A2 Media Evaluation

Music Video – The World’s Greatest

R Kelly

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

Hip-hop is a genre that is mainly populated by African-Americans and especially in recent years the Hip-Hop genre has become very popular amongst the youth and males especially. Most Hip-Hop artists are stereotyped as males who like to flash their money and their cars. In recent years they have been showing off watches and other things that they label “bling”, this represents them and the view they are trying to construct of themselves. Many of their music videos show them driving flash cars, having parties, meeting beautiful woman and showing off lots of money. It also shows some shots of them actually performing the song, this shows some real meaning to the song and it is used to try and show that the song means something to the artist. Many artists use this to prove that they are more than just someone who parties all the time, it shows they have to put in work to get where they are. It is used so they can attract a larger audience.We haven’t been able to use all of the bling, but we had the luxury of havinga recording studio on our school site. We used this to shoot our main character Toby singing some parts of the song. We showed him singingthe chorus and some other small parts of the song. We didn’t wantTo overuse the recording studio as the song we chose to reproduce a Video on is very themed towards boxing and being “The World’s Greatest”

We chose to have Toby dressed fairly smartly as he was singing in the recording studio, most rappers prefer to look smart in their music video, and we thought that we would dress Toby in a casually smart costume to try and keep with the same conventions that other artists in the genre have used. With these We also used a filter on the editing program that we used, ‘Final Cut Express’. This allowed us to make the shot dissolve in with another shot of Toby whilst he Is training throughout the video. It brings a link between both shots and it allows the viewer to see Toby working hard in two completely different aspects. The dissolve effect has been used recently in many videos and it is very popular amongst many artists at the moment in the Hip-Hop genre. We used this effect on more than one occasion, we chose to use it every time that we cut back to the scenes in the recording studio. We showed Toby becoming more involved with the song and showing more enthusiasm whilst singing the middle parts of the song. This gave us a chance to show our artist as someone who cares genuinely about the music they sing and put thought in what they are singing. This is quite typical of R&B artists. This is because some people think that the music they sing has no meaning and some of the artists do this so the viewer can see that the song has thoughts to go with the lyrics. In our video you can see a clear reflection of the visuals trying to synchronize with the lyrics. We tried our hardest, as we have got Toby singing and when he sings a certain line in the song, he completes an action to go with the lyric. E.g. “I’m that star up in the sky”, at this point Toby points to

the air, as if he is pointing to a star in the sky.

We have also used a number of close ups throughout the video. This is to mainly promote our artist. Music videos are one of the biggest ways that artists get to promote themselves as people are more used to listening to their voices rather than seeing what they are like. We have showed Toby performing the song with close ups so you can clearly see that it is him. We have also showed a couple of slow motion shots of him working out and trying to train for the fight that is happening at the end of the video. We couldn’t secure a place to film a fight scene around the local area, so we had to build it up without showing it. To show that the fight was building up. We showed a couple of scenes of Toby interacting with a poster that we created to build up hype for the upcoming match. In the recording studio we have the poster on the wall in the background, we use a zoom effect to show the poster coming into view as the main focus on the screen. We thought this would be a good idea, as it shows a link within the recording studio and the training parts of the music video. The overall video has many conventions of music videos in the R&B/Hip-Hop genre and we feel that we have followed them and stuck to them quite well with the resources we had to use. We feel that we have advertised our artist in a good way, and it shows that he is working hard to succeed in what he is doing.

How effective is the combination of your main productand your ancillary tasks?

After a small discussion, our group decided fairly quickly that we wanted to do an album digi-pack and also a poster to promote the album. The digi-pack is just the CD artwork that you get when you buy any album, it consists of the front and back covers, and also two covers in the middle packaging of the album.

We decided to go for the star, as this has a direct link with the lyrics "I'm that star up in the sky" in our main video, which is the main song on the Album itself. We had a picture of the same boxing gloves that we used throughout the video and we also used some effects on Photoshop to create what we thought was a "cartoon" effect. We thought this would go well as R Kelly appeals mostly to young males. If he was trying to attract an older, more serious audience we wouldn't have used it. We have also used boxing gloves, as most this is quite masculine and would appear to more males. It also shows that the artist is quite masculine and this fits in well with R Kelly's profile.

We had some positive and negative feedback from people when we showed them the Album front cover. Some people thought that the Font worked well, as it stood out, you could clearly see R Kelly. It is at the top of the cover and this is getting the message across about the album. They thought it was good that we included the star and the boxing gloves. They also approved of the fact that you could clearly see we are trying to promote our artist as the main focusof the album cover.

Inside Album Cover #1Here you can see we have decided to use another picture of Toby. Here

you can see him recording the track. It is also a screenshot from the music video. We this would be good to use as it promotes the artist

performing his track. It shows Toby singing and performing an action of pointing to the sky. We have also used the cartoon effect as we are

trying to create a consistency throughout the album artwork.

Inside Album Cover #2This is the artwork that goes behind the CD. We have looked at a number of album's and the artwork that they have, and more often

than not, the cover on the inside behind the CD is blank, or it is very plain. We have decided to put an image of Toby with his

boxing gloves and hoody for training on. Although we have used the cartoon effect in this picture to keep continuity between the other images in the artwork. We thought this would be a good image to use, as this is the final shot in music video, where we

zoom into a still image of Toby.

Album Back CoverThis is the back cover of the album artwork. Once again we used

an image from the video. It shows one of the locations that we shot in. We used the cartoon effect once again to keep the

consistency amongst the overall artwork. We have also used a similar colour for the font when we list the songs on the current album. We had a look at some back covers in the R&B music

genre. They are all fairly simple and just show a list of the song titles. We have used this approach and have just slightly moved

them as we have gone down. It's quite simple, but we think it works well.

Album Poster

We used Adobe Photoshop once again to create the poster as we thought it would be good as we all had some experience and quite a lot of success when we used the software to create our first ancillary task, the album artwork. Although we didn't have as quick success as before, we had tried many different designs, different images in different positions. The main problem we had was that we were trying to inflict more than one message on the poster. In our initial copy we were trying to promote an upcoming tour as well as the artist and the album. This meant that none of them really stood out. After talking to a few people to see what they thought about our poster we decided to go for a simple effect. We had the picture of Toby on the page. Then we also included the front cover of the album. We decided to mention the tour, but as it wasn't the main feature of the poster.

Overall Effectiveness: I think that we have kept a good consistency throughout both the ancillary tasks. Visually you can see a link between the two as we have used a cartoon effect throughout both tasks. We

have also decided to use an image from the digipack and put it onto the poster. Both products follow a certain theme and I think this fits in with the character we are trying to portray but it is also a good advert to

our target audience of young males. Both the products seem upbeat and have special effects to try and construct a certain style and I think we achieved this.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We had a number of people that we went around asking for their opinions on our film to see what they thought worked and things that we could improve on. Even though there was a group of us making the film we decided it would be best if we asked a wider range of people to see what they thought. We asked Toby, who plays the character of our artist in our film. We also asked a group of people in our school year that are Hip-Hop fans and are genuinely interested in the style of music that we chose to reproduce a video on, the results have been mixed. People have seen things that have gone really well, but they have also picked up on a few things that we might have done differently had we been given more time.

We had another media group in our class that are fans of our song so we decided to ask them what they thought, their main negative points were:

• Recording Studio shots appear to be rushed and not very well thought out. Toby’s costume isn’t relevant and the shot’s don’t have much variety.• The also thought that we overused the gym slightly. They thought that the sequence dragged out a slight bit as if it was just put in to use time up.

They also had some good points about our video, these included:

• Sequences are very well put together, the settings worked well and Toby’s character is portrayed very well and he is portrayed very well.• They thought the visual/lyric sync was well put together as we used some special effects. They thought this was creative and worked well with the rest of the video.

Toby’s feedback:

Toby was with us throughout the whole production, he had an input and gave us some idea’s in which we used in the video. He knows what we thought about doing and what we decided to not do in the end so we thought it would be good to ask him what he would have done differently and what he liked about the film.

After a long conversation we put three good points and three bad points about the film

Good Points

• The running sequence at the start of the video is very well planned and the lighting makes it seem as if it shot in the early morning, this shows that our main character is willing to work throughout the day to try and achieve his goals. This shows that he is a hard worker and that is what we are trying to advertise him as. Therefore the whole sequence works really well.

• He also liked the small sequence we shot of him with his trainer. It shows him doing a boxing combo. We also used a slow motion effect to make the shot stand out and bring more intensity to the shot. After looking back he thought that the use of the slow motion worked fantastically well.

• His final point about the film was towards the end where we show him leading out towards the ring. We show him being led by a group of people, but what his main point about the shot was his costume. He had boxing gloves and he was also wearing a gown. This shot looked realistic and we planned it well. Overall he thought it was one of the best parts of the video.

Bad Points

• In his opinion the weakest part of our video was the recording studio part. As we had a limited amount of time to use the recording studio, he felt that we rushed and lacked the planning that we had in the other parts of the video.

• He thought our shot variety in the recording studio was really limited and could do with some different angles showing more of the technical side of the recordings (Producer, Editor)

• His last downfall was that we maybe used the slow motion effect too much. We used on a few shots in the gym and he thought it wasn’t necessary.

Friends interested in Hip-Hop genre:

We also asked a group of our friends that our massive Hip-Hop/R&B fans as we thought they might be able to compare our music video with the ones that they watch often. None of them have taken media and don’t have any knowledge about the shot types and editing. But we thought that they might be able to give us something useful and tell us where we went wrong.

Positives

• They liked all of our sequences. They thought that they were well constructed and they also thought that the setting was well thought out. They thought the boxing sequence was really good and that we put it in place at the right time with the song itself.

• They liked the final sequence as they thought it was quite realistic as we had like a group of guys leading Toby to a ring so he can have his boxing match that he had been training for.

• Their last point was that they thought that the whole video told a story. This was really good to hear as we weren’t too sure whether people would get the story of the video. They said that you could see the progression Toby makes throughout the video and it is obvious that the main climax is the fight at the end.

Negatives

• Once again, the recording studio was a negative contribution from the group. They also picked up on Toby’s costume for the recording part. They didn’t think it was very “Hip-Hop” and it doesn’t suit the character we are portraying.

• They picked up on the actual acting of Toby in the studio. They thought that he wasn’t making eye contact with the camera and it was clear to them that he didn’t know what to do and where to look. They thought it looked unprofessional.

• They thought that we could have included like a few shots of a weigh-in between Toby and the person he is preparing to fight. They thought this would have further enhanced the story that we were trying to build.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stage?

We have used many different types of technology along the way to making our music video come together. We have used Apple Macbooks, HD Cameras, Lighting effects, our own personal computers, iPhones and a lot of other things that have helped us achieve what we have today.

We were very lucky as we were given a Macbook to store all of our shots that we had taken with the HD camera. The Macbook came with software such as FinalCut Express and Garageband. FinalCut express allowed us to do all of our editing on. It also enabled us to import and save all of our clips together. Garageband is a piece of software that allows you to create music tracks, it also has a lot of sample tracks that are available to use. We also used Photoshop on the Macbook to create our poster and our digipack. This software was hard to get used too but we were lucky that we had it all available to us from the start.

To present all of our work and planning, we all have a blog that we update with whenever we have something to update it with. Whether it is location shots, or a textual analysis of a similar music video to our own. We have everything we have done to date on the blog.

The URL for my blog is: http://wbsmediagroup1adams.blogspot.com/

We were really lucky this year to have the chance to use a HD camera for the first time. Last year we used a camera, but this year you could tell the difference as we used a HD camera. This was very helpful as we had a lot of shots at night time. Last year when we shot at night time the shots weren’t brilliant, but this year they were really good and we were happy to use them.

Another thing we used was the lighting at school. We used this to create a spotlight on Toby. We didn’t know how to use it, so we had to get one of the technical support team to help us out. But they were happy to help and we were thankful as the spotlight shots worked out to be quite a good part of our final video.