person suggested to “simplify the video by maybe removing one or
two scenes, for example the begging scene; and instead make the party scene longer
so it is simpler rather than jumping from one scene to another as this is what
confuses people.” I find this to be a good piece of audience feedback as if I was to
start all over again with this production I defiantly wouldn’t try to cram as much in
and actually stick to maybe developing two or three different scenes.

We feel that all our end products successfully met the OCR brief as we were able to
comprehensively follow as well as challenge forms and conventions, whilst
maintaining creativity and innovation. We were also able to demonstrate a degree of
excellence in technical skills such as framing and keeping hand-held shots steady,
alongside continuity editing with a meaning that is clear to the audience. This makes
me feel like our music video could actually stand up well against professional
products.

4) How did you use new media technologies in the research,
planning, construction and evaluation stages?
The majority of our research was achieved by gathering information via the internet
and search directories. We found out that using search directories like Yahoo as
opposed to search engines like Google gave us a lot more relevant information as
the websites given are actually analysed and categorised by humans whereas the
results given by Google are collected by a computer programme called robots which
just gives people results from a match off any website that has the same words
typed in the search box. Google still has provided us with relevant images and some

useful information. Another extremely good new media technology that we used
was Youtube (www.youtube.com) which especially helped me with my textual
analysis. I selected a music video that I wanted to analysis on Youtube because of its
wide variety and easy access. The use of facebook also really helped me during the
target audience research because I was able to gain a large sample size as people
seem to be more lenient about giving up their time whilst on their computer as
oppose to in person. I think this is because they can be doing other things whilst
taking a survey on a computer. For the planning stage, we used our mobile phones
to take pictures of locations on the days we were filming.

For the construction of the music video, we used the
Canon XM-2 Camcorder. To get the best out of this
digital tape camera, we needed to know how to set
up several controls like how to insert and play back a
tape, and how to adjust the white balance so
our recordings would be clear in each location. We also
learned how to use used manual focus, which allowed
us to capture clear shots from different distances with the option of pulling focus
when required. We also used the Canon’s manual exposure adjustment for example
when our DJ is dancing in the studio.

During the editing stage, my group used Apple’s Final Cut Pro. Most of the
techniques that were required had already been learnt during our AS thriller film
opening sequence project. So, we were able to very effectively use the log and
capture feature whilst playing back our tape though the external video tape player.
Another new technology we used in the construction stage was Adobe Photoshop
for our print production. This software wasn’t that new to me because I also study
photography. For the digipak design I was therefore able to used different tools (the
crop and blur tool) very effectively to manipulate and edit the front and back cover
to exactly how I wanted it.

Generally, as well as for the evaluation, we had to upload all our work on to Blogger.
However, I used Slideshare most of the time as this was a lot easier and quicker to
upload documents and pictures all at one go.

Evaluation finalll

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked (9)

Similar to Evaluation finalll (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Evaluation finalll