Evaluation - Individual Write-up - Aaron Marshall-Sinclair

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

Conventions of music videos are common features that can be exhibited throughout all music videos. I have researched these conventions in an earlier presentation, some include close ups of the artists face, dancing, ritualism and exotic locations. All these are utilized to keep the audience’s attention and to make the music video more eye catching and attractive. For my music video we chose the genre of rap, which advocates aggressive, illegal behaviour conventions; unlike other genres.

The music video we have created challenges these conventions of rap. Although the original music video of Gangster’s Paradise displays serious issues of relative deprivation and gang violence, we do not follow these ideas. Our video is more of a parody compared to this one. We wanted to include humour to make it more enjoyable for our audience. We hoped to have put across the humour by the scene of us dancing in the graveyard.

Not only have we tried to add humour here but also we have created a controversial scene for are audience to remember are music video. However, comparing to other music video conventions we do deploy similar camera shots angles including close ups and low angle shots.

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

As part of our A2 media coursework we were asked to create a music video as well as two ancillary texts, which include a website for are artist and an album cover. Firstly the album covers helps portray a further image for are artist D-Rail, as well as advertising our product. This is a traditional use of a music video however; some covers can convey emotion and different ideas. We have created these ideas by the types of shots we have taken. D-Rail shows two different facial expressions for the front and back.

The front cover can connote a sense of loss or a struggle due to the facial expressions; in contrast to the back where we see the artist more relaxed.

In addition, it also creates an image in terms of the artist symbol. We developed the letter D with a multi coloured background. The letter D is easy to recognise and the colours help attract people to the symbol.

This further reinforces how the album cover helps promote the artist and the product. Moreover, the website similarly allows further advertisement of our product. However, the website also allows the artists fans to interact with D-Rail himself and other fans.

The website is connected to many social media sites. These include Facebook and Twitter and we have made them clear to see on the first page of the website. Furthermore, the image of the artist is advocated as the website is an expression of how he wants to be viewed. The house style and organisation of images are purposely placed to emphasise the artist himself. The images we used are mixture of serious and comedic showing how the music video is a parody of something that was originally done to give a message. Ultimately both these products together benefit us in promoting and exhibiting are artist to our audience and creating an image for him.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We have shown our created music video to a random group of people that fit our target audience. We asked them to give us feedback on our product in the form of an interview. Their responses indicated to us what was successful in our video and also what was not. A common trend amongst are responses was the quality of the lip syncing. Everyone thought it was perfect and they found no faults in this aspect of the music video.

This was a likewise response to the special effects we utilized as well. Most agreed that the effects, props and locations used were deployed and shown at appropriate times and were very good. This includes the green screen background and the filter effects of the change to black and white. However, some criticism was shown to the lightning effect. They thought it looked a bit out of placed and didn’t match what was happening in that scene of the music video. Overall the responses were very positive and it concludes that we did make a successful effort in making this music video.

How did you use your media technology in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

At first, to research music videos the most pivotal part of technology is the Imac for the internet.

This allows us to look at other music videos for our planning and construction stage. Youtube helped a lot in terms of giving us access to watch these other music video examples. We looked at videos within our chosen genre – Rap. First we did watch the original Gangster’s paradise just to see it as an option to what we can do. We had also used blogger at this stage to document are progress and ideas. The Imac also provided us with software’s such as premiere and Photoshop which was the catalyst to the editing of are filming. The many tools it consists give us the best possible effects and ideas we can input onto our music video. Furthermore, Photoshop created our album cover and allowed us to manipulate text and images to create a product.  Another piece of technology used was a camera. Once we had our idea we were able to film and construct our video at will. For the evaluation stage, we needed to get feedback from our target audience. So we utilized the social networking sites such as Fcaebbok and Twitter in order to gather this information.

Twitter allowed me to share my video and questionnaires to all my followers at once. In addition, twitter allows people to respond and comment back to me what they thought about our music video. This was similarly used for Facebook where my friends can look at my posts and gain access to questionnaire link and the music video.