QUESTION 1In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The most common and important convention that I found was used in most music videos was the use of the combination of performance and narrative elements. This is important in music videos as it is key that the artist establishes an identity, and is recognisable to the audience. Narrative, like performance is also important, as it allows a creative movement that is typically associated with music videos as they tend to be stylistic. When planning our course work we decided that this would be a convention we would follow as we felt this combination would be key to our success, as the videos we as a group preferred all followed this style. So we decided to have our artist lip sync the song and participate in a romance narrative. However as we felt that this may be a generic storyline and style we decided we would make the performance elements part of a twist in the narrative at the end as he is actually singing holding the flowers because she has died.

Lip syncing was a very important convention to follow along side the use of frequent closeups as music videos are used to premote the artist meaning our artist shold be the focus of the video. This makes sure that the audience remembers them.

As we did more in-depth research into music video conventions we realised the importance of the flow of the video in connection to the beat of the song. By following the convention of cutting to the beat our video appeared synchronous with our choice of song. Andrew Goodwin suggests that the meaning of the song is conveyed through matching the lyrics to visuals or through tone. By cutting to the beat and also using visual matches to lyrics such as ‘who guessed that we would cry’ showing both our artist and his girlfriend crying by doing this we were able to convey a message of sadness and loss in our video.

When we decided to shift our focus to the genre of R&B we looked at conventions specific to the genre. We found that most R&B Videos such as Bryson Tillers ‘don’t’ followed the convention of using young actors, that were dressed in the fashion that was popular at the time of filming. By using this iconography of costume, we were able to establish our artist as being ‘cool’ and ‘relatable’ to our target audience, who are mainly late teens, that fashion would be important to. AS you can see hear we chose to style Elijah in a trendy

long bomber jacket and Aaliyah in one outfit is wearing jeans and a leather jacket.

However, we did also decide to break some R&B conventions, such as the use of alcohol as a prop and clubs and house parties as a setting, such as the house party setting of Alissia Caras ‘here’ We decided to do this as we felt this convention can be a damaging presentation to constantly inforce in the media as it could be pressuring to R&Bs young target audience. So by breaking this convention we were able to stop reinforcing this damaging stereotype.

When planning our ancillary tasks, we took inspiration from Bryson Tillers tour poster. We found that most R&B tour posters used a bright white font in order for it to stand out to the viewer. We decided to use this white font for our posters. We also like the way the poster conveys Tillers attitude as he is looking away from the camera suggesting a lack of interest and attitude something we originally thought would be a good selling point. We also used similar techniques when making our website, using bright white fonts and similar style pictures. This created a continuity between the products that is also conventional of music artist’s products.

QUESTION 2How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

When planning our music video and ancillary tasks we realised that in order to create a clear brand identity we needed to have continuity between the products. The main way we did this was through our choice of images of the artist. We chose to take the pictures for our website and poster in the same shoot in order that they look similar and are clearly linked. We found when researching that continuity between products gave the artist a stronger brand identity, for example Rihanna’s Anti Album has a black and white photo of her on the cover the only other colour featuring on the cover is red, which is a signifier for her trademark red hair, as well as this her website also uses black and white photography to link to the album cover.

By creating a continuity between our products, we developed a ‘house style’ for our artist. We did this by using photos of the artist with similar shot compositions and through the use of roses that appear across all our products. By doing this the roses have become a signifier of the album and the artist. Roses also connote love and romance again giving the audience a clue into are artists identity and what they tend to sing about. We also created this ‘house style’

We felt it was extremely important to establish a brand identity and have are products link as it is key that the artists’ products appeal to their target audience. The best way for us to draw in the target audience was to give them a clear idea of what to expect from our artist, and to show them what to expect from their music. This meant we also needed it to be clear that our artist’s genre is R&B as we need to appeal to R&B fans as they would make up the majority of our target audience. To ensure that we did this we looked at various R&B artist’s posters and websites, we found that many artists use photos of the artist looking away from the camera, through this use of body language the artist is showing a more relaxed attitude which presents the artist as cool. We decided we would mimic this style when selecting our photos.

QUESTION 3What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In my AS coursework I failed to understand the importance of getting audience feedback throughout the creation process rather than just at the end of filming, so when doing this years coursework I was sure to ask for feedback through out, this meant that our video and ancillary tasks better appealed to the audience as theyhad told us what they did and didn’t like. For example with our original idea for our poster we had our artists silouete filled in with roses on photoshop however after asking for feedback we were told that it would be better to have the background filled in with roses so we decided to change it. We collected audience feedback in a series of different ways, firstly we asked members of our class to tell us what we were doing well and what

could improve throughout the editing process. By doing this we were able to maintain a strong idea of how are video would be received by are target audience (same age as our class members) As well as this we were able to make small changes based on their advice for example someone suggested a place they thought would be ideal for us to film performance scenes in, and we looked at it as a possible place for filming which we later on ended up using.

We also decided to utilise social media to gain a wider range of people’s opinions on our work. We posted our video to Facebook and twitter and asked people to leave us feedback. The feedback was mostly positive commenting on how professional the shots were and how the narrative flowed well. Some people suggested that we could have included more of a performance elements to improve the flow of the video.

Finally when we had our final cut ready and our finished ancillary tasks we each interviewed members of our target audience on camera to receive feedback. Again we were given mostly positive feedback, for example several people commented on the good use of lip syncing and our ability to cut to the beat. However someone did suggest that we could have made Christmas a stronger theme like we had suggested we would in our pitch to add to the romantic element of our video. Were we to make another music video we would take this feedback in to account and try to make the Christmas theme more clear in the narrative.

QUESTION 4 (Prezi)How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

As a group the first thing we decided to do was make a group blog on the site WordPress, this became an invaluable asset to both the planning and filming process. With regards to planning, WordPress allowed us to share our ideas to develop a better plan for our products and when it came to filming having access to the blog from our phones made it easy for us to follow our shooting schedules. The blog has also been useful in the evaluation as having all our work in one place makes it easy to see our progress and it also makes it easy for us to access information that would be helpful in the process.

By having access to the blog via our phones made it much easier for us to utilise our research on site when filming, for example we were able to use our video timeline to get all the shots we had planned in advanced. This meant

that we saved lost of time when filming as we were able to see whilst we were out what we needed to do rather then checking the blog again once filming had finished.

Another piece of media technology that was invaluable in the production of our video and ancillary tasks was the canon Digital camera. Using this high-quality camera meant we could film high quality footage which makes all our products appear professional. This meant that when it came to the editing process we had lots of good footage to work with. For example, we were able to easily change the levels of focus on the camera in order to make different elements of the frame to stand out. This gave our shots a more professional appearance and allowed us to establish vocal points for different scenes in the video. This was also important in our ancillary tasks as we wanted Elijah our artist to standout in the frame even though the shot would not be close up of him, so by using the cameras focus we were able to make Elijah stand out.

To edit we used final cut pro, at first as a group we struggled to use the software to its full potential as were all only familiar with iMovie, however we quickly gained a good understanding of the site and were able to use more advanced editing techniques. We were able to use a wider range of techniques than the more simple ways he had edited our video at as for example we previously focused on cuts and fades and stabilised all our shots rather than attempting a more natural look. However by using techniques such as This again made our finished product appear more professional as we were able to add stylistic elements that are conventional of music videos.

Another media technology that helped us throughout each section of our coursework was web 2.0. In research and planning we used sights such as YouTube to gain a greater understanding of what conventions we needed to follow. When evaluating our work, we were able to access lots of feedback by using social media sites such as Facebook by sharing our video amongst our friends, who then gave us honest feedback.