Evaluation Q4- I have done this question in the form of a Prezi
Brief overview of how I've progressed since AS media:
When I first began AS media, I was completely new to all of the software and hardware devices that we were able to use. I did not understand or recognise the potential that our camera's and websites offered us. Firstly, when being introduced to iMovie, I did not know how to cut shots to make it look professional. This was show in my preliminary task, when two people were talking. If you watched and listened closely, you would be able to see that there was a brief moment between each persons speech before we cut the shot to the next person talking. This made it look unprofessional. However, when faced with our A2 music video, I found it a lot easier to cut to the beat of the music, as we knew it caused a lot more effect and looked professional. We figured out how to zoom into the footage so we could cut it to the finest detailed moment, in order to make the music video flow nicely. We were also more able to play with the colour of our footage on this piece of software to make our graffiti locations seem more vibrant and stand out to our target audience.
In regards to Hardware, we were given better camera's in our second year in media. I found that I was able to make much better use of our camera's in our A2 year, as I was more familiar with the features it included. In my AS year, my footage was a lot blurrier and effected the professional standard of our overall footage. We also didn't understand how to utilise all of the buttons it had. However, in A2 media we were able to understand the equipment better. We used a button called 'sports mode', which enabled us to take moving shots of Mikah singing, without the camera going blurry or focusing on different objects. This overall meant that learning new aspects of the hardware given to us in the AS year, gave my product a much more professional end product in my A2 year.
When looking back at my blogger in my AS year, it was clear that I didn't do enough research on the thriller genre we chose. This was because I didn't make use of our software such as Google, Prezi, SlideShare, Wikipedia and more. In my A2 year, I made sure that I studied my genre thoroughly in order to clearly attract my target audience. As well as this, in my A2 year I learnt how to include GIFs, YouTube clips, live links, images and more, in order to show my viewers how I was able to vary my skills.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When choosing which media platform we wanted to upload our final product to, we chose YouTube- an easily accessible website that allows people to view videos for free. Choosing a website that enables anyone to watch the product means that we would be available to a mass audience, which is inevitably good for marketing. Founded in 2005, YouTube quickly became one of the most used media platforms, along with Facebook and Twitter. Many popular artists used the website before their fame, and would often get recognised and scouted by record producers. One artist that's particularly known for being found on this site is Justin Bieber, who is now a world known star in the eyes of the media. Thus, the successful YouTube site is clearly an effective website to promote our artist.
Instead
of cohering to the typical forms of real media products in the 21st century, we
decided that we would advertise our artist in a tour poster. One factor to why
we chose a tour poster, is because of the people it attracts. Tour posters can easily be uploaded as an image (as shown here) onto social media. Individuals that
are more likely to use social media are males and females between the ages of 15 and 25.
However, it also attracts a larger proportion of age groups as more and more
people join social media everyday. Within this varied age group is our own
target audience that we initially wanted to appeal to (16-22), therefore making
it a significant and effective way of promoting our product. As well as this,
our tour poster can be put into a magazine. Magazine's are usually a colourful
and eye catching product that appeals to the eyes of the readers, which is
similar to what we were trying to achieve for our advert/poster. Although most
of the individuals within our target audience use social media to get their
daily news, magazines are the next best resource as they provide gossip stories
and fashion icons that would entice our target audience to read and come across
our advert. Our title 'Gangsta' would fit in well with the magazine advert as
the individuals in our target audience age group would most likely be going
through their rebellious adolescent years, meaning this would catch their
attention as they would be able to relate to the edgy term and would be
intrigued to research the artist and her products.
How we subverted to and conformed to the R&B genre
Nikki, Libby and I decided to conform to and challenge the typical conventions of the R&B and R&B Soul genre. Usually, R&B artists are male figures that possess all of the dominant features of an alpha male. Women, on the other hand, are seen as submissive and sexual figures that appeal to the eye of male viewers, due to their revealing costumes and seductive makeup. We decided to challenge this by switching the roles of the genders. Mikah, our actress, is portrayed as an independent and edgy character that would easily be able to adopt the characteristics of a typical male figure.
We decided to challenge these conventions due to the development of our modern-day society; women are now seen as more independent than ever, meaning our music video is a realistic reflection of 21st century music. For us, creating this independent image meant a lot, we eventually decided that we did not want Mikah to look seductive and weak, as this does not mirror the theme of the lyrics. The artist, Kehlani, did this too, by portraying herself as a 'gangsta' We decided to recreate this to form synergy between the music video and the song. Although it looks as if Mikah is independent, the lyrics do express how she need's a 'gangsta' meaning we do, in some aspects, conform to the R&B genre, by creating a conceptual video whereby Mikah travels to various location to find her ideal man that will protect and love her. Thus, a male figure is still significant in our music video. Andrew Goodwin identified the relationship between the narrative and the performance as being one of the five key elements of a music video that the audience's would want to see. We wanted to make ours conceptual as it is not abundantly clear that Mikah is searching for her ideal man, instead, it is metaphorical.
Location & challenging the genre
In terms of location, we decided to challenge the genre. Originally thinking about filming in different rooms of one location (such as a house party), we came to a unanimous decision to go with something more unique. R. Kelly's Ignition and The Weeknd's I Can't Feel My Face were both filmed in one specific location, a house and a night club. This made it significantly convenient to incorporate artificial lighting, in order to create the 'party' atmosphere that R&B music video's so commonly have. We made a conscious decision to use artificial lighting, by utilising a projector to create the typical party R&B convention, as we did want to conform in some ways. Both Mikah and Chrissy (our dancer that played a minor, yet significant role in our music video, by acting as a filler and aiding in forming a connection between the actress and the audience through her dancing) were subject to standing in front of the projector, which enabled them to become a silhouette of bright and colourful light. This inevitably created the 'party theme' with dancing and bright colours being one of the main aspects of the genre, which is part of Andrew Goodwin's 'technical aspect' theory. Therefore, in some aspects, we did conform to the genre. Instead of artificial lighting to create vibrant colours, we decided to use locations such as Leak Street and Embankment skate park, which are covered in eye-catching graffiti that brings its own vibrancy and colours without the use of artificial lighting. You could suggest that we still did use artificial lighting though, as we used the projector to bring light to the shot.
Furthermore, we wanted to include a shot from the movie 'Suicide Squad', where it shows a clip of The joker and Harley Quinn driving around, it's clear they are crazy in love. Kehlani wrote this song for the movie, to show how Harley's gangster, The Joker, adhere's to all the qualities she wishes her man possessed. This small clip was of important significance, as it creates a connection between Mikah and the famous Joker's girlfriend, by sending a message to the audience that this is the kind of love she aspires to find. This inevitably stimulates a connection with the audience too. To do this we used a close-up shot, as it was one of the five key elements Andrew Goodwin used to describe a successful music video. Myself, Libby and Nikki agreed that these vibrant colours worked well with the conceptual theme of our music video and ancillary texts, due to the frequent use of colourful graffiti.
Getting inspiration from female R&B artist, Beyonce, we chose to include a variety of close-up shots of Mikah's face. Andrew Goodwin stresses the importance of close-up shots in relation to forming a connection between the audience and the artist. Additionally, these close-up shots also aided in repetitively displaying Mikah's many piercings on her ears and neck, this was also a key element within Andrew Goodwin's theory by stating that many successful artists have a 'trademark', this helps the audience identify them. We inevitably decided that exaggerating Mikah's piercings would make her memorable and would aid in the marketing of our music video.
Costume
Our costume choice
was one of the most difficult decisions we made within the making of our music
video. Libby, Nikki and I were conflicted on how to dress Mikah. Considering we
had already challenged the R&B genre by having a female, instead of a male,
artist, we didn't know whether to rebel completely and not dress Mikah in
promiscuous clothing. Typically in R&B music video's, as mentioned in my
previous blogs, women wear minimal clothing to appeal to mainly a male
audience. This frequently leads to the objectification of women in music
video's and this was ultimately something we wanted to avoid. Instead, Mikah
wore clothing that was modest, i.e. hoodies, bomber jacket and jeans. However
we did bring an aspect of femininity to her clothing through mise-en-scene, by
her always wearing subtle make-up. She also wore ripped jeans that showed
minimal parts of her legs, and her piercings also portrayed her as a dominant
ethnic representative of R&B music.
Editing
Watching Beyonce's R&B song Party also gave us some inspiration for our editing. We noticed a pattern of slow motion shots that was usually adopted to stress the expression of people's faces. I.e. happiness, sadness and more. This was a good technique as it sets the atmosphere for the music video and aids the audience to feel the same way and relate t it. Therefore we adopted many shots that were in slow-motion, often showing Mikah looking directly at the camera in a seductive, yet edgy, way. This made her look feminine but also independent and bossy. We also made a connection between the slow-motion shots, often making Mikah look directly into the camera (and thus the audience's eye's) on lyrics such as 'I need someone' and 'You', inevitably making the audience feel as if they are being personally addressed by the artist and makes them feel part of the music video. We also noticed that the slow-motion shots brought a dramatic effect that made the audience want to follow the narrative further.
Ancillary texts
In terms of our ancillary texts, I think that we have both challenged and conformed to the forms and conventions of real media products. For our digipak, we decided to make it conventional by doing the following: Firstly, when listing our track-list on the back of the digipak, we decided to number them. This is a subtle similarity and we decided to incorporate this because it makes it look more professional and realistic to other real media products. It would also help our audience choose which song they would like to hear easily, due to it being in chronological order. This would be good for marketing our digipak as the consumers would know it's easy to use. Another aspect of our digipak that conformed to the conventions was our use of a bar code, record label logo and copy right information. We decided to use the record label logo as this would be memorable to the audience, it's quite eye-catching and is good for marketing due to people then knowing it's a good record label.
Secondly, we incorporated a bar code and copy right information as this makes it look professional and realistic. Therefore making it more appealing to the consumer. Secondly, we utilized bright and vibrant colours through graffiti, this is something we wanted to do from the start as I noticed this was a common technique used in most R&B digipak colours, especially in Kehlani's and Rhianna's. Using bright colours also aided in the synergy between the music video and ancillary texts as they are used throughout both products. When thinking about the mise-en-scene in terms of costume, we decided that we wanted Mikah to wear subtly revealing clothing, we did this by making Mikah wear a grey cropped hoodie, this exposed her midriff. We got the inspiration of Mikah's clothing from artists such as Rhianna and Kehlani as making women look seductive is a typical convention of R&B music. We thought we would only utilize minimal clothing for this one occasion to attract a larger audience and aid in the digipaks marketing. Lastly, we made sure that we used bold titles for both the artist's name, and the name of the digipak. We did this because it's a common theme/aspect of the digipak cover, often aiding in the success of marketing and advertising the product as it would catch their attention.
One way that we subverted from the typical conventions of real media products is shown on the back cover of our digipak. Instead of placing our track-list in the middle of the page, we decided to include another image of Mikah on the right-hand-side and put the track-list on the right. We wanted to make Mikah a large part of the digipak as she is of course our artist and this would make her memorable for the audience. Therefore promoting her as an artist. Additionally, we chose to put images of Chrissy (our dancer), who played a minor role within the music video. On the left hand side of the inside cover, we put in action shots of Chirssy dancing in the music video, this isn't common and we felt very confident about incorporate g her into the digipak, even though her role in the music video was only minor. My group felt that an action shot of the music video would be effective as it would entice the audience to watch it. Another way in which we went against the conventions is how we incorporated the lyrics of the song, next to the images of Chrissy. We decided to insert the lyrics as we felt it would aid in making the audience understand our conceptual narrative, due to the lyrics playing a big part in this.
Lastly, many female R&B artists utilize a close-up shot of their face to exaggerate their femininity by wearing flawless makeup and pulling seductive facial expressions. We went against this by using a long-shot of Mikah. We wanted to challenge this convention of women in R&B, as this is not the image we wanted to create for our artist. Instead, we wanted the audience to see Mikah's prop, which was a bat, and her minimal, yet edgy, costume and also make her a good role model for young girls. Ultimately giving our digipak a unique aspect that would appeal to our audience.
In terms of genre and media conventions, I feel as if my group and I have met their aspects in a professional way. Following the typical conventions was important to us as it meant our audience would not be displeased. Additionally, following famous artist's footsteps meant that we would be doing things that have obviously been effective and attracted a large audience to make our artist successful. Although we often subverted from the conventions, it worked well as we were able to bring a new unique quality for our artist and her products.
We thought we would look back on our time filming and put together a short video of all of our bloopers. This was useful to us as we learnt to be more professional when filming. As you can hear in the video, there were times when we would re-do shots as they were not up to the standard we were hoping for, this showed we were firm directors towards Mikah, our artist.
Definition-aim (something) in a particular direction or at a particular person.
Above is a video of us directing on the second day of filming. Whilst filming it's clear that we gave instructions on Mikah on what to do, such as where to stand and how to position herself. We also discussed as a group what we thought would look best within the music video, we would often shoot in the same location but from different angles to ensure that we had enough footage.
Because my group and I were just beginning to become close, we found it quite difficult to communicate with each other on the first day of filming. As a result, most of this footage wasn't included in the music video. Because of this, we realised that we needed to be more verbal with each other, in order to make the music video as good as possible.
Because of our unsuccessful first day of filming, we all made sure that that we gave constructive criticism, to ensure that we didn't just go along with something that we didn't think looked good. Although in this video it seems as if we all agreed with each other for the majority of the time, that was not always the case. Sometimes one of us wasn't happy with the lighting, the way Mikah was positioned or wasn't satisfied with the quality of lip syncing.
We found that Mikah, our artist, worked well with us and followed all of the directions that we gave her. However, one problem that we continuously faced was lip syncing. This was our main challenge as Mikah found it hard to lip sync in public in front of others, this meant it didn't turn out as good as we hoped it would. Looking back on this, my group and I agreed that we shouldn't of been as lenient as we were in relation to the lip syncing, as we later realised that this was an essential aspect of the music video that should of been perfected via stricter directing.
Behind the scenes- Filming
When filming, we came to have some difficulties with our camera. In some lighting's it went blurry and looked very unprofessional. As a result, Mikah let us use her camera. This was much better quality and made filming a lot easier.
Attached are some images of behind the scene shots. Whilst filming, Mikah was completely guided by us. Because she didn't take media, and consequently wasn't in our group, it meant that she wasn't completely aware of what she had to do. The first images are from our first day of filming. We took some footage in front of a church, walking down a long pathway and also went into an estate so we could make use of our props. After analyzing the footage, we found that it wasn't effective and didn't reflect the themes and conventions of the R&B genre. This day did however make us realise what we needed to do in order to improve our footage and make use of our time.
On our second day of filming, we got some footage inside of an abandoned warehouse. This was one of our favorite pieces of footage as it came out clear and professional. We decided to film in this building because it was covered in graffiti and was the perfect 'gangster' location, which inevitably aided in the success of our theme that we wanted to create. Instead of using artificial lighting to bring the vibrant aspect to the shot, we decided to use real life vibrant backgrounds.
Our third location in London brought most of the vibrant colours into our music video. We were able to film in Leak Street tunnel The Embankment Skate Park and more, these locations had significant amounts of graffiti on them. As you can see from some of these pictures, we put the camera's close to and far away from Mikah, as well as using the zooming in tool on the camera. This was to ensure that we had a variety of different shots, including close-up's and long shots.
The last piece of filming we did was within the Medway Tunnel, this was a particularly hard place to film as the road had a bumpy surface, meaning that the camera shook a lot. As well as this, the lighting was quite yellowy from the tunnel lights and meant that it didn't match the rest of the scenes in our music video, to fix this we also filmed on the roads, which gave better lighting. Filming in the car gave us the chance to capture many close-up shots of Mikah, which showed off her piercings and as Andrew Goodwin suggested, created a trademark for our artist as this was a continuously featured shot in the video. The shaky shots came out really good after stabilising the footage. We decided to film here after getting inspiration from the Weeknds R&B song 'Starboy'. Which you can see in my real music video analysis blogs.
Behind the scenes- Editing
During the editing process, we used the editing software 'iMovie'. We used this because it was significantly easy to use and we was familiar with its aspects due to our AS year. The purpose of editing our music video was to make sure that it it was in sync with the music. We did this by slowing shots down, speeding them up and cropping/extending them. As well as this, we used the software to crop the size of some shots, to ensure that we didn't get any unwanted people in the background. Lastly, we used the software to add text the text titles 'Gangsta- Mikah'.
This is a picture of us speeding up a shot, we did this because we wanted it to match the beat of the music, this was something that was suggested in Andrew Goodwin's theory of music video's.
This is a picture of us cropping a clip, we did this so that we were able to take our any unnecessary footage, such as people in the background or Mikah slipping out of character.
This is a picture of us using the slow-motion tool, we used this to cause dramatic effect and entice the audience to watch more. This was also done to match the beat of the song.
This is a picture of us stabilising a piece of footage, this was a tool that we used frequently throughout the making of our music video, as we did a lot of dolly shots and point of view shots, in which we had to walk along uneven pavements.
This is a picture of our final product, proving we put use to the tool that enabled us to use unique fonts to end our music video by saying 'Gangsta- Mikah'. We did this so that the audience remembered our artist and music video, which is inevitably good for marketing.
We all took part in the process of editing, it was definitely one of the most challenging parts of creating our music video as we all had a lot of different views and opinions as to how we should do things. However, we managed to come to a consensus and was happy with our final product.
This is my groups tour poster. We decided to choose a tour poster instead of a magazine advert, as we feel it would be a lot more effective in attracting and appealing to our target audience. Tour posters are easier to be uploaded as an image onto social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.
This is why we incorporated links to Mikah's social media sites, as this would enable our audience to follow our artist and build a connection with her. Inevitably, this would be good for marketing our product as it widens our audience, and it also aids in the promoting of our audience. We decided to make it a 'tour' poster as it shows that our artist is active and willing to build her career, ultimately attracting the attention of spotters to support her through her journey. It's also a good way for her to keep a good relationship with her audience, meaning our views would increase. Libby, Nikki and I chose to put Mikah's name and the album name 'Gangsta' on the poster in bold letters as this makes the both of them memorable.
We additionally included 'Available now on iTunes and in stores', as this entices the audience/text receivers to download our song. Lastly, we used a our record label logo 'Grunge Records' to promote it let the audience know that there will be up and coming songs, similar to what we did with Mikah. We also thought that our logo was a valid representation of our artist as it includes some of the same colours (purple) that we have incorporated throughout all of our ancillary texts, and our music video.
Final Digipak This is our digipak, on the left, you can see our spine. The first top left image is the front cover. The second image on the right is the inside right cover, the third image on the bottom left corner is the CD and the bottom right-hand corner is the back cover. As you can see, we incorporated bright and vibrant colours to cohere to the typical R&B conventions.
This is our digipak name. We decided to go with 'Gangsta' instead of Kehlani's 'Gangster' as we felt this gave it a unique twist. The use of colloquial language also aided in the 'gangster' theme, as this is related to lower class area's that are more likely to use this restricted code. Ultimately, these area's and type of people are more likely to be involved in gang activity, meaning this was a clever, yet subtle, title. We wanted it to be in black letters as we felt this would be the most convenient colour, due to it matching with everything and wouldn't be easily blended out. However, we did have to change this colour to white on our digipak cover, as the grafitti in the background made it difficult to see the 'Gangsta' title. We also wanted it to look quite edgy and replicate real graffiti, as this created a more realistic portrayal for our audience. We also felt that it worked well with our 'Grunge Records' font, as it was quite similar.
We wanted Mikah's name to be in a different font to the Gangsta title, this is because we wanted her name to individually stick out against the other titles. This was good for promoting and marketing our artist as it made her name memorable. We wanted to use bold, simple letters as it was the clearest font to use, however still made a bold statement to the audience, showing she is still a dominant character.
This is our planned digipak front cover. As explained in previous video blogs, we decided that we wanted bold texts and we wanted our main image to have Mikah with the bat over the shoulders. This is because it gave a sense of dominance and made her look like a dominant ethnic representative of the R&B genre. We wanted to incorporate bright and vibrant colours, through the use of a grafitti background. We also came to a consensus that we wanted Mikah to wear a cropped hoodie, as this would attract the audience's attention, however was only a subtle and minor way to make our artist seem destructive and admirable.
What we changed: We changed the shot of Mikah, we decided to use a long shot as it didn't show off as much of her midriff We changed the camera shot, we later decided on a long shot, as this worked better with our background picture and created synergy between this ancillary text and the music video as we used quite a lot of long shots in this product.
What we kept the same: We kept the title name the same 'Gangsta'- we changed Kehlani's original name 'Gangter' to an 'a' instead of 'er', as this gave it a more unique aspect. We also incorporated the vibrant graffiti background to cohere to the R&B genre, shown in my other blogs through artist's such as Rhianna.
This is our planned digipak left inside cover. We wanted to have Chrissy dancing on this page (the performance aspect of our music video) as this created synergy between our ancillary text and music video. We wanted the background to be black to make the images of Chirssy stand out.
What we changed: One aspect that we changed within our digipak was the way we placed Chrissy's images on the page. We originally wanted all three of her pictures in a line at the bottom, however we changed this to putting them all down the left side of the page, this enabled us to bring in another feature to the page. We came to a consensus to put the lyrics to the main song 'Gangsta' on this page on the right-hand side, as this would enable the audience to understand the lyrics and make a link between this and our conceptual narrative.
What we kept the same: We kept the black background and images the same.
This is the left inside cover of our digipak. This side of our digipak would contain the CD. We wanted the CD to have bright colours, which would be consistent with the front cover. We did this by using the same image.
We also decided that we wanted the background behind the CD to be black, as this is consistent with the right inside cover, and also makes the CD stand out.
What we changed: We decided not to put the 'Gangsta' title on the CD, as this was already done on the front cover. Instead, we wanted to let the audience know that Mikah was the soul artist on what they was about to listen to, and if they liked it, this would be good for marketing and promoting the artist.
As you can see, we had a variety of different shots to choose fromfor our ancillary texts. We wanted to get shots of Mikah standing up, sitting down, looking towards the camera and looking away. We also got a variety of shots of Mikah's prop (the bat) that she uses throughout the entire music video. We felt it played a significant role in the making of Mikah's character as a dominant ethnic representative of the R&B genre.
Originally wanting Mikah to have the bat over her shoulder, we then changed to an image of Mikah sitting on the floor. We chose to do this because it exposed less of her midriff, something we decided to avoid from the start of our planning, as our aim was to make Mikah look dominant; not sexual.This went against the typical conventions of the R&B genre, as the women featured are often made to look promiscuous. However, we wanted our artist to be a modest role model for our young female target audience.
Mikah was placed infront of a green screen, we decided to do this instead of a plain background, as we wanted to make use of the editing software 'PhotoShop'. Our plan was to have Mikah in front of a graffiti background, and in order to do this we would have needed to edit it in. Hence, the green screen. This would make our digipak stand out to the audience, which is good for promoting.
After analysing our pictures, we could clearly identify the positions that Mikah was and wasn't comfortable being in. We wanted to choose the most casual and effortless shots, as this makes our artist seem more confident as in her lead role. This is good for promoting our artist as she comes across as a professional individual.
To ensure that we came across mature and educated to the record label, I decided to do some research on other permission letters that people had written to the record label companies. This enabled my group to incorporate the right points to come across clearly to the reader. Doing this may encourage the reader to agree to letting us use their content for our coursework.
From analysing the email, I was able to pick out certain aspects of it that I would like to include in my own request. Firstly, the correct email address of the record company. Secondly, a subject matter that lets the reader know what the letter is going to consist of, and thirdly, the use of formal language which makes us look more professional and mature.
My own letter of permission
For our music video, it was important to us to make sure that our song and music video wouldn't get taken down due to copy right issues. Because of this, we decided we would write up and send an email to Kehlani's record label company Atlantic Records, in order to let them know what we are going to do for our product. It was clear to us from the start that it would be unlikely that we would get a reply, as this is a large company that doesn't have time to answer to A-level students; so we incorporated that if we do not get a response, we will presume we are allowed to continue. We also decided to include that this is for purely for educational purposes, meaning that we would not be 'stealing money' from the original artist. My group was able to come across in a very mature manor, which may encourage the label to agree to our questions and concerns.
