EVALUATIONAriba Ahmed

Q.1: IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Marketing aims: Before even producing our music video, as a group, did a lot of research into other music videos of the same genre (Hip Hop). This was to help us see what the typical conventions are for these videos, and follow these, so the audience would be able to recognise our product for what it is and therefore also identify what aspects of our artist and his music follow & challenge these conventions.We also made a marketing aims profile before making each product. This allowed us to get ideas of how we could be selling and promoting our products successfully.

A lot of decisions were made from taking our target audience into consideration and what they wanted, also although we did reflect the conventions of the real media products amongst the Hip Hop genre, we also somewhat challenged them which gave our products and artist unique selling points!

WAYS IN WHICH OUR MUSIC VIDEO CHALLENGED THE CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

Through research I found that most Hip Hop videos use the idea of ‘the cult of the star’. Most male hip-hop artists like to expose their material possessions (eg;cash shown in the video on the right, excessive jewellery) in their videos to enhance their dominance, this is the persona that alot of the younger audience look up to as role models.

This is also expressed through other ways such a low camera angles to shown their superior (also shown on the right) Other Hip Hop music videos also consist of objectifying women to convey power, aside from this their lyrics also talk about their background/where there from (which is usually low maintenance area) and they express their success, overall their lyrics are personal and their videos usually portray this. .

However, for our music video we didn’t COMPLETELY conform to all these hip hop conventions. As we believe our artist is more interested in promoting himself and his music rather than material possessions. Especially since the title song is ‘straight hip hop’ the narrative is about hip hop music is not just about the materialistic conventions we see today but about self expression which still exists in alot of hip hop music videos but needs to be more recognised.

Our artist highlights this by his lyrics which are reflected through the projection shots in the music video, wherein, the images in the back represent current events/political issues eg; anti stereotyping/ anti terrorism/anti racism.This is shown on the images on the bottom right which reflects how we should open our eyes to important things in life eg; poverty around the world shown in the first image of post-flood image in Pakistan.Also, our artist doesn’t wear excessive jewellery/show cars/ other major materialistic things in the music video.

WAYS IN WHICH WE CONFORMED TO THE CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS:

Our music video develops many conventions of a hip hop music video such as it is performance based rather than having a specific storyline being shown. Through research of a range of indicative music video its became evident this is is a main element to have incorporated in our music video.

Through costume (another aspect of misc en scene) we also somewhat conform to the convention of what hip hop artist wear as we advised our artist to slightly baggy clothing(jeans)/hoody/trainers. This was made fairly easy as our artist is part of our target audience and already owned this type of clothing an attire, such character codes were recognisable to our target audience for them to relate to.

We used a lot of natural lighting as they do in real hip-hop music videos.

The locations featured in our music video also use & develop conventions of a real hip hop music video as there's one with graffiti shown in the background

The artists facical expression/body language was another way of him interpreting the mood/atmosphere & narrative of the song and mudic video.The hip hop convention he conformed to here was the way he used alot of upper body movement.

The camera being at a low angle at some points is another convention we also developed to make our artist appear dominant and confident.

• Locations used in our music video consist of generic and common place that youths of our target audience associate themselves with as they find ‘street life’ and being in the ‘hood’ to be cool. Graffiti is also another way of self expression, not just establishing shot, as is hip hop itself about self expression and its very personal as it shows the artists background & teaches the audience that success & status aren’t just about money & one can reach such heights of success no matter what kind of background they belong to.

•

• We arranged the frame shots to also use & develop conventions of real hip hop music videos as we used mainly eye line shots, these shots were used for the artist to relate with the audience and really engage with them rather than vulnerability/inferiority/superiority.

We also captured footage from different focuses and distances as shown in many hip hop videos such as Devlin; ‘Brainwashed’ & Lowkey ‘Something Wonderful.’ & RKZ: ‘Defeat me’

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND

ANCILLARY TEXTS?

•The most significant judge of how effective the combination of our main product (music video) and our ancillary texts are target audience

•We therefore got in touch with 30 people (aged 14-20) for a focal group whom described what they liked from the CD cover and advert and what elements they felt they could relate to in the music video, ensuring their demographic variables match those of our target audience i.e: age. both genders, mostly working class, various ethnicities. Whom described what they liked from the CD cover and advert and what elements they felt they could relate to in the music video.

•The large sample size benefited us as it overcame the bias, hence reducing the chance of chanced results•After they described what they thought of how well the ancillary texts markets the productwe collectively constructed a questionnaire to be completed by them.•The responses of the questionnaire were plotted on graphs to visually & easily illustrate the results of how effective the ancillary texts were in marketing the music video.AIM OF THEQUESTIONNAIRE: We aimed for the results to either prove or disprove what we’d hoped to achieve/our marketing aims and to reflect on how successful our end product is , we also wanted to achieve this through our target audience feedback•The questionnaire consisted of a combination of 8 quantitative (closed questions)& 2 qualitative (open questions) Advantage of quantitative questions: to easily gather numerical data to include in charts/graphs/produce percentages from etc•Advantage of including qualitative data: to gather a range of different responses that were more descriptive and opinionated as the open questions allowed to see what the audience really thought in more detail.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE

1) From the advert and CD cover do you think the music video will be mainly performance or narrative based? Circle one.

Performance Narrative 2) What do you like most about the CD cover and advert? Circle one. Colour Picture 3) Was the link between the CD cover and advert and the music video easy to establish?

Yes No 4) Do you usually listen to this genre of music? Yes No 5) Does the video look like typical Hip-Hop video? Yes No 6) If yes what features did you like about the music video? Please write here. ................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................... 7) Did you like the colours used in advert and CD cover? Yes No 8) What kind of TV program do you think you would see this video on? MTV base 9) What improvements could you suggest that would make the music video or the ancillary texts more attractive?

Please write here. ……………………………………………………………………………………….. ………………………………………………………………………………………..10) Finally, would you watch the music video after seeing the advert or CD cover? Yes

No

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

From the advert and CD cover do you think the music video will be mainly

performance or narrative based?

Performance

Narrative

The response of this question is that the majority of the people in the focal group said before they watched the music video, they predicted it would be a performance. This is because the target audience mainly watch Hip-Hop videos so they know what to expect.

To the second question, the majority of people said that they preferred the picture more than the colour. Some people also went on to explain that it was because the artist was attractive (mainly by the females) and the background was appealing

The majority of the people in the target audience we surveyed said that they could establish the link between the ancillary texts and the music video. They explained that it was because they had similar features like colour, artist performance skill and location.

Finally, would you watch the music video after seeing the advert or CD cover?

Yes

No

Finally, we asked if they would consider watching our music video if they saw the advert or CD cover. The majority of the focal group answered yes and we were so pleased with that end result. Therefore, I have realised that our ancillary texts have marketed and promoted our music video successfully to the extent that our target audience would watch our video and raise its popularity

SYNERGYSynergy & Location• There is quite alot of synergy between our main product (music

video) and the ancillary texts. The main theme of the song ‘straight hip hop’ is to highlight that true hip hop isn’t about materialistic possessions and objectifying women as is shown in many hip hop videos nowadays, but truly about self expression and passion for the actual music.This is shown by establishing shots to reflect the artist’s social background so a running theme through our video is an urban one of being ‘on the streets’ and & ‘ in the hood.’Which is why we thought a good location would be in front of a wall of graffiti , which was also included in our digipack ( cd front cover.)There is also little influence of grime music which is largely associated with being on the streets.

• The artists passion for his own music is conveyed in the shot of him writing his own lyrics which shows he believes in what he writes and their his own words and views rather than somebody else's. This is also shown in the hip hop music video – Eminem: ‘When im gone’

FEEDBACK ON THE ADVERTS AND CD COVERS

I asked people generally, who shared the same demographics as our focal group (14-25 year old males and females) face to face/verbally & also via social networking website- Facebook. additional feedback and opinion on MY CD cover & advert and received the following responses:1. Out of the following,which CD would you be most likely to buy & why?

1)

1. Out of the following, which Magazine advert do u find most appealing & why?

FINAL MAGAZINE ADVERT WE DECIDED UPON

This is my magazine advert produced by myself, that was collectively chosen as a group to market the final predict as it has enormous synergy it links with the whole digipack

the small picture of the album cover was good marketing tool and fits in well with the whole music video and it has similar locations etc

and this received a great response by or target audience

FINAL CD FRONT COVER WE DECIDED UPON

Produced by myself as it received the most postitive feedback, through comments and ‘likes’ etc via social netowrking website- facebook

FINAL CD BACK COVER WE DECIDED UPON

This is Warsan’s back cover that was chosen as it shows alot of synergy as itis evidently the location shot that matches the genre of the hip hop music and it has a very urban feel to it.it also contrasts well with the inside cover

FINAL INSIDE COVER WE DECIDED UPON

The simply written graffiti reads ‘horn head in the fuckin area’ whilst he is facing to the right, this not only reinforces conventions of a hip hop/rap genre which is area dominance/turf wars etc it also as the artist facing to the right where the cd is supposed to be placed. claiming the music to be his own, unique, original in a ‘area’ of his own.Also the person graphitised the wall represents the devil as he has horns but him facing away from the artist reflects he is a strong good character and isn’t influenced by bad, this sets a good example especially to the youth of our target audience.

This inside cover was also produced by me and chosen especially for the relationship and synergy it has with the back cover due tot he colours usedalso through research we realised inside covers are more subtle as itis what the audience sees later on, whereas the front cover needs to really attract the audience to purchase the product more.

HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

I used various different technologies to research pan and construct my final product of CD cover, advert and music video.Such as the following;

YouTube : At the beginning of the planning stage, we collectively as a group viewed many different music videos on YouTube and analyzed them to gives us insight and idea on our music videos. Throught this we also then chose to use music indicatives (included on the blog.)

I also used the internet to do my own primary and secondary research by browsing websites such as Wikipedia & other various websites to understand more about record labels.

I decided on our artist to be signed on Island Records for many reasons (included on the blog) To include their icon on my CD cover in my digiback i also browsed Google Images for this.

During the filming stage we captured footage on DV tape, which allowed us to transfer the contents onto the computer & we used the software Final Cut Pro from Apple

As I also was involved in cinematography and taking pictures for my DigiPack i used my own Canon Eos 5d

Digital Camcorders to record footage As well as online email and phones to contact each other and

the artist We also used my phone to play the song track as it was more

easier and sufficient , we transferred the song to my mobile phone.

We also used photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop & microsoft picture manager.

I also used microsoft powerpoint to produce this slideshow evaluation

Our footage to edit was saved on a hard drive which we connected tot he computers to edit on final cut pro.