Media Evaluation

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Question 1 -

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

real media products?

From my research of digipaks I have learnt that a convention of Tyler the Creator’s is to not follow conventions. If you look at each front cover of Tyler’s digipaks you will notice that they are not consistent and don’t follow a certain theme. Therefore this ends up being the a convention in itself. This is something that is not only apparent through his digipaks but rather his whole way of being - as you can see from the analysis of Tyler the Creator on my blog (click here.)

Here you can see three of tylers front covers. Each cover has a completely different theme and meaning.

This is a style sheet I made when doing my research. I made because it shows how unconventional Tyler is.

An example of Tyler’s creativity would be the use of unexplained baby heads on this digipak. This is a very weird thing to do - I tried to replicate this on our digipak, as

explained later. Also on this front cover you will notice it features a drawing of Tyler on a bmx, this is the very same outfit and bmx that is featured in some of his music videos.

This subconsciously creates a stronger brand for Tyler and I realized that I too

would have too incorporate some brand strengthening in out digipak.

This shows how I used Rorys head to represent our media products. The picture on the left is the inside cover of our digipak and the image above is the title taken from our magazine advert.

This is how I used these conventions. Regarding the baby heads, I used a cut out image of Rory’s head through out the digipak. Rory was the actor in our music video therefore I thought the use of his head would create a stronger brand image for the video. Also, and quite simply, I cropped out the image of Rory’s head because it makes people laugh - everyone who I have asked: class members, target audience and other friends have liked this feature and said it is very fitting to the genre and conventions of our music video, digipak and poster and also those conventions of Tylers. Because the album is an exclusive playlist album I thought it would be appropriate to feature an image taken from the set of out music video - this image was used as a background for the front and back cover of the digipak. The reason for this was because the image has dark connotations which reflects the meaning of the song. In other words, it wouldn’t have been appropriate to use a very colourful picture, to market a sad song.

This shows my digipak and the magazine album advert

How did I challenge these conventions in my digipak? An important note to make however is that in not challenging the conventions of Tyler the creator, I am challenging the conventions of most other artists. Put simply its very unconventional to have an unconventional digipak and magazine advert, most other artists will have a strong and clear brand image that they follow and express throughout their medias. Rick Ross for example conforms to the conventions of his genre, he brags about money, girls and possessions which is important because he is apart of a larger sub genre of music whereby the audience has to have that connection between themselves, the artist and the conventions that are portrayed as part of that genre. On the other hand I have challenged the inconsistent convention of Tylers, I have kept the design of my digipak, album advert and video consistent with each other. This is something that Tyler the creator choses not to do. If you look at his website, then at his magazine adverts and his videos, they don’t match, which is unconventional.

Left (digipak front cover,) middle (music video,) right (digipak back cover.)

My research told me that a convention of album magazine adverts was that it needed to feature at least; the name of the artist, the release date of the album and the name of the album. I have of course used this convention and included all of theabove mentioned.

From my research I found that most album adverts were very basic, I decided to challenge this convention. For my magazine I included some starred reviews from certain magazines, this was deliberately done because its something Tyler the creator has never been known for, Tyler is known for hating reviews on his adverts and marketing, this is because he likes to think that his audience already know what to expect and will buy the album regardless - due to his persona and image. I thought it would be interesting to add these because it provokes questions for the target audience, especially because of the choice of magazine and newspapers I chose to review the album. The independent and the daily mirror and the guardian are all sophisticated newspapers, these newspapers would never been seen to be listening to this genre of music and likewise Tyler the Creator would never been seen to be reading these newspapers. (ignore the fact Tyler is American and these papers are British.) The reason I decided to include all of this is because, to the target audience, it is very funny. The target audience will know this feature is a joke and will be attracted to it because it follows Tyler’s convention of being unpredictable and having a strange sense of humour. This feature says to the audience ‘I don’t follow convention and I do things my way.’

Something I learnt from my research of music videos is that each genre has different conventions and must feature different objects, camera movements and editing styles to convey these conventions in order the create a connection between the video and the viewer. Without this connection the viewer will not be attracted to the video, therefore may not like the song and choose not to buy the album.

Chiddy bang’s album artwork shows the connection between our work and existing alernative hip hop media products

Most of Tyler’s videos are very abstract and don’t follow themes and conventions – much like all of his media products. Yonkers however is slightly different, Yonkers is a very unconventional video in terms of the way its shot. It focus’s entirely on Tyler, because this relates to the lyrics of the song. Thus conforming to Andrew Goodwin’s thought beats theory which state that the visuals of the video need to be reflected and relatable to the meaning and sound of the song. The song Yonkers has no chorus’s its all one verse therefore I decided to play on this and shoot our video all in one take. The effect of this is that it creates a connection between the meaning of the song and the visuals of the song.

Andrew Goodwin’s thought beats theory also states that there needs to be a certain level of address from the star image towards the viewer in order to attract them into the video, that is, where the act of rapping to the camera creates a two communication device between the artist and the viewer. This means that our target audience want to feel connected to our actor. We played on this by making our artist the only focus of the music video.

This is a screenshot from our video showing rory’s looking and pointing at the camera. (Showing an aggressive mode of address, which relates to the attitude of the video and the conventions of Andrew Goodwin.)

This is a screenshot from the original Yonkers video showing tyler looking and pointing at the camera. This shows the relationship between the two videos and how we represented the original video with ours.

The colour scheme in the video is very important, to put this into context, a viewer will expect a dark video if the meaning of the song is dark. If this expectation is not met then the viewer may feel cheated on and therefore not be able to connect to the song and video. We chose to shoot our video in monochrome, the effect of this is that it takes out all of the emotions that are connoted through colours.

These pictures help show the connotations of sadness that are associated with the use of a monochrome filter. The use of black and white takes out colours which can represent different emotions. Red for love and passion for example.

As our media product isn’t just the music video but rather the video, the digipak and the poster. We needed to keep the colour scheme constant throughout all of out media products. The effect of this is that it suggests to the viewer that all of the products are related, a secondary effect of this is that it strengthens each product in terms of branding

A convention of album adverts and albums themselves is that the design is consistent. As I mentioned before a convention of Tylers is to not be consistent with design. I have

chosen to challenge Tyler’s convention and used other genres and artists conventions by keeping the design of the advert consistent to the digipak. The colour scheme of the

advert is dark, which matches the colour scheme of the digipak and also matched the visuals and connotations of the music video. If these three pieces of media were to be seen separately, it would be acutely apparent that they are related - due to the colour

schemes, fonts and general design. One specific way I have connected the advert to the digipak is through the use of the cut out image of Rorys’ head.

Three digipak covers taken form Tyler the Creators digipaks.

As you can see from this slide all of my media products follow a theme and look professional. This is important because it helps the viewer to create and associate a brand and this imagery with the song.

Question 2 -

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

The colour scheme between our video and ancillary texts are always constant.

It is important for an artists music video, digipak and other media texts to be related. This is to create and reinforce a brand that the audience can connect to. In order for a strong image to be created each media product has to interrelate with each other. If not then an artist can seem inconsistent which could ultimately result in less song and album sales. My products and ancillary texts all extensively relate to each other. As you can see the advert and the digipak feature the cut out image of Rory’s head, Rory also happens to be the actor in our video. The effect of this is that it creates a strong connection between all of the products and Rory - because each of the products relate to each other, they strengthen the performers image and a stronger image sells more. Because the audience can relate to and identify each of the products they will be more willing to go out and buy the album.

These images and media products from JAY Z’s Magna Carta album are all interrelated. This link explains why a brand is important

Another example is how the image taken from the set and used on the digipak compliments the video. Because the whole video is shot in the tunnel, and because the tunnel is very unique looking. As soon as you see the picture on the front cover of the magazine you immediately think of the video, this connection has the effect of strengthening the appeal towards the video, the audience will see the picture of the tunnel and be reminded of the video, this will then subconsciously make them want to watch the video, after having watched the video several times they may start to think about buying the song or album. This is how the relationship between the design of the advert and cinematography of the video sells the album.

When choosing a font for branding, you have two main families to chose from, the serif family and the sans family. Generally speaking, sans fonts have modern connotations due to their round edges, whereas serif fonts tend to be regarded as being more old fashioned – see the image attached below.

YONKERS YONKERS

This shows ‘YONKERS’ in a sans serif font. It looks modern and conventional

This shows ‘YONKERS’ in a serif font. It looks old fashioned.

This shows the font that I used for our representation of Yonkers.

When designing our digipak and poster I decided to use a font from the serif family, a font called Cochin. This is because, our video is in black and white, therefore it has connotations of the past – this derives from the fact that the first films and pictures that were made and

taken were in black and white. As I mention before the serif font family shares these conventions, that is, it’s regarded as housing more old fashioned fonts. Hence why I

decided to use it for our digipak and poster. If you take a look at our poster, I have designed it in an authentic style, using an old newspaper overlay to creates a scrunched up poster effect, as though it has just been pin up to a wall and left there. Now If I had used a sans

font I wouldn’t have been able to get this message and branding across as the poster would have looked inconsistent and wouldn’t have created a strong relationship between the

video and the ancillary texts.

Question 3 -

What have you learned from you audience feedback?

From our initial feedback, on survey monkey I learnt that our audience were mainly white British teenagers. I also learnt that they wanted to be able to watch music videos on YouTube, specifically on smartphones (this is something that we kept in mind when rendering and uploading our video.)

During our video interview with two boys from our target age demographic I learnt that the rap and alternative hip hop genre was very popular. In particular they said that they like the lyrics and find them easy to connect to, another feature of the hip hop genre that both interviewees said they like are the artists themselves - this was an important point because it backs up all of the research to show that fans of Tylers like him partly because of his image. Having found this out we decided to make the actor in our video a big part of our whole project, ie including him in the digipak and album advert. The aim of this was to create a fan base around him and use that as a basis for the audience to connect with the song and album, therefore leading to them going out and buying the album.

Something that one of the interviewees said that they expect to see in a rap music video is rapping to the camera, this relates to Andrew Goodwin’s thought beats theory which is where the act of rapping to the camera creates a two communication device between the artist and the viewer. This means that our target audience want to feel connected to our actor. We played on this by making our artist the only focus of the music video - much like the original Yonkers video made by Tyler. The theory behind this choice is that, based on our research and feedback, the audience would be able connect fully to our actor however at the same time have no connection to the song - because the meaning of the song is so dark, thus creating a juxtaposition between the viewer, the visuals of the video and the lyrics.

As you can see throughout our video there is always a direct mode of address from the star image.

This was some of our feedback from people who were asked. As you can see something that everyone who was asked agreed on was the good choice of location Generally everyone thought the video was very good: syncing, location, mise-en-scene. The only areas for improvement were the lighting, which was said to be a little too dark at some points.

Regarding feedback for the video. We uploaded the video onto Facebook, we shared the video and has some feedback. The feedback was mostly positive, on the whole people liked the fact that we shot the entire video in one take, they said it was ‘quirky and fitting for the genre.’ This feedback was very helpful as it shows our video is successful and hints that other viewers will also like the video

This shows how we used convergence between different technologies to share and get feedback for our video

Overall our feedback was really helpful, our initial feedback helped us to set about making our artefacts based on the audience wants. The feedback we had during the production of the products was very positive which indicated that we were doing the right things and that everything was working and relating to each other. Finally our after production research reassured to use that our products were successful and were fitting for out target audience.

Whilst making my digipak and album advert, I had constant feedback from the other members in my group, also from other friends who I asked. Everyone I asked said that they liked my ideas and that they were fitting for what was needed. When I had finished both artefacts I sent the work around to some friends via Facebook - everyone that I asked said that they were professional looking and very appropriate for our music video. This feedback was very helpful and reassuring as it meant that all our three artefacts were consistent and relate to each other.

Question 4 -

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

stages?

RESEARCH:Throughout the research period I used a variety of different technologies. To document and present my research I used a blogging site called blogger, this allowed me to upload many different multi media posts and then share and access them from my smartphone, a computer, tablet etc. Blogger was really helpful because I could use it to gather all of my work in one place. The layout of blogger is really helpful because it makes all of my posts accessible and easy to view.

I used Surverymonkey as a tool to ask my target audience questions regarding the research into our music video. Surverymonkey allows you to ask up to ten question, this was helpful in a way because it meant I had to make each question count and be worthwhile. Surverymonkey allows you to directly share the questionnaire through Facebook twitter, blogger and other social network sites. This was really helpful because, after sharing it on Facebook and twitter - which have a larger audience I began to get more responses. Once we had enough responses, Surveymonkey allows you to collectively view your answers in tabular and diagrammatic forms, this is really helpful because it allows you to have an overview of your data. Making for easier analysis and interpretation.

Part of my research was to look at conventions of the genre. For this I used many search engines, Youtube for music videos, rap genius for in depth lyrical explanations. Having this data open for me to use is very helpful. Having 4G on my phone means I could quickly access any data I wanted from any internet site which meant I could get a better understanding of the genre which helped later on when making decisions about making our video.

used a digital camera to film our interviewees during our interview with two boys from our target demographics. This helped because it meant I could quickly transfer the video onto my mac and then upload it straight to blogger.

PLANNING: When looking for the location of our music video, Google maps street view came in very handy. This allows you to freely look about any street in the UK – to an extent. This was extremely helpful because it meant we could find a location quickly, thus saving time and being more efficient. I used this by finding our location, taking a screenshot of the street view image then uploading it as evidence to my blog.

Because I was working in a group it was important to communicate with my other team members. To do this we each had each others phone numbers, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Facebook, twitter etc. Because we could access all of these from our phones it meant if one of us had an idea, we could quickly share it with each other. Snapchat came in particularly useful because it allowed us to quickly send pictures to each other regarding props, location and other ideas we had for the video. Snapchat allows you to send an image for up to 10 seconds to a contact which automatically deletes itself when it reaches the time limit.

CONSTRUCTION:For the construction of our video we used adobe premier pro, which is a high end video editing software. This allowed us to extensively and professionally edit and manage the video. We could change the keynote on a levels overlay for example, this enabled us to achieve the special lighting we used in the video.

I used Photoshop for the construction of our digipak and album advert. I am very familiar with Photoshop having been using it for some years now which meant that I could quickly navigate around it and create professional looking artefacts.

EVALUATION: I constructed my evaluation on Powerpoint and uploaded it to blogger via Slideshare. Slideshare allows you to upload a Powerpiont and view it as Powerpoint intends on the internet. From Slideshare I could directly embed the Powerpoint to my Blogspot blog. This meant I could keep all of my evaluation on one post, without it appearing to text heavy and being displayed in a cohesive way.