Fred Foster, evaluation

Media Studies Product Evaluation

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

The generic conventions of a music video are very different to a film, for example. In our music video there are elements of a live performance, which is not something that is possible to replicate in the genre of film. A music video is not only for the viewers’ entertainment, it is also an effective promotional tool for an artist. A memorable music video can boost the artists’ reputation and make the brand more identifiable. It is easy for a lot of people to see the video, thanks to music channels on television and You Tube. Unlike in the film genre, a music video sells a single and is a valuable marketing device, helping artists and band managers to develop the brand of the group or artist by continuing motifs and trademarks.
I think that if you were to look at our media product as a whole, you would not be able to call it stereotypical, but you wouldn’t be able to call it non-conformist either. Judging by the Mise-en-Scene of our video, the costumes are quite generic for hip-hop artists. This was always our aim. The shades, tracksuits and jewellery successfully conform to our chosen genre. On the other hand, our locations that we used in the video are quite dissimilar to what you would normally expect from a video of this nature, as they are not hip-hop stereotypes (Locations such as forests, gardens etc.). This is the non-conformist element to our product. We balanced this with the live performance component which was far more generic and mainstream to the genre. We worked very hard to ensure that there were lots of repeated motifs (Pink shades, Iglu&Hartly logo, and pink and black colour theme) in both our video and in the ancillary texts. We were sure to include them in both the video and ancillary texts.

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

I think that the ancillary texts are a good addition to the feature music video. One of the many advantages of producing ancillary texts was that it gave is the chance to develop and continue motifs that featured in our feature video. These motifs include pictures of the artists on location in the filming of our video. Motifs are good because it helps the public identify the group and make them a more recognizable label. The use of colour in our ancillary texts is very consistent and the fonts of writing are familiar. By continual use of the Pink and Black colour theme we are building an identity for the band and boosting its publicity. It is a very good marketing technique. It could be said that the digipack represents the group quite stereotypically. It is a simplistic, minimalist piece of work, which suggests that the artists are lazy, or devote their time to the music side of things. The continuous Pink and Black theme stays true to the memorable trademark image we are trying to build.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Throughout our whole project we used a blogging website called Blogger to post information and plans associated with our project. Other groups and teachers posted regular feedback on our rough cut, final cut and ancillary texts. The most useful feedback was the Teacher feedback on our rough cut, as we were able to improve in the areas Tanya suggested. As she is a teacher we felt her opinions were most valuable, with it being quite likely that she knows what is required for a good mark! Thanks to this feedback we were able to get more close ups of performers faces, cut back and forth to different locations and get more shots with graffiti background (as this fitted the genre) edited in to our video for the Final Cut. The feedback told us what people liked and what they disagreed with in our feature video. We were then able to make changes consequently. We were a bit confused with some of the feed back because at times it was contradictory to its own views. The peer review told us overall that the cinematography and the Mise-en-Scene. One thing that was correctly highlighted was the lack of relation between visuals and lyrics, which forms part of Goodwin’s music video analysis model. However, this lack of relationship between lyrics and videos was something which did not prove to be an issue with our project, because this was a style that we wanted to convey.

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

We used our online blog to post any information for our project, to update our progress regularly, post examples of work and show our planning. Our peers and our teachers frequently post reviews of our work on our blog. It is an efficient way of keeping all of our work in one place and making it easy to access. We edited our video using Final Cut Express, which was shot on camcorder. We are lucky because Final Cut is state of the art video editing software, which allows us to put lots of professional and advanced effects and features to our music video. Thanks to Final Cut we have been able to use fades, transitions, colour tints, ghosting and glow effects. To design our ancillary products, we used gatefold cover design templates with programme called Photoshop, which allowed us to have absolute freedom in what we wanted to do. With using Photoshop there are a very wide range of options, tools and effects to choose from, as the software is so versatile.


We used You Tube to import videos on to our blog for analysis. We also uploaded our rough cut and final cut to You Tube, so that others could see it. We used iTunes, to import our song (Jump out of Your Car- Iglu & Hartly) in to Final Cut so that we could do lip-syncing professionally. We did this very well, I think. Through using Blogger we earned a prestigious accolade “Blog of the week”. It’s a competition held throughout all media studies groups. It was recognition of the whole group’s enthusiasm for the tasks set. Modern technology has definitely helped bring amateur film making to a more accessible audience. This helps the industry as there is more enthusiasm for it as a whole.

Peer Comments

Cinematography

• Lots of different camera angles and shots keep it interesting
• Camera can be seen in glasses at start

Editing

• Matched up lip synching well but need more (this is not our fault as we didn't get much)
• Good effects- some don't really fit though

Mise-en-scene

• Good costumes (hats, glasses etc), goes with genre
• Good locations, could have more though
• Josh B needs a shave
  

Genre Conventions

• No narrative, bit random
• Some shots not relevant to lyrics, no car either

What's Missing?

• More lip synching
• More thoughts that link to lyrics
• Rest of video (not our fault as there was no tape in the camera when we went to film at CVC)
  

Rough Cut

Never has a rough cut been rougher :)

Filming update

So far we are quite pleased with the footage we have and have edited some of it quite well. Sadly our rough cut won't be ready on time, due to situations beyond our control.

Ed Lovelace

We had a talk from a former Long Road Pupil called Ed Lovelace. He went to Bournemouth University, where he made a friend called Daryl. During his time at Uni he had various projects to make certain videos, such as music videos.
The University required every pupil to get themselves a three month placement, in which Ed worked as a runner for a media company, making tea and cleaning up after other people. When he finished University he found work with a company called Pulse films, where he and Daryl created music videos for music bands. He started off very low budget, creating videos for £100, before moving on to bigger budgets of £40,000 for a group called "Cage The Elephant".
He is now working on a proJect called "Werewolves across America", in which a homeless folk singer travels across America and plays gigs in peoples homes and stays there the night. The feature film is a documentary which will be shown at the picture house in Cambridge next year.

Lyrics

This is a little limerick
Of something that don’t exist
Called love and the passion
They’re coming together with action
I’m never hesitating with my words or my thoughts
I go on
Blasting through these doors
Just to show them what I got
I, got my hand motion into the sky
You got your, hands grabbing onto another lie
Now take it easy baby
You never forget where you’re from
Swallow your pride
Cuz everyone thinks they is number one
Some, people can love
Some people can only hate
Some people are deviant in the back of the face
It would take all the strength
Of an army loaded with guns
And all that it takes
Is an army of one

Now what you’re telling me is this
Let me get it correct
Cuz Ima step up in this motherfucker
Dripping with sweat
I know a glimpse is better
Than never seeing at all
At least I know what to expect when all the leaves start to fall

(Chorus)
She kept on walking and she never ever looked back
And you do know everybody in town knew that
She gunna take off, going to be a star
When there’s nothing left she gunna jump out of your car

This is the motion of the ocean
And it’s overflowing
This is the motion of the ocean
And it’s overflowing
I gotta keep it up
Keep on going
Don’t stop exposing myself
Out to the public
Got to make em love it
Gotta, make em hurdle over people to see
Me and my shiny gold hair
And my shiny white teeth
Eventually enchanted with their newly crowned king
They follow me with pictures of myself
They just ripped out the magazine
No time for autographs
I got places to be
Gotta race around the world
Until there’s nothing to see
Like a helicopter
Spinning rotors floating in the sky
Your free girl
Go on and go on and give it a try.

I see your asking what I got with a pocket full of holes
And we’re the exact opposite
But we keep blowing smoke
So now tell me why you insist
On wasting my fucking time
Keep on searching round here for something you aint gunna find
So lets take a step back
Remove our mask and ask
Is this the way we’re gunna live
Keep on stepping over cracks
I know you try so hard to be what you want to be
But it aint that
So Ima say c’mon baby, go on a lay back.

(Chorus)
She kept on walking and she never ever looked back
And you do know everybody in town knew that
She gunna take off, going to be a star
When there’s nothing left she gunna jump out of your car

Test Footage

This is our test footage. We added the black and white effect as this is what we are planning to use for our video.

Shotlist for video

Shot 1: Black screen with song title. (hot pink titles)
Shot 2: Transition from small circle to full screen.
Shot 3: 2 people on chopper bikes riding down the road in 80's mod clothing.
Shot 4: Close up of strumming guitar.
Shot 5: Long Shot to establish main characters in mod clothes.
Shot 6: Zooming into mid shot.
Shot 7: People walking around scooters (Transition before).
Shot 8: Playing football in a street.
Shot 9: Close up of playing keyboard.
Shot 10: Mid Shot of 1st person singing in front of wall with graffiti.
Shot 11: Long shot of Josh B on his own in a park.
Shot 12: Mid range shot of performance on stage.
Shot 13: Long shot of spoof crowd shot.
shot 14: Mid shot of walking through doors.
Shot 15: Close up of singer with hand in air, low angle shot.
Shot 16: Mid Shot of singer grabbing girl and singing.
Shot 17: Long shot, moving camera, of people walking around in 80's clothing.
Shot 18: Group of people kicking the s*** out of someone.
Shot 19: Group of people with guns/weapons lined up.
Shot 20: Shot of singer standing alone in camouflage army gear.
Shot 21: Performance on stage.
Shot 22: Mid-shot of singer singing in different locations.
Shot 23: Close up of singer and give in car.
Shot 24: Zooming out to see girl Jumping out of a car.

Pitch Feedback

On Thursday we pitched for the song Jump Out Of Your Car by Iglu and Hartley. We got the song but no one else wanted, so don't know if our pitch was good.

1 point that was brought up by the class were that the song suits an 80s setting, so we were thinking about making the mise-en-scene 80s style (80s costumes and that). But we will have to be careful that we don't expose the modern world in our video (modern cars, clothing, technology). that will be hard.

Pitch Package-Jump Out of Your Car

Video Pitch: We want to make sure that the video is related to the song so our plan is to do a lot of filming using a car. we want to cruise around, filming and lip-syncing in the car in a variety of different locations. As a group we haven't decided on specific locations yet but we do want shoot in town, a graffitied wall or street or something like that, and a scummy grimey sort of area. we also want to film in a really isolated place, like a park bench to provide some contrast to the video. we also want to include some football and a fight because we think that would be safe. We also plan to do a bit of live performing on a stage, and we will have to draft in some extras.

We want the video to have a story line and relate to the lyrics, not for it to be abstract and really confusing.

Props: Car, park bench, bling and stuff, football, girl, instruments (e.g. keyboard guitar), extras.

We want to include some generic hip-hop generic conventions in our video as well.

DVD/Magazine Cover

We want to have something similar to this cover. Our idea is to have the main artists in the car hanging out of the windows. This is in relation to the lyrics. There will be close ups of the main artists faces because of the demands of the record label. we want to make sure that it is recognizable as a hip hop group and a hip hop video.














this is a video, day 'N' night - Kid Cudi. It is an example of a sterotypical hip-hop video. it may not be a strictly hip-hop song. But the video conforms to some maJor hip-hop conventions.

Song Choices

1. jump out of your car - Iglu and Hartley

This is our number 1 choice. We think the tune is great but the voices ruin it. A waste of what could have been a potentially great song. Things we could include in our video are a bit of live performance on a stage, with whole group "playing" instruments, hopefully a guitar keyboard which would be sick. Other props we would need are a car, instruments, different costumes (Suits, tracksuits etc.) and extras to be in the autograph hunting part and a girl to be in the car and walk out. Both Josh's will perform the singing parts- lip synching.

2. More than life- Whitley

This is our 2nd choice. The idea we had is the singer in different locations on his own, such as on a park bench, graveyard etc. We would use a forest aswell when the song mentions falling leaves- this is a good time to film it as it is autumn.

3. Way back into love- Hayley Bennett

This is our 3rd choice song. The idea for the video was to have 2 people doing a duet lip syncing but no close-ups, as we have no females in the group.