Evaluation Response
There are only four questions to answer for this section but it's worth twenty marks so take it seriously and don't leave it until the last minute or it will affect your grade.
The questions are as follows:
• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
• What have you learned from your audience feedback?
• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation
stages?
The first stage is to type up your response. As long as you have planned properly you should have a lot to say but make sure that you express your points using relevant key terms and giving lots of evidence. Nobody is interested in hearing you waffle so be specific. Add your evaluation responses to your website by the deadline given in order for feedback prior to converting it into a documentary film.
There are a few examples below of good responses which should give you a clear idea of the standard that is expected.
The questions are as follows:
• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
• What have you learned from your audience feedback?
• How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation
stages?
The first stage is to type up your response. As long as you have planned properly you should have a lot to say but make sure that you express your points using relevant key terms and giving lots of evidence. Nobody is interested in hearing you waffle so be specific. Add your evaluation responses to your website by the deadline given in order for feedback prior to converting it into a documentary film.
There are a few examples below of good responses which should give you a clear idea of the standard that is expected.
Q1.• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our A2 media project, we produced a music video for the song “Stay Too Long” by artist Plan B. Throughout this production, we have consciously both developed and challenged certain conventions typical of other popular music videos in order to create an innovative and original final product.
In order to understand what would be considered ‘conventional’ of modern music videos, we researched other musicians of a similar genre to Plan B. As Plan B’s discography and musical style spans the ‘hip-hop’ genre as well as blues and soul, we analysed a range of artists from Smokey Robinson to more modern British artists like Professor Green and Example. We focused on the presentations of artist image, finding that the conventional appearance of older blues artists like Robinson included designer clothing (often suits) and also other symbols of wealth like expensive jewellery. Such artists were also presented in the media as conventionally being charming, suave and sophisticated in order to sexually appeal to a female audience and act as aspirational figures for a male audience. In contrast to this image, stereotypical hip-hop artists are alternatively often represented as aggressive and surly, wearing casual clothing such as hoodies/tracksuits that are often somewhat reminiscent of ‘yob culture’.
In our A2 music video, we used the typical conventional ‘blues’ image for our main protagonist in order to reflect his lavish lifestyle. This meant that his attire included a smart suit with a red tie and designer shoes to signify the wealth and sophistication typically associated with classic blues artists, in this way, we immediately present the protagonist using visual conventions of the blues image. However, the protagonist’s attitude and his actions within the music video are more inclined towards the conventional hip hop image. Examples include the fight scene in which he is injured as well as the hedonistic party scene, albeit we also feel we have challenged the conventions of ‘hip-hop’ in the form of the protagonists fiancée. This is because such rappers are normally shown as sexually active and single to fit in with the established theme of sexual objectification in hip-hop songs, and in depicting our protagonist as engaged we feel we are challenging this theme. Although, his later infidelity is certainly more typical of the idea of sexual freedom conveyed in certain hip hop material.
Our research also included the analysis of similar music videos, particularly the conventional style of editing, the variety and implementation of different camera shots, and also visual post-production effects. We noticed that in music videos such as Professor Green’s and Example’s, a lot of screen time is dedicated to the musicians in the form of close-up shots and medium shots. We found this boring and aimed to develop this conventional filming style with a wider range of shots, for example, the master shot thorough the pint glass and the employment of point-of-view shots are representative of the way we developed upon the status-quo of other modern music videos.
The conventional editing style also involved cross-cutting between the narrative of the music video and the musical performance of the star, a style we felt appropriate for our own production due to its standing as such a deeply ingrained convention of the music video format, and one we felt still appeared stylish due to our fast editing and cross cutting pace. Post-production effects are also used heavily in such music videos, and we both used and developed the stereotypical style of such effects, employing common effects such as slow-motion but also adding more original, innovative effects such as the ‘stop-motion’ effect of the beer draining.
Version 2
As a pair Michael and I were very influenced by the conventions and ideologies of Asher’s existing video for G.R.I.N.D, the positive message behind the song combined with the interesting transition from representing the economically disadvantaged people in the public to showing how these people can enjoy what they have because life is beautiful and should be appreciated was a theme we decided to employ in our own interpretations. We decided that it would be a really interesting idea to reproduce Asher’s pre-existing video styles such as his ideologies encouraging spiritual rather than materialistic aspirations which are stereotypically associated with rap music; Asher also favours non narrative performance videos that represent himself positively as a figure of learning and wisdom whom the audience are positioned to respect and admire. These are all incorporated into our own work along with Asher's signature energetic performance style and handheld more dynamic camera work but we developed on these and give it our own London twist. The styles that we decided to replicate and adapt on are viewable in Asher's videos "Turnip the Beat" "Common Knowledge" and "Muddy Swim Trunks". We also analysed other videos from the similar genre to Asher, but the fact that the diversity of rap artists representation and music doesmake it problematic to define him within a particular sub genre, this means that the conventions we followed were predominately based on his particular representation in the media. We decided to analyse videos with a similar ideology, such as Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” and Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness”. We drew out particular conventions from these videos (you can see them on our website under “Genre research”) and used these conventions in our own work to ensure that the style is professional, acceptable and recognisable to its own niche. We found that these reflected Asher Roth's particular video style particularly in terms of non narrative forms and ideologies encouraging greater spiritual awareness with an implied criticism of capital consumer society.
With this said we did still want to challenge current forms and conventions in order to convey the strong underlying message behind the song and video. Steve Neale has discussed how genre relies on 'pattern of repetition and difference', in this context we tried to create an original video by adding more post production than his videos normally rely on and setting the video locally. I feel we were successful in making our video unique, meaningful and also memorable in a way that will reinforce Asher’s already strong image in a clear manner. Through analysing these videos, along with some more of Asher’s own we decided that being unostentatious was a key part of Asher’s production and image, we thought that to portray this message I should wear plain tee shirts that aren’t branded. Furthermore we realised that in Asher’s videos he always has very visually stimulating locations and if we wanted our video to be professional and authentic we would need to do the same. or instance, in his video "Muddy Swim Trunks" the location chosen is a supermarket. We felt this carried ideological implications in terms of an implied critique of the blandness of contemporary consumer culture Asher Roth's political views would suggest that he could be considered part of a counter culture. We chose specific locations, a West African village, urban settings, indicating counter cultural influences with graffiti and locations which stressed the economic divides in the UK such as a tower block and the Bank area. We were also influenced in representing Asher Roth as a counter cultural figure through his use of homage to other countercultural figures such as The Big Lebowski in "Gotta Get Up". We planned out a route around London (viewable on our website) and shot our video mainly in one long day. The locations we chose are important for us, because if we wish to show London for all its glory we need to access many areas and film some local places that are very influential to ourselves and we needed to use different settings if we were to convey our focus clearly.
Asher’s current G.R.I.N.D video along with a host of other music video’s all followed a certain trend of employing fast editing and dynamic camera movements, not only in the song but also the video and the post production effects that are used on the video. Using Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After Effects we produced our work in such a fashion that there is a lot of fast cuts and there is always something interesting on the screen with a strong reliance on post production. As our video has no narrative we felt it was important to keep on surprising the viewer and keeping them interested with a range of different visual effects and settings. We created a structure to our video with our colour design, moving from black and white to a "Schlinder's List" effect to colour This is not a typical convention that we have seen in similar music videos so I feel that challenging this new convention creates a very visually stimulating effect and lends a structure to the work.
Overall I feel that we do use a lot of currently existing media conventions, such as focussing on one main character effectively ‘preaching’ to the viewers. This representation throughout Asher’s videos making the video’s recognisable to Asher himself. We followed conventions in terms of representing the artist, also using dynamic camerawork, fast paced editing, a hose of locations and typical ideologies. We then added a few conventions in our heavily increased focus on post production and independent colour design. Overall I feel that we have intentionally followed quite a few media conventions that are used in the Genre to produce our work, we wanted to focus on an almost homage to Asher and to showcase the beauty and talent of our own local town aiming to showcase that there is a lot of interesting and fun stuff/people right on our doorstep.
In order to understand what would be considered ‘conventional’ of modern music videos, we researched other musicians of a similar genre to Plan B. As Plan B’s discography and musical style spans the ‘hip-hop’ genre as well as blues and soul, we analysed a range of artists from Smokey Robinson to more modern British artists like Professor Green and Example. We focused on the presentations of artist image, finding that the conventional appearance of older blues artists like Robinson included designer clothing (often suits) and also other symbols of wealth like expensive jewellery. Such artists were also presented in the media as conventionally being charming, suave and sophisticated in order to sexually appeal to a female audience and act as aspirational figures for a male audience. In contrast to this image, stereotypical hip-hop artists are alternatively often represented as aggressive and surly, wearing casual clothing such as hoodies/tracksuits that are often somewhat reminiscent of ‘yob culture’.
In our A2 music video, we used the typical conventional ‘blues’ image for our main protagonist in order to reflect his lavish lifestyle. This meant that his attire included a smart suit with a red tie and designer shoes to signify the wealth and sophistication typically associated with classic blues artists, in this way, we immediately present the protagonist using visual conventions of the blues image. However, the protagonist’s attitude and his actions within the music video are more inclined towards the conventional hip hop image. Examples include the fight scene in which he is injured as well as the hedonistic party scene, albeit we also feel we have challenged the conventions of ‘hip-hop’ in the form of the protagonists fiancée. This is because such rappers are normally shown as sexually active and single to fit in with the established theme of sexual objectification in hip-hop songs, and in depicting our protagonist as engaged we feel we are challenging this theme. Although, his later infidelity is certainly more typical of the idea of sexual freedom conveyed in certain hip hop material.
Our research also included the analysis of similar music videos, particularly the conventional style of editing, the variety and implementation of different camera shots, and also visual post-production effects. We noticed that in music videos such as Professor Green’s and Example’s, a lot of screen time is dedicated to the musicians in the form of close-up shots and medium shots. We found this boring and aimed to develop this conventional filming style with a wider range of shots, for example, the master shot thorough the pint glass and the employment of point-of-view shots are representative of the way we developed upon the status-quo of other modern music videos.
The conventional editing style also involved cross-cutting between the narrative of the music video and the musical performance of the star, a style we felt appropriate for our own production due to its standing as such a deeply ingrained convention of the music video format, and one we felt still appeared stylish due to our fast editing and cross cutting pace. Post-production effects are also used heavily in such music videos, and we both used and developed the stereotypical style of such effects, employing common effects such as slow-motion but also adding more original, innovative effects such as the ‘stop-motion’ effect of the beer draining.
Version 2
As a pair Michael and I were very influenced by the conventions and ideologies of Asher’s existing video for G.R.I.N.D, the positive message behind the song combined with the interesting transition from representing the economically disadvantaged people in the public to showing how these people can enjoy what they have because life is beautiful and should be appreciated was a theme we decided to employ in our own interpretations. We decided that it would be a really interesting idea to reproduce Asher’s pre-existing video styles such as his ideologies encouraging spiritual rather than materialistic aspirations which are stereotypically associated with rap music; Asher also favours non narrative performance videos that represent himself positively as a figure of learning and wisdom whom the audience are positioned to respect and admire. These are all incorporated into our own work along with Asher's signature energetic performance style and handheld more dynamic camera work but we developed on these and give it our own London twist. The styles that we decided to replicate and adapt on are viewable in Asher's videos "Turnip the Beat" "Common Knowledge" and "Muddy Swim Trunks". We also analysed other videos from the similar genre to Asher, but the fact that the diversity of rap artists representation and music doesmake it problematic to define him within a particular sub genre, this means that the conventions we followed were predominately based on his particular representation in the media. We decided to analyse videos with a similar ideology, such as Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” and Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness”. We drew out particular conventions from these videos (you can see them on our website under “Genre research”) and used these conventions in our own work to ensure that the style is professional, acceptable and recognisable to its own niche. We found that these reflected Asher Roth's particular video style particularly in terms of non narrative forms and ideologies encouraging greater spiritual awareness with an implied criticism of capital consumer society.
With this said we did still want to challenge current forms and conventions in order to convey the strong underlying message behind the song and video. Steve Neale has discussed how genre relies on 'pattern of repetition and difference', in this context we tried to create an original video by adding more post production than his videos normally rely on and setting the video locally. I feel we were successful in making our video unique, meaningful and also memorable in a way that will reinforce Asher’s already strong image in a clear manner. Through analysing these videos, along with some more of Asher’s own we decided that being unostentatious was a key part of Asher’s production and image, we thought that to portray this message I should wear plain tee shirts that aren’t branded. Furthermore we realised that in Asher’s videos he always has very visually stimulating locations and if we wanted our video to be professional and authentic we would need to do the same. or instance, in his video "Muddy Swim Trunks" the location chosen is a supermarket. We felt this carried ideological implications in terms of an implied critique of the blandness of contemporary consumer culture Asher Roth's political views would suggest that he could be considered part of a counter culture. We chose specific locations, a West African village, urban settings, indicating counter cultural influences with graffiti and locations which stressed the economic divides in the UK such as a tower block and the Bank area. We were also influenced in representing Asher Roth as a counter cultural figure through his use of homage to other countercultural figures such as The Big Lebowski in "Gotta Get Up". We planned out a route around London (viewable on our website) and shot our video mainly in one long day. The locations we chose are important for us, because if we wish to show London for all its glory we need to access many areas and film some local places that are very influential to ourselves and we needed to use different settings if we were to convey our focus clearly.
Asher’s current G.R.I.N.D video along with a host of other music video’s all followed a certain trend of employing fast editing and dynamic camera movements, not only in the song but also the video and the post production effects that are used on the video. Using Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After Effects we produced our work in such a fashion that there is a lot of fast cuts and there is always something interesting on the screen with a strong reliance on post production. As our video has no narrative we felt it was important to keep on surprising the viewer and keeping them interested with a range of different visual effects and settings. We created a structure to our video with our colour design, moving from black and white to a "Schlinder's List" effect to colour This is not a typical convention that we have seen in similar music videos so I feel that challenging this new convention creates a very visually stimulating effect and lends a structure to the work.
Overall I feel that we do use a lot of currently existing media conventions, such as focussing on one main character effectively ‘preaching’ to the viewers. This representation throughout Asher’s videos making the video’s recognisable to Asher himself. We followed conventions in terms of representing the artist, also using dynamic camerawork, fast paced editing, a hose of locations and typical ideologies. We then added a few conventions in our heavily increased focus on post production and independent colour design. Overall I feel that we have intentionally followed quite a few media conventions that are used in the Genre to produce our work, we wanted to focus on an almost homage to Asher and to showcase the beauty and talent of our own local town aiming to showcase that there is a lot of interesting and fun stuff/people right on our doorstep.
Q2
We believe we effectively combined our main media product and our ancillary texts with a similar artistic style and sub textual references presented in both productions through mise-en-scene.
In relation to the music video, we wanted our ancillary texts to promote the theme of hedonism that is reflected in the protagonist’s lifestyle. A symbolisation of this theme can be shown in his clothing, with the expensive suit representing his position as a commercialised, but wealthy individual. In both the ancillary texts and our music video, his suave appearance is constantly maintained to also reflect the popular media’s focus and glorification of brand image which is also rigorously maintained. The reflection in his sunglasses is a key part of our album cover, with excessive substances such as alcohol and narcotics being shown to literally reflect the hedonistic lifestyle of many celebrity figures, and also the reflection of dollar bills to show his commercial value in the eyes of media producers as well as his extreme financial income.
We used green screen technolgies to create a fictional television dog food advert with a surreal sound track created on garage band and a comical background, the effect of which represents the protagonists subsequent loss of dignity in favour of wealth, a trait typical of modern commercialisation.
The album artwork depicting his presence on a red carpet with flashing photography surrounding him reinforces this sense of voyeurism that surrounds the lifestyle of modern celebrities, with much contemporary media now solely reporting on celebrity lifestyles as can be shown by magazines such as Closer and Gossip. We wanted to reflect this aspect of media popularity, with ‘paparazzi’ figures also having an influential role in our music video in how they photographed the protagonist’s infidelity. However, the back cover of our album artwork is intended to represent the true identity of our celebrity protagonist, with a bar code on his neck representing his own de-humanisation and eventual transformation into a commercial product for a mass-consuming audience.
Version 2
Our main product was our music video and we created other media such as a Digipak and a Magazine ad to make the production seem professional and to replicate that of a real record release. To produce our digipak we used Adobe Photoshop CS5 and a Bamboo Pen Tablet, the free flowing and hand drawn effect that the Bamboo pad gave us combined with the digital manipulability we can control on CS5 helped us to produce a very professional product. We decided on designs by rigorously assessing Asher’s already existing album art (you can see this on the “Album Cover Analysis” tab on our website). In the end we decided to follow some pre-existing conventions of Asher's design ethic, his “Pabst and Jazz” mix tape was initially very appealing and we decided to imitate this style but use me instead of Asher. We decided to follow his fashion of using the same, sketchy font as we feel Asher definitely finds it important to make all his products similar in some sort of way. We were analysing our work hoping to find inspiration for the back cover, cd cover and the 4th panel; and we came to the realisation that the three other panels that we had designed and created would fit perfectly into our digipak as a whole. Not only did they all follow the conventions that we studied and used in the rest of our work but they passed Asher's pre existing message and fluency too, thus we decided to use them in the final product.
Our target audience was quite a niche audience, with Asher’s pre-existing fan base being quite an independent and active audience. We believe that Asher’s Audience has an opinion, our video and digipak both aim to reach out to this audience by replicating Asher’s authentic styles and taste. Furthermore, we decided that Asher’s audience tends to revolve around the successor and reformer groups who do not find pleasure in purchasing branded expensive clothing but rather his fans follow their own ideas of style, not following any certain idols or just purchasing a product because of a brand. This audience is not too far from Macklemore’s audience, with an emphasis on purchasing products from thrift shops or charity shops and we tried to appeal and attract to this audience by doing the same, if the viewers can relate to what’s going on in the video and what the main character is expressing they will appreciate the music much more, this definitely relates to the representation of the audience and their ideologies.
For our magazine cover we decided to use our Bamboo Pad and Photoshop CS5 yet again. We utilised the sketchy font that you can regularly see throughout Asher's work and the almost hand written style font that is featured on the back of our dikipak cover to create a visual link between the two items. Along the bottom of the magazine there are two reviews from two magazines, "The Source" and "XXL" magazines; we researched into other past magazine covers that have idolised hip hop artists however we could not find many reputable companies other then these two. Furthermore Asher has already featured on an XXL Magazine front cover when he was put into their "Freshman Class" that promotes young up and coming hip hop artists. We feel that adding these two reviews really uses conventions that you can see in many other real life media texts to create realism and make the cover look a lot more professional. As for the design we decided to feature the album art as a main feature, seeing as the aim is to promote our product to our target audience - as you would see in real life magazines. Furthermore we created a quite grungy background and silhouettes of fists being raised into the air in the foreground; just like the song this imagery carrys an underlying meaning, showing that Asher supports those that are economically disadvantaged and would like to help them in an almost uprising to enjoy their life more as a group and a family.
Overall I feel that the combination of us replicating a lot of Asher’s style and using specific techniques to reach out with his existing audience mixed in with our own personal flair in the video and all ancillary texts has helped us to create a final piece that has a professional finish and represent’s Asher as he would like to be represented.
In relation to the music video, we wanted our ancillary texts to promote the theme of hedonism that is reflected in the protagonist’s lifestyle. A symbolisation of this theme can be shown in his clothing, with the expensive suit representing his position as a commercialised, but wealthy individual. In both the ancillary texts and our music video, his suave appearance is constantly maintained to also reflect the popular media’s focus and glorification of brand image which is also rigorously maintained. The reflection in his sunglasses is a key part of our album cover, with excessive substances such as alcohol and narcotics being shown to literally reflect the hedonistic lifestyle of many celebrity figures, and also the reflection of dollar bills to show his commercial value in the eyes of media producers as well as his extreme financial income.
We used green screen technolgies to create a fictional television dog food advert with a surreal sound track created on garage band and a comical background, the effect of which represents the protagonists subsequent loss of dignity in favour of wealth, a trait typical of modern commercialisation.
The album artwork depicting his presence on a red carpet with flashing photography surrounding him reinforces this sense of voyeurism that surrounds the lifestyle of modern celebrities, with much contemporary media now solely reporting on celebrity lifestyles as can be shown by magazines such as Closer and Gossip. We wanted to reflect this aspect of media popularity, with ‘paparazzi’ figures also having an influential role in our music video in how they photographed the protagonist’s infidelity. However, the back cover of our album artwork is intended to represent the true identity of our celebrity protagonist, with a bar code on his neck representing his own de-humanisation and eventual transformation into a commercial product for a mass-consuming audience.
Version 2
Our main product was our music video and we created other media such as a Digipak and a Magazine ad to make the production seem professional and to replicate that of a real record release. To produce our digipak we used Adobe Photoshop CS5 and a Bamboo Pen Tablet, the free flowing and hand drawn effect that the Bamboo pad gave us combined with the digital manipulability we can control on CS5 helped us to produce a very professional product. We decided on designs by rigorously assessing Asher’s already existing album art (you can see this on the “Album Cover Analysis” tab on our website). In the end we decided to follow some pre-existing conventions of Asher's design ethic, his “Pabst and Jazz” mix tape was initially very appealing and we decided to imitate this style but use me instead of Asher. We decided to follow his fashion of using the same, sketchy font as we feel Asher definitely finds it important to make all his products similar in some sort of way. We were analysing our work hoping to find inspiration for the back cover, cd cover and the 4th panel; and we came to the realisation that the three other panels that we had designed and created would fit perfectly into our digipak as a whole. Not only did they all follow the conventions that we studied and used in the rest of our work but they passed Asher's pre existing message and fluency too, thus we decided to use them in the final product.
Our target audience was quite a niche audience, with Asher’s pre-existing fan base being quite an independent and active audience. We believe that Asher’s Audience has an opinion, our video and digipak both aim to reach out to this audience by replicating Asher’s authentic styles and taste. Furthermore, we decided that Asher’s audience tends to revolve around the successor and reformer groups who do not find pleasure in purchasing branded expensive clothing but rather his fans follow their own ideas of style, not following any certain idols or just purchasing a product because of a brand. This audience is not too far from Macklemore’s audience, with an emphasis on purchasing products from thrift shops or charity shops and we tried to appeal and attract to this audience by doing the same, if the viewers can relate to what’s going on in the video and what the main character is expressing they will appreciate the music much more, this definitely relates to the representation of the audience and their ideologies.
For our magazine cover we decided to use our Bamboo Pad and Photoshop CS5 yet again. We utilised the sketchy font that you can regularly see throughout Asher's work and the almost hand written style font that is featured on the back of our dikipak cover to create a visual link between the two items. Along the bottom of the magazine there are two reviews from two magazines, "The Source" and "XXL" magazines; we researched into other past magazine covers that have idolised hip hop artists however we could not find many reputable companies other then these two. Furthermore Asher has already featured on an XXL Magazine front cover when he was put into their "Freshman Class" that promotes young up and coming hip hop artists. We feel that adding these two reviews really uses conventions that you can see in many other real life media texts to create realism and make the cover look a lot more professional. As for the design we decided to feature the album art as a main feature, seeing as the aim is to promote our product to our target audience - as you would see in real life magazines. Furthermore we created a quite grungy background and silhouettes of fists being raised into the air in the foreground; just like the song this imagery carrys an underlying meaning, showing that Asher supports those that are economically disadvantaged and would like to help them in an almost uprising to enjoy their life more as a group and a family.
Overall I feel that the combination of us replicating a lot of Asher’s style and using specific techniques to reach out with his existing audience mixed in with our own personal flair in the video and all ancillary texts has helped us to create a final piece that has a professional finish and represent’s Asher as he would like to be represented.
Q3
In the development of our media product, we aimed to gain constructive feedback on any creative concepts proposed by a team member from a specific audience that would typically listen to our chosen genre in an attempt to create an authentic final product. Due to Plan B’s position as a ‘cross-over artist’, his change in genre from hip-hop to soul also resulted in a change in his fanbase and this meant we had to accurately target an audience that still listened to both his new and old material. We believe we effectively targeted a specific audience in age and musical tastes, through the use of focus groups.
Focus groups were used as our main means of improving our final media product with feedback as well as creating discussion amongst an audience with mutual appreciation of Plan B’s genre and music. Our audience were selected based on age and musical preference, and we presented them with several different story ideas for the music video. The focus group members would continue to describe what they liked about different narratives as well as what could be improved, and because we also filmed our focus groups we could record all feedback to be watched and discussed amongst the group.
We performed these focus groups twice in order to refine the creative stream of ideas using different participating group members each time. From these groups, we learnt which ideas were stronger and accepted by specific audiences such as these and which ideas were not considered worthy for our music video. An example of this is the newspaper used depicting Plan B’s infamous activities, an idea many members considered original for an amateur film production. Several shots such as the stop-motion draining of the pint glasses were also encouraged by group members and made their way into the final film.
We also researched audience feedback in relation to our ancillary texts, with many participants reacting positively to our concept of portraying hedonism through the reflection Plan B’s sunglasses as well as the idea of a bar code representing commercialism.
Version 2
During the planning stages of our music video we had to find the audience that was fit for our music video. We analysed the audience for Asher Roth who is a non-materialistic, minimalist and truthful rapper. At first we thought that since he was a rapper he would automatically attract many rap groups, however, through our research we realized that rap has in fact many sub genres with different audience expectations. His audience can be described as Successor and Reformer groups who do not find pleasure in purchasing branded expensive clothing but rather his fans follow their own counter cultural ideas of style, not following any certain idols or just purchasing a product because of a brand. This shows that the people who follow Asher Roth are independent in what they believe in, they are not simply passive followers of consumer culture, but instead as a specific subculture they share ideological values such as heightened spiritual, social awareness as well as a rejection of unsatisfying materialism.
To receive audience feedback on our video we made a poll on the website. This poll gained quantitative data to vote for two different clips that we weren't sure on which to implement into our video. Depending on the number of votes that the clips received, would be the clip that we would add to the video. The Focus Group greatly improved the quality of our film as we were given qualitative data on specific improvements that could have been made. We showed the Focus Group of 7 people the Rough Cut of our film as well as the Final product, we then handed out the Focus Group Questions which can be viewed on the website under the Coursework tab. From here they wrote down a response under the question. Collecting all the information, we looked to see what was mentioned the most, we took these points and added them in red to the Focus Group Questions on this site.
We also showed the focus group the old and new CD covers we made. Their response to the newer CD covers was very positive, they stated how they related to the theme of Asher Roth as well as the video, the colourful artistic cover being favored by many, however we were told to scrap the old CD Covers because of the small dimensions and lack of relation to the video, they stated that they had no meaning behind it and were only made to look flashy. We considered this information and got rid of the old CD covers keeping the new ones and using each one in the final Album.
From the audience feedback that we received from our classmates as well as the polls made online we have been recommended a lot of idea's that should be implemented into the film. Prior to the rough cut of the music video we showed the class, Asher Roth's album covers is what we planned to work on first. They all saw a link in his album covers in terms of text and style as some had block capital letters in the same font a few times, but we also found out that a lot of the album covers were very different. Though we discovered that Asher Roth was a minimalist, plain person in terms of style, the album covers were the complete opposite to our initial thoughts of him. The covers were always different to each other making it seem unpredictable on what the next art style would be if he released another. The relation to Seared Foie Gras and Party Girl are incomparable whilst Green House Effect and Asleep in the Bread Isle both use blocky sketch font. We've acted upon these various styles and made a some of our own trying to differentiate each one keeping a gap between similarities. This also helped in our conventions of real products. According to our Album Cover audience feedback it seems that the Pabst and Jazz version is the one that everyone prefers the most as it received the most votes out of the other two.
Soon after we also presented Asher Roth's other music videos so they could get a feel for the type of person he is and the kind of effects used in his Videos, this would give the audience an understanding of Asher Roth and help with the feedback. We showed the class the music video 'Common Knowledge' which included a lot of post production as well as smooth transitions and overlays over the video. This made the film very fluid, contemporary and unique in terms of style. We aimed to replicate this in our own video which has become successful in terms of transitions. We have been informed to add more overlays onto our music video to reproduce the effects seen in Asher Roth's music video.
During the production of the draft that we have hosted on our page, we took cuts of effects that we weren't completely sure on using as there were various transitions to choose from. Once we rendered these samples we put them onto our Website for feedback and got a very positive response on the effect we weren't sure on using, this made an impact on our film as we adapted to fit the audiences' preference. Again we had to use audience feedback on the transitions for the "No Abe, no Ike, no Moses or Mohammed" clip as we had to either cut to the pace of the music or use smooth transitions. The feedback helped in allowing us decide on a final decision as it would always be in the preference of the audience. We used Facebook and Twitter as well as YouTube to branch these samples to a wider audience.
Focus groups were used as our main means of improving our final media product with feedback as well as creating discussion amongst an audience with mutual appreciation of Plan B’s genre and music. Our audience were selected based on age and musical preference, and we presented them with several different story ideas for the music video. The focus group members would continue to describe what they liked about different narratives as well as what could be improved, and because we also filmed our focus groups we could record all feedback to be watched and discussed amongst the group.
We performed these focus groups twice in order to refine the creative stream of ideas using different participating group members each time. From these groups, we learnt which ideas were stronger and accepted by specific audiences such as these and which ideas were not considered worthy for our music video. An example of this is the newspaper used depicting Plan B’s infamous activities, an idea many members considered original for an amateur film production. Several shots such as the stop-motion draining of the pint glasses were also encouraged by group members and made their way into the final film.
We also researched audience feedback in relation to our ancillary texts, with many participants reacting positively to our concept of portraying hedonism through the reflection Plan B’s sunglasses as well as the idea of a bar code representing commercialism.
Version 2
During the planning stages of our music video we had to find the audience that was fit for our music video. We analysed the audience for Asher Roth who is a non-materialistic, minimalist and truthful rapper. At first we thought that since he was a rapper he would automatically attract many rap groups, however, through our research we realized that rap has in fact many sub genres with different audience expectations. His audience can be described as Successor and Reformer groups who do not find pleasure in purchasing branded expensive clothing but rather his fans follow their own counter cultural ideas of style, not following any certain idols or just purchasing a product because of a brand. This shows that the people who follow Asher Roth are independent in what they believe in, they are not simply passive followers of consumer culture, but instead as a specific subculture they share ideological values such as heightened spiritual, social awareness as well as a rejection of unsatisfying materialism.
To receive audience feedback on our video we made a poll on the website. This poll gained quantitative data to vote for two different clips that we weren't sure on which to implement into our video. Depending on the number of votes that the clips received, would be the clip that we would add to the video. The Focus Group greatly improved the quality of our film as we were given qualitative data on specific improvements that could have been made. We showed the Focus Group of 7 people the Rough Cut of our film as well as the Final product, we then handed out the Focus Group Questions which can be viewed on the website under the Coursework tab. From here they wrote down a response under the question. Collecting all the information, we looked to see what was mentioned the most, we took these points and added them in red to the Focus Group Questions on this site.
We also showed the focus group the old and new CD covers we made. Their response to the newer CD covers was very positive, they stated how they related to the theme of Asher Roth as well as the video, the colourful artistic cover being favored by many, however we were told to scrap the old CD Covers because of the small dimensions and lack of relation to the video, they stated that they had no meaning behind it and were only made to look flashy. We considered this information and got rid of the old CD covers keeping the new ones and using each one in the final Album.
From the audience feedback that we received from our classmates as well as the polls made online we have been recommended a lot of idea's that should be implemented into the film. Prior to the rough cut of the music video we showed the class, Asher Roth's album covers is what we planned to work on first. They all saw a link in his album covers in terms of text and style as some had block capital letters in the same font a few times, but we also found out that a lot of the album covers were very different. Though we discovered that Asher Roth was a minimalist, plain person in terms of style, the album covers were the complete opposite to our initial thoughts of him. The covers were always different to each other making it seem unpredictable on what the next art style would be if he released another. The relation to Seared Foie Gras and Party Girl are incomparable whilst Green House Effect and Asleep in the Bread Isle both use blocky sketch font. We've acted upon these various styles and made a some of our own trying to differentiate each one keeping a gap between similarities. This also helped in our conventions of real products. According to our Album Cover audience feedback it seems that the Pabst and Jazz version is the one that everyone prefers the most as it received the most votes out of the other two.
Soon after we also presented Asher Roth's other music videos so they could get a feel for the type of person he is and the kind of effects used in his Videos, this would give the audience an understanding of Asher Roth and help with the feedback. We showed the class the music video 'Common Knowledge' which included a lot of post production as well as smooth transitions and overlays over the video. This made the film very fluid, contemporary and unique in terms of style. We aimed to replicate this in our own video which has become successful in terms of transitions. We have been informed to add more overlays onto our music video to reproduce the effects seen in Asher Roth's music video.
During the production of the draft that we have hosted on our page, we took cuts of effects that we weren't completely sure on using as there were various transitions to choose from. Once we rendered these samples we put them onto our Website for feedback and got a very positive response on the effect we weren't sure on using, this made an impact on our film as we adapted to fit the audiences' preference. Again we had to use audience feedback on the transitions for the "No Abe, no Ike, no Moses or Mohammed" clip as we had to either cut to the pace of the music or use smooth transitions. The feedback helped in allowing us decide on a final decision as it would always be in the preference of the audience. We used Facebook and Twitter as well as YouTube to branch these samples to a wider audience.
Q4
Throughout the coursework of our A2 Media Studies, we used media technologies to help out continuously.
In the research stages we used a video camera to film our focus groups when discussing the pitches. This helped us as we could view it back and gain valuable feedback about what our target audience did and didn’t like. Furthermore, we used YouTube to host the focus group videos so that we could put them onto our coursework website. We had to make a website to host all our coursework and act as an online portfolio. To do this we used a website creator and host called Weebly. Here we put all of our research, planning and ancillary texts on different pages with all the information we gathered to achieve the tasks. We also put a blog on the site, which we updated regularly on the progress of our coursework.
In the construction of our music video we used a Panasonic HD video camera to capture the raw footage we used. Utilizing it in various ways we were able to create interesting and dynamic shots which helped to contribute to the over all style of our film. We then used Apple iMacs for the postproduction stage due to their high processing power, great graphics capabilities and ease of use. Utilising Final Cut Express which, we used last year in our AS course, we were a able to edit the footage. Because we had already used this programme it wasn’t as much of a challenge using it. As a result we were able to develop and enhance our editing skills. We were able to discover new features of the software programme, learning the cuts for tools and more, all of which mad the postproduction process more efficient and easy compared to last year.
We used colour correction to change the style and make the footage look more moody and dynamic. This was especially important, as we needed to change the colour of numerous shots where we filmed during the daytime and wanted it to look more like evening or dusk. By adding transitions and other filters we were able to create a better over all product.
A new feature we learnt to employ this year was chrome key, which we used to create the dog food advert to symbolise the commercial world of modern music artists by using a green screen.
We also experimented with stop motion to create the beer glass emptying and refilling. To do this we used a Nikon D3000 DSLR camera. By then stitching the still images together in Final Cut we were able to create the shot and make it look like a piece of film.
Another crucial programme we used was Photoshop, we used this to edit the images and create the digipack and magazine advert. Developing and building on our skills from last year we were able to use filters and different effects to create the artwork. Some of the tools we used were: opacity, cropping, stylised filters, masks, gradients and more. We then created a promotional website which is used to hose the video and promote it. For this we used a different website host called Wix. We also used this to build the mobile version of the site, which can be accessed on a smart phone by scanning the quick response (QR) code we generated and put onto the magazine advert.
So we have used a variety of media technologies both hardware and software throughout the entirety of our coursework, cumulating in an over all good product.
Version 2
Through-out the whole project we continuously used Media Technology to help us along the way. To start with, we used Weebly; an easy website creator. This helped us store all of our information into one place, it was very helpful as you could edit it from any computer and everyone who had internet would be able to view it. It proved useful as it could hold all of our coursework information on the website as well as our music video, it could also hold polls that you could create that would assist in audience feedback. Explaining certain subjects became easy as you could use all of Weeblys elements to your advantage, for example you could add images to the paragraph if you happened to explaining something specific.
YouTube was another website that we used. It was easy to share our footage with the audience as you could upload video to te website, write a description, and embed the video onto other websites. Again Weebly was helpful as it had an element to attach YouTube videos onto the website. This helped us to share the video with others who used the site as they could click play and our videos would play.
Search engines; being quite an unnoticeable source of media technology was one of the most useful technologies we used. Google was very helpful in finding information as it would gather the most relative subjects on our search and present them in most important sites at the top. Wikipedia was a website that came up often as it is filled with information that we used to our advantage.
The digital camera provided was the main source of our footage which enabled us to look back on the footage to check if it was a good take or not. Without it we wouldn't know if we had good clips so we wouldn't whether to film again on the spot. The fact that is was a High Definition Camera helped us receive the highest quality footage we could achieve. It also had included stabilization in the codec when moving it onto the Mac computers which helped the camera movement look less handheld and more like a Steadicam We then moved all the footage onto the Mac Computers because of the Processing Power of the machines as well as their ease of use. With the help of iMovie and Final Cut Express we managed to cut together the film whilst leaving some blank spaces that needed to be filled later on in the year.
Like last year I began to move all the footage onto the Computer I own at home as I am more used to my Computer and Windows in general, and because of the history I have with editing on Sony Vegas Pro instead of Final Cut. I am more experienced in the programs on my PC so I preferred to use it rather than the Macs, this way I would be able to work faster with more efficiency. As I had recently built my own computer choosing what I wanted in terms of components I was able to work very quickly as the processing power of my own machine is very powerful as well as the GPU that assisted in the speed of work on Sony Vegas. Compared to last year where I used my laptop and the Mac for editing, the post-production process was much quicker.
During the Post Production process we wanted to use conventions from Asher Roth's music video GRIND. At the start of the official video it is completely black and white. As the video continues he uses a Saturation Adjust to exclude some of the colour on the footage. For example if you had a video sample of a beach and used Saturation Adjust on the blues, the sea and sky would be the colour that stood out (depending on the dial settings) and the sand would be grey-scaled This is a good effect that can represent gloominess like the colour grey does.
I also downloaded a Film Burn pack which helped in transitions a number of times. It helped with the cuts between clips rather than having a fade of a sharp cut.
Another program we used was Photoshop. This came in handy for still images that needed adjusting especially for the part in the draft were we replicate the Obama 'Hope' poster. We found a guide on YouTube on how to make this kind of effect with consisted of copying the layer 4 times and using an effect called Posterize. Changing the colour of each layer was what made the picture recognizable to the 'Hope' poster. We then changed the text at the bottom to 'Dope' instead of 'Hope' as it is a slang term for Cool which enhances the hip hop genre impact on the music video.
I also used Photoshop to add dynamic text to the film that appear as lyrics on the video that slide upwards once it's sung. I made the wrote out the words needed, each word being a different file, saving them as PNG files without a background to maintain highest quality. I then positioned them onto Sony Vegas a layer on top of the footage and then added a smooth upward transition to them. This gave the Music Video a more contemporary feel which we were trying to create to replicate Asher Roth's Common Knowledge post production heavy video. Photoshop was also used to create the Album Covers and Digi-pack it is very useful for still images as you can use a variety of effects and filters to help you. One of the album covers we created greatly resembles Asher Roth's Album Pabst and Jazz, this is because we wanted to use the idea and style of that album to recreate it with our performer in the picture instead of Asher Roth. We made this using a Wacom Graphics Tablet which proved successful in reproducing the CD Cover.
For one clip I used a plugin called Optical Flares which is an effect for Adobe After Effects. It creates a light source that shines towards the screen. There are many combinations to what you can make as well as a variety of screen shots. In the clip with Kevin in front of the London Eye I added a sun-like flare. Though it wasn't very noticeable it did improve the look of the clip.
Through-out the film I used another Plugin called Twixtor which is an effect used to slow down clips but in a smoother fashion. Normally when you slow down clips it just stretches it, meaning the frames will stay on screen for a longer period of time creating a very jagged looking clip instead of it being smooth. In Twixtor, it tries to merge and create frames in between frames to make it much smoother. A noticeable part where I used this effect would be at the end where the screen goes black and white while Kevin is walking away from the camera with the Sun flare in the back. I key framed the Black and White filter as well as the Twixtor speed which created a very smooth ending for the Music Video.
Recently we went back to editing the Music Video because the lack of post production was an issue. We decided that adding text highlighting important words would be effective as it would express the meaning of the song in a more obvious manner. Once again we used Photoshop to produce these words, adding a slight glow to the edges to make them look visually appealing, and saving them as a PNG for quality. We then added them into the timeline above the video taking time into consideration. Using New Blue FX we used Push transitions to smoothly elevate or drop the text once the lyric has been sung. A slow fade followed shortly after.
In the research stages we used a video camera to film our focus groups when discussing the pitches. This helped us as we could view it back and gain valuable feedback about what our target audience did and didn’t like. Furthermore, we used YouTube to host the focus group videos so that we could put them onto our coursework website. We had to make a website to host all our coursework and act as an online portfolio. To do this we used a website creator and host called Weebly. Here we put all of our research, planning and ancillary texts on different pages with all the information we gathered to achieve the tasks. We also put a blog on the site, which we updated regularly on the progress of our coursework.
In the construction of our music video we used a Panasonic HD video camera to capture the raw footage we used. Utilizing it in various ways we were able to create interesting and dynamic shots which helped to contribute to the over all style of our film. We then used Apple iMacs for the postproduction stage due to their high processing power, great graphics capabilities and ease of use. Utilising Final Cut Express which, we used last year in our AS course, we were a able to edit the footage. Because we had already used this programme it wasn’t as much of a challenge using it. As a result we were able to develop and enhance our editing skills. We were able to discover new features of the software programme, learning the cuts for tools and more, all of which mad the postproduction process more efficient and easy compared to last year.
We used colour correction to change the style and make the footage look more moody and dynamic. This was especially important, as we needed to change the colour of numerous shots where we filmed during the daytime and wanted it to look more like evening or dusk. By adding transitions and other filters we were able to create a better over all product.
A new feature we learnt to employ this year was chrome key, which we used to create the dog food advert to symbolise the commercial world of modern music artists by using a green screen.
We also experimented with stop motion to create the beer glass emptying and refilling. To do this we used a Nikon D3000 DSLR camera. By then stitching the still images together in Final Cut we were able to create the shot and make it look like a piece of film.
Another crucial programme we used was Photoshop, we used this to edit the images and create the digipack and magazine advert. Developing and building on our skills from last year we were able to use filters and different effects to create the artwork. Some of the tools we used were: opacity, cropping, stylised filters, masks, gradients and more. We then created a promotional website which is used to hose the video and promote it. For this we used a different website host called Wix. We also used this to build the mobile version of the site, which can be accessed on a smart phone by scanning the quick response (QR) code we generated and put onto the magazine advert.
So we have used a variety of media technologies both hardware and software throughout the entirety of our coursework, cumulating in an over all good product.
Version 2
Through-out the whole project we continuously used Media Technology to help us along the way. To start with, we used Weebly; an easy website creator. This helped us store all of our information into one place, it was very helpful as you could edit it from any computer and everyone who had internet would be able to view it. It proved useful as it could hold all of our coursework information on the website as well as our music video, it could also hold polls that you could create that would assist in audience feedback. Explaining certain subjects became easy as you could use all of Weeblys elements to your advantage, for example you could add images to the paragraph if you happened to explaining something specific.
YouTube was another website that we used. It was easy to share our footage with the audience as you could upload video to te website, write a description, and embed the video onto other websites. Again Weebly was helpful as it had an element to attach YouTube videos onto the website. This helped us to share the video with others who used the site as they could click play and our videos would play.
Search engines; being quite an unnoticeable source of media technology was one of the most useful technologies we used. Google was very helpful in finding information as it would gather the most relative subjects on our search and present them in most important sites at the top. Wikipedia was a website that came up often as it is filled with information that we used to our advantage.
The digital camera provided was the main source of our footage which enabled us to look back on the footage to check if it was a good take or not. Without it we wouldn't know if we had good clips so we wouldn't whether to film again on the spot. The fact that is was a High Definition Camera helped us receive the highest quality footage we could achieve. It also had included stabilization in the codec when moving it onto the Mac computers which helped the camera movement look less handheld and more like a Steadicam We then moved all the footage onto the Mac Computers because of the Processing Power of the machines as well as their ease of use. With the help of iMovie and Final Cut Express we managed to cut together the film whilst leaving some blank spaces that needed to be filled later on in the year.
Like last year I began to move all the footage onto the Computer I own at home as I am more used to my Computer and Windows in general, and because of the history I have with editing on Sony Vegas Pro instead of Final Cut. I am more experienced in the programs on my PC so I preferred to use it rather than the Macs, this way I would be able to work faster with more efficiency. As I had recently built my own computer choosing what I wanted in terms of components I was able to work very quickly as the processing power of my own machine is very powerful as well as the GPU that assisted in the speed of work on Sony Vegas. Compared to last year where I used my laptop and the Mac for editing, the post-production process was much quicker.
During the Post Production process we wanted to use conventions from Asher Roth's music video GRIND. At the start of the official video it is completely black and white. As the video continues he uses a Saturation Adjust to exclude some of the colour on the footage. For example if you had a video sample of a beach and used Saturation Adjust on the blues, the sea and sky would be the colour that stood out (depending on the dial settings) and the sand would be grey-scaled This is a good effect that can represent gloominess like the colour grey does.
I also downloaded a Film Burn pack which helped in transitions a number of times. It helped with the cuts between clips rather than having a fade of a sharp cut.
Another program we used was Photoshop. This came in handy for still images that needed adjusting especially for the part in the draft were we replicate the Obama 'Hope' poster. We found a guide on YouTube on how to make this kind of effect with consisted of copying the layer 4 times and using an effect called Posterize. Changing the colour of each layer was what made the picture recognizable to the 'Hope' poster. We then changed the text at the bottom to 'Dope' instead of 'Hope' as it is a slang term for Cool which enhances the hip hop genre impact on the music video.
I also used Photoshop to add dynamic text to the film that appear as lyrics on the video that slide upwards once it's sung. I made the wrote out the words needed, each word being a different file, saving them as PNG files without a background to maintain highest quality. I then positioned them onto Sony Vegas a layer on top of the footage and then added a smooth upward transition to them. This gave the Music Video a more contemporary feel which we were trying to create to replicate Asher Roth's Common Knowledge post production heavy video. Photoshop was also used to create the Album Covers and Digi-pack it is very useful for still images as you can use a variety of effects and filters to help you. One of the album covers we created greatly resembles Asher Roth's Album Pabst and Jazz, this is because we wanted to use the idea and style of that album to recreate it with our performer in the picture instead of Asher Roth. We made this using a Wacom Graphics Tablet which proved successful in reproducing the CD Cover.
For one clip I used a plugin called Optical Flares which is an effect for Adobe After Effects. It creates a light source that shines towards the screen. There are many combinations to what you can make as well as a variety of screen shots. In the clip with Kevin in front of the London Eye I added a sun-like flare. Though it wasn't very noticeable it did improve the look of the clip.
Through-out the film I used another Plugin called Twixtor which is an effect used to slow down clips but in a smoother fashion. Normally when you slow down clips it just stretches it, meaning the frames will stay on screen for a longer period of time creating a very jagged looking clip instead of it being smooth. In Twixtor, it tries to merge and create frames in between frames to make it much smoother. A noticeable part where I used this effect would be at the end where the screen goes black and white while Kevin is walking away from the camera with the Sun flare in the back. I key framed the Black and White filter as well as the Twixtor speed which created a very smooth ending for the Music Video.
Recently we went back to editing the Music Video because the lack of post production was an issue. We decided that adding text highlighting important words would be effective as it would express the meaning of the song in a more obvious manner. Once again we used Photoshop to produce these words, adding a slight glow to the edges to make them look visually appealing, and saving them as a PNG for quality. We then added them into the timeline above the video taking time into consideration. Using New Blue FX we used Push transitions to smoothly elevate or drop the text once the lyric has been sung. A slow fade followed shortly after.