Evaluation

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

We took a lot of inspiration from the original Azonto music video, we attempted to copy certain angles, shots, locations and mise en scene to show a clear linkbetween the two videos. However we have changed certain aspects to fit our college surroundings, budget and the time period in which to make the video e.g.some outfits, some locations etc. although our music video is very similar to Fuse ODG’s original video it does challenge some of the media conventions of classic hiphop videos which I will discuss via screen shots.

All the screen shots below are comparing our own music video and the original Azonto video.

This shot is our establishing shot for the entire video and we included it to setthe tone for the rest of the video. However we chose to change the colour ofthe text to yellow as this colour fitted in with the outfit we dressed our Fuseactor in and the colour reflects the African culture Fuse is alluding to. We alsochose to use yellow as it is one of the main colours in our colour scheme forour Digi pack and magazine advertisement to show a clear link with all ourmedia products e.g. music video, Digi pack, magazine advert.

This shot is an extreme close up of a dancers feet free styling, we thought thisparticular shot was very effective in the original video so we took inspirationfrom it and used it in our video. However we did change the shoes that thedancer is wearing as those shoes are around £120, and this is not within ourbudget so we compromised and asked one of our dancers to bring there owntrainers.

This shot is a close up of Fuse, we decided to include this shot as close ups areused to promote the artist and make the audience form a connection withhim. Also due to the fact Fuse ODG isn't a very well known artist these closeups could be to allow the audience to recognise the artists face and create abrand image for him using motifs which reoccur across his videos, similar tocreating a brand image so fans can easily recognise him (Andrew Goodwin).Also we thought including close ups of Fuse were very important as it giveshim a sense of individuality and shows he is the main artist as he has the mostclose ups and single shots.

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

This shot, in the original video, shows a masked dancer outside an art galleryperforming the Azonto dance moves. We thought this choice of location wasvery effective and we planned on using the famous art gallery in York citycentre, however whilst doing our location scouting we discovered the artgallery was under construction and had a plastic sheet masking the wholefront of the building so we had to change our location to the YorkshireMuseum in the Museum Gardens in the city centre.

This shot shows a large group of people dancing and partying with Fuse inwhat looks like an unused basement. It was very hard to find a location likethis within our time scale and that was easily excisable for lots of dancers sowe used the photography studio in college and found props in the back roome.g. a graffiti door, spotlights, an old tv etc to make our location look moreurban and inviting.

This shot shows the two masked dancers that feature throughout the videodancing in an underground car park. We decided to keep the location ascollege has a multi-storey car park so this location was easy find and wasreasonably empty depending on the time of day. However we did choose tochange the dancers outfits as we wanted to emphasise the differencebetween the mysterious masked dancers dressed in black, and the brightcolourful happy dancers.

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

Most hip hop music videos that I researched tend to have a narrative structuree.g. a story line where a girl and boy break up (Akon – Lonely) (Kanye West –Heartless) or drug and alcohol abuse. However our music video doesn’t have aclear storyline or narrative as its all about the dance culture involved within hip-hop and the African culture. The choice to not include a narrative challenges thenormal convention of hip-hop music videos greatly as the vast amount of videos(hip-hop and most other genres) I researched have a clear story line thatdevelops throughout the video normally relationship related. However ourmusic video doesn’t develop a clear story line our narrative does develop usingTzventa Todorovs theory as our video starts off with Fuse by himself walkingdown a dark alley, then a disequilibrium occurs where he is joined by a fewother dancers and then progresses to the new equilibrium where fuse is joinedby a large group of dancers all together concluding the video showing everyonehappy and dancing as a large group.

Another common convention of hip hop music videos is the utilisation of LauraMulveys theory ‘the male gaze’ this theory depicts the female to bean object ofmale desire, where men want a woman like the female in the video, andfemales want to look and be like the female in the video. We decided to utilisethis theory in our video as its such a common convention within the hip hopgenre. In our music video we have the actor Tiffany (who's is featuring in FuseODG’S Azonto single) dancing. She is an attractive female dancing in a seductiveway and being and pictured as being promiscuous. The male gaze also workswith male actors, as males want to look like the male in the video and femaleswant to be with the male in the video. We decided not to include this aspect ofMulveys theory as we wanted Fuse to be depicted as an approachable characterand we didn’t want to ruin this characteristic by portraying him as being astereotypical strong male and a ‘player’ which is how males are portrayed inmost hip hop music videos. (appropriate screen shots to the right from Akon’s‘Lonely’music video).

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

I feel like the combination of my main product and the two ancillary texts (an albumcover for the single, and a tour poster) I have produced are effective together as they allshare common themes e.g. colour schemes, fonts mise en scene and locations.

Firstly my group and I researched all of Fuse ODG’s previous album artwork and digipacks to get inspiration for our design. We noticed there was a common theme of thecolour yellow in all of the digi packs. Yellow is a Pan-African colour which refers to a setof three colours: green, yellow and red (inspired by the flag of Ethiopia) which oftenrepresents the sun, wealth, and/or justice in the African flag. We felt this colour was avery important feature to include as Fuse is of Ghanaian descent and is an "Afro-hiphop“ artist. We deliberately included this colour in our music video to fit with thenative African theme and the warm colour scheme. We therefor then included yellow inour final album artwork and the tour poster to keep the African theme clear and toshow all 3 products were related.

We then focused on mise en scene e.g. the locations included in our products. We shotour music video in the city centre of York as we felt this was an urban location to fit withthe genre of music, there for both our ancillary texts have urban locations featured inthe backgrounds e.g. a black and white image of bright city lights in the album artworkand a coloured cityscape skyline image in the background of the tour poster.

Another factor of mise en scene we focused of was outfit choice. We chose to dress ourmain actor Fuse in plain black trousers and a black jacket and then a bright yellow t-shirtto match the colour scheme and to keep the African theme in every aspect of ourproject. We chose to have our fuse actor wearing this outfit whilst shooting our videoand in the album artwork photo shoot and tour poster photo shoot. We chose to do thisto once again show continuity between our main product and ancillary texts, and tocreate an brand image of Fuse and his appearance to create an identity for him.

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

Our first ancillary text is the album artwork for our music video. These two images are Fuse ODG azonto album covers,the one on the left is the original and the one on the right is my interpretation of it. My group and I deliberately choseto stick to the same predominantly black and white colour scheme as it shows a clear link between our album artworkand the original. We also chose to stick with the yellow colour as it stands out from the black and is a stereotypicalAfrican colour that relates to Fuse’s roots, we also chose to use yellow as it shows continuity between our music video(as we have our Fuse actor dressed in a yellow t-shirt) and our album cover image. We also chose to have our Fuseactor looking directly into the camera as this is to create a relationship and to connect with the audience and workseffectively as it gives the image a focus point which is the first thing you look at. However we added the facebook andtwitter logos onto the album cover as these medias create a link between the artist as Fuse has a twitter account, a linkto the video as you can publish the link to the video on these social media websites and they can create awareness forthe album artwork via retweets, likes and shares.

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

The second of our ancillary texts is a tour poster. Thefont is exactly the same font that is featured in thealbum artwork, and at the beginning of the music video.However the colour scheme is completely different tothe album artwork as the main colours featured in thetour poster is lilac and pink to stand out in a magazineor on a wall to catch your eye, but the album artworkcover is predominantly black and white. Although thecolour schemes are very different and don’t have a clearlink together they are both suited individually to themedia form they are designed for e.g. a bright eyecatching tour poster, and a classic professional albumcover.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

I think our audience feed back has been incredibly helpful as thevideo is created for the audience and fans to enjoy so there opinionis the most important aspect of a music video, and if there opinion isnegative the video isnt going to be acknowledged and we wont havefulfilled our aim to make a successful music video.

We posted our music video on YouTube and left it available for likesand comments so we could receive feedback, we then shared thelink to our video on social networking sites like Facebook and twitterand asked for people to give us there view on our video.

One of the comments on the music video via Facebook said ‘this isso good it is so similar to Fuse ODG’s videos and really suits thegenre’. This comment aloud us to appreciate the similarities betweenour music video and the original that we had hoped to achieve,although we could see similarities due to the fact we haddeliberately taken aspects of Fuse ODG’s original video and adaptedit to fit in our own video we wanted viewers to also see theintentional link between them both.

Another comment we received mentioned that the dancers weremiming the wrong words which is incredibly important. This issomething that I would definitely take into consideration if I were tomake the video again as it makes the video look unprofessional andout of time. We should have planned the shots more thoroughly andin order so we could have synced the song lyrics to the dancersmiming.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We also posted a link to our video on twitter and tagged Fuse ODG’sofficial twitter account on it too and he retweeted it so that all of histwitter followers could view our video too, then some of his fansviewed and retweeted the video too which resulted in our videogetting over 1000 views. Twitter and other social networking sitesare incredibly important for artists as it gives fans a direct link to theartist and makes them feel more accessible which results in agrowing fan base. Although this isn't direct audience feedback apositive retweet from Fuse was very inspirational and showed usthat the artist that had inspired us originally approved of our videowhich was encouraging that his fans would like our video too.

Our video on YouTube got 8 likes and 2 dislikes, however the peoplewho disliked the video didn’t leave a comment as to how to improveour video which would have been helpful, however a DJ whospecialises in the Ghanaian hip hop genre commented ‘nice one’ onour video which was encouraging that he felt our video wassuccessful within that genre of music.

Overall I think our audience feedback has been very helpful, althoughmost of it was positive we did get some very helpful constructivecriticism e.g. make the dancers miming sync with the lyrics of thesong and to increase the energy of the dancers which may have leadto recruiting professional dancers if we were to make the videoagain.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and

research, planning and evaluation stages?