Evaluation

Courtney-Isis Guishard-Pine

A2 MEDIA

Introduction

In the mainstream music industry today

soca music is not a worldwide

product and is mainly known by

ethnic minorities from the Caribbean

Cont.

Soca music is known for having strong

rhythmic sections done by drum sets. Due to

its strong influence from Africa. More recently

soca has used synthesized drum sounds and

has taken on more of a pop influence.

Cont.

The biggest soca hit is the 1982 song (Feelin’)

Hot Hot Hot by Arrow. Other leading artists

include,

Above is one of Machel Montano’s album covers,

showing his various stages through his long-running

career.

He is well-known for his

high-energy performances

as well as catchy,

unforgettable songs

MACHEL MONTANO

DESTRA GARCIA

Destra Garcia is soca’s vixen, she is

one of the biggest and best soca

artists of all time.

Within the media there are very few TV

channels that show soca music, these are:

- CaribVision

- Centric

- Synergy TV

- Tempo TV

These are mainly shown in the Americas

Question – One

In what ways does your media product

use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Introduction

• A music video is a film/video that

accompanies a piece of music or a song. In

more modern times it has been developed as

a marketing device for the promotion of an

artist or album. Because of this, music videos’

complexity has increased.

• To answer this question I have referred to

Andrew Goodwin’s Generic music video

Forms and Conventions.

USE – There is a relationship between the

lyrics and the visuals

• Bright text appearing in our video, reading out the lyrics that were being sung in the song. This added a bit more life to the video. This is similar to ‘Palance’ by JW and Blaze where text also appears in a similar fashion.

• Lip-syncing of the lyrics being sung in the song was used in various shots. Like in many modern music videos where the artist is lip-syncing the lyrics of the song.

Cont.

Lip syncing the first verse to the

song, illustrating movements that

match the lyrics.

• We used this through the editing style of the

video. By cutting the shots to match the beat.

We enhanced this between 02:01 and 02:11,

where we fast cut the shots in time with a

specific drum beat.

• We also used this through dancing, laughter

and the bright coloured text matching the

upbeat rhythm within the music.

• These techniques are used both in soca music

videos as well as mainstream music videos.

USE – There is a relationship between

the music and the visuals

• By showing women/girls of different ages and sizes, not

being shown as sexual items, just being normal and having

fun. I believe we challenged and developed this convention

in a positive way. It showed that it was possible to show

women/girls in non-sexual ways but still make the video look

exceptional. Unlike in the majority of modern videos.

CHALLENGE and DEVELOP – There is likely

to be reference to voyeurism, particularly in

the treatment of women

• Soca music videos are quite simple in terms of what

conventions, style, iconography etc. They usually

contain women in revealing clothing, dancing,

carnival/partying, beaches, islands.

• We used the dancing within our video and

requested a small routine be formed to perform

throughout the video. We also used the fact that

soca music videos are usually non-narrative in the

production of the film.

USE, CHALLENGE and DEVELOP – Particular

music genres may have their own music video

style and iconography

Cont.

• We challenged and developed the concept of

showing women in a certain way, and showed

women/girls of different ages and sizes, in non-

revealing clothes, dancing, laughing and having

fun like normal girls. Their not like the girls that

are seen on television.

Question – Two

How effective is the combination of

your main product and ancillary

texts?

Digi-packThe digi-pack had to have a Caribbean feel.

Which is why we chose the bright, almost-

neon colours for the front and inside. We also

added a palm tree to the front cover because

we felt that this would connote the Caribbean

and that this digi-pack would link to the

Caribbean. The font for the wording was

chosen to give a superstar, name in big, bold

lights feel. As if the band are a

huge success. I like the

digi-pack because it

shows the true colours

of what Soca stands for.

Which is standing out

and having fun.

Music Video

These are some signature

images from the music

video. Very bright,

summertime, happiness,

fun directed. Which is

exactly what we wanted to

connote. Because the

music is very upbeat and

carnival orientated we had

to try our hardest to show

this through our video

without involving an

actually carnival. Which

meant we had to focus on

other things that were well

known for carnival, such as

sunshine, fun, dancing,

bright colours etc.

We added shots of

London because we are

from London and we -->

-- > wanted to bring the

carnival/Caribbean feel to

London

BRANDING• A brand is the identity of a specific product,

service or business.

• Branding is mainly known to be used on

products and companies such as McDonalds

or Coca-Cola.

Cont.

• Many of the major music artists are known to

be ‘branded’. Celebrities such as Lady GaGa,

who is famously branded for her crazy, wild,

extravagant antics, music videos and outfits.

This is known as ‘personal branding’

Cont.• I felt that when it came to our artist, we should give them a

brand that would make them stand out, like Lady GaGa.

• Their brand name is ‘Kes the Band’. So we felt that the best way to help them to stick out was through the design of the digi-pack and through the music video. By making the video unlike any video in the mainstream, but still noticeable.

• I feel we did this in the music video by putting predominantly a female cast in the video and having a female miming the lyrics to the song despite the band/artist being all males. We also made sure to show females of different ages, sizes, colours etc. in non-revealing clothing. Which is the opposite of what the majority of soca products show. I think the fact that our products are completely out of the norm makes them stand out.

Cont.

The front cover of a well-

known Soca compilation

albumThe front cover of our digi-pack

Cont.

A printscreen shot of a clip from

our music video

A printscreen shot of a clip from

Ricardo Drue’s soca video ‘Car Key”

So how effective do I think the combination of

the main product and the ancillary text is?

• I feel that the main product and the ancillary text match each other perfectly. They both include bright colouring, and have a Caribbean feeling. The music video is very fun, active and involves a lot of happiness. The digi-pack matches this through the layout, the text and certainly through the colouring used.

• This unique differentiation from the norm of Soca products makes our products distinctive, which is why I think our main product and ancillary text is excellent and will be very accomplished.

Question - Three

What have you learnt from your

audience feedback?

Questionnaires

• We came up with several relevant questions that wouldn’t

be time consuming to fill out and handed the questionnaires

out to various members of the public with hopes to find

information that could help us to decide on different factors

for promoting the video. Questions such as:

• Are music video’s important to you?

• What do you find is the most successful advertisement for promoting

music?

• Where do you think is the best place to listen to music?

• We asked these questions to find out about our audience

and find out what they thought about artist promotion,

which would help us on how we would go about

promoting the band.

Cont.

The majority of the replies we got were as we suspected. People said

that music was a part of their everyday lifestyle and they listened to

it daily. Also we learned that people felt the best way of promoting

music was using clubs, where they would listen to such music.

Lastly we found that hardly anybody felt that their dress sense is

strongly influenced by the music they listen to. Which meant that

when promoting the artist, we did not need to focus strongly on

creating a brand clothing for the artist that would be influencing

the way their fans dressed. Although I feel this would be a good

thing to do and would advice it.

Interviews

• I did a interview with a fellow soca lover before going

into the production processes of creating the music

video. The interviewee told of how they liked to see

people having fun and dancing in the videos, especially

when it matched the music. They felt that this made

them feel happy to see others being happy and it took

them to a different mindset.

• We also discussed issues to do with representations of

women in music videos. They felt that modern video’s

portrayed women in a certain way and that they

wanted women to be portrayed for being beautiful for

things much deeper than their material gains.

Feedback Throughout Production

• Once we had done some filming and captured the footage, we found

that the original idea given was not the direction we wanted the video

to go. After various feedback from people saying they could not

understand where the video was going and how it matched the music

style we scrapped the idea and came up with a fresh one.

• However, again, once we had captured the footage and began editing

we and other members of the audience constantly thought that

something was missing from the video and that we needed to add

something to bring a bit more happiness and flavour to it.

• So we did some more shooting, after receiving some careful feedback

and guidance and luckily found more vibrant, useful shots. Once we

added these in and edited it to our likings we all decided that the video

was to a suitable standard and put it onto the website youtube.com and

facebook.com in order to get feedback from an audience.

Final Video Positives

After the video had been finished I posted the

video onto the social networking site

facebook and got feedback from various

people. Both soca lovers and non, the

majority were very positive. This showed me

that our video had achieved the conventions

of what soca music video’s are meant to do.

Inspire feelings of happiness, unity, love,

togetherness etc.

Cont.

We got comments such as:• ‘I really, really enjoyed watching that video. It looked liked

everyone was having fun and the shots of London were well edited. The video looked very natural. Good job everybody’ – Angela

• ‘This video is very good, I enjoyed watching it, actually love the ending , very good..’ – Jasmine

• ‘Love it! Love it! Love it! Charming infectious fun! Yea!! Go Performers. Top Marks from me! I really really love it.’ -Maureen

Final Video Improvements

However, and gratefully we did get some comments

that sought to give the video improvement. Or

point out what they felt was missing from it that

would’ve helped to make it slightly better. These

people also felt that we had improved massively

from the original video we had, which helped us to

see that from the last video we needed to add more

sunshine, cutaways and just general happiness in

order to match the music style. The majority of these

comments were from non-soca listeners.

Cont.

• ‘I liked the fact that they were taking the mickey and having fun. Loved the bit where the roller-skater was going through the cups. Also I liked when the guys popped up from behind the car and that everyone was taking it in turns to dance. I thought that the parts where the writing flashed up were good too. It would have been good to see boys miming the words of the song as well as the girls. It was great. Hope my comments are off use.’ – Asabi

• ‘That looks better from the last time I saw it. I liked that u added the other random shots of London.’ – Aline

• ‘Perhaps some party or BBQ or even shots that just show people chillin’ socially could have enhanced the sort of feeling you get from the music but otherwise I agree with Aline ^ and also I like that its just a happy and natural video, very suitable to the song..I like it.’ – Amit

Question - Four

How did you use media technologies

in the construction and research,

planning and evaluation stages?

• In regards to the planning, research and evaluation stages of production we used different Microsoft software.

• For the evaluation we also used Final Cut Pro and filming equipment in order to record and edit members of the group answering evaluation questions and talking about the various equipment we used.

• With the construction of the video, we used equipment like a canon filming camera, a tripod (for steady/stable shots), still camera (for taking pictures of locations), and a handheld tripod in order to fulfill tracking shots that needed to be filmed.

• When it came to editing the video we went to a editing suite equiped with apple-mac computers and all the editing software we needed such as Final Cut Pro and PhotoShop(PhotoShop was used for the colourful backgrounds with the text)