media evaluation music video

Media Evaluation Music Video

Aman Dhillon

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

products?I have made a hybrid music video where I have used two different genres of music being urban uk grime and rap. This has allowed me to research both codes conventions of both genres. My main focus was to create a freestyle video like the ones I have seen on many popular YouTube channels over the years. These have been getting very popular as the hybrid of grime and rap is becoming increasingly popular. The song me and my artist have produced is about his personal life therefore it had to have a calm feeling to it so when they made the beat they had this in mind. Also the video had to show this also. This is why I kept the lighting and other aspects very low, I wanted to create a relationship between the viewer and the artist, because Kameron (artist) is speaking about his life troubles and what he does on a day to day basis I wanted it to be like he is talking directly to the audience so even if they don’t like the music they are passively taking in what he is saying.

This is why you can see the music video is simple but yet dark and you can catch what he is saying and not be distracted by a big music video.


products?• Mise En Scene - The mise en scene of my music video was very simple but yet very effective. It was shot

in a studio and this is why I called it a “studio freestyle” as a freestyle has changed a lot and now is known as playing a beat and rapping over it. The mise en scene was very effective as he is talking to the audience through the camera and saying his lyrics, the lyrics go with the music video because you can feel what he is saying. He is also wearing dark colours and the lighting is very low, this is using the usual conventions of normal uk urban grime music videos. The conventions of these music videos is that they are a dark theme as the artists are talking about the struggles they are going through so it is not like the traditional rap music videos where they are throwing money around and having a good time. This is how my mise en scene challenged the conventions of a rap music video as most of the time these rappers can be talking about something emotional but be in a strip club throwing money around. This is why I wanted to combine the dark effect of the video and still have him talking about the struggles as well as good things in his life, because I believe the audience will want to see this as they then can connect with the artists and some can relate to the same struggles.

• Sound – I did not have any diegetic sound in there as I believe this was not necessary for the music video I'm making. My music video does not look lip synced as in the grime music videos they are mainly playing a beat and rapping over it with no lip syncing unless it is a high end music video as they want to talk directly to the audience and I believe now the audience can tell when you are lip syncing and it would not be effective. My target audience being mostly in the grime genre would also look at this as weird because this would then not be a “freestyle”. The lyrics are conventional and goes with the grime and rap genre being talking about the struggles they are going through in their everyday lives.


products?• Camera – As you can see I have kept the same main camera angle throughout the music video, this is

because I wanted to keep it as a natural feeling and if I including to many different angles for this freestyle music video it would off become to complicated. As I believe and from my audience research the grime genre audience mainly want to hear the lyrics as well as see the artist and upon doing my research I have seen many popular artist do music videos in studio but make it to complicated where the audience is just looking and the video and not the lyrics so by doing a simple music video it allows the audience to focus on what he is saying as it is a close up shot where he is looking at the camera talking directly to the audience (breaking the 4th wall) and therefore it is more effective than having lots of different camera angles.

• Editing – The editing of my music video was very difficult but yet very worth it. As Kameron uses a lot of metaphors it allowed me to create something very well in my music video. When he says “flow so sick send man to the doctors” by putting a quick Stethoscope picture while he says this is creates a sort of humour to the music video and also if the audience didn’t catch the wordplay they will after they see the picture, and as grime and rap is all about the person with the better wordplay I believe this would be very effective and have not seen other music videos from this genre do this so will be something new for the audience.


products?• My digipack and magazine cover as you can see challenge the conventions of the real media

products as mostly in the urban Uk grime genre don’t release very detailed digipacks and this is why I included a detailed digipack because I wanted to get it out of the genre that if you make a unordinary digipack it is ok and to create a digipack on the artist instead of the album, as it is Kamerons first album we needed to create an effective digipack that the audience will see and automatically be attracted to. This is why on the front cover it contains his initials a pen notepad and a roll up of weed. As weed is like a convention of the urban Uk grime and rap scene I felt it would be effective to put it on the front cover as it is about the artist. On the other pictures it contains a mic and lyrics from the songs in the album, this gives the audience a feel of how he made the album and how he writes his own lyrics. Also the back cover contains a picture of the artist that has been pixelated and also contains his initials again. I wanted to have a different digipack then other artist as I believe to many are going with album covers that have nothing to do with the artist and I believe these artists just want to make money and have no feel for the actual music so therefore I challenged this and made the album cover mainly focused on the artist as it is the first album by him therefore I want the audience to feel like they have a connection with the artist.


products?• My magazine cover as you can see is from the famous magazine XXL, this magazine mostly includes

upcoming rappers and gives them a detailed article about a new upcoming album, so by having XXL recommendation on the advert it tells people that this artist is becoming increasingly popular therefore the audience will check him out or listen to a few songs from the album to decide if they like it and want to buy the album. I Including the photo from a event that me and my artist went to where he was performing in front of a crowd and used 3 photos of when he was in this event with the mic in his hand. I wanted to give the audience the feel of the sort of energy that my artist creates and by seeing him on the mic where the audience can tell by the picture the energy is a lot was very effective. Also I included the picture of the digipack on the magazine advert as I believe it was more effective for my audience to see the album so they could easily identify the album when they see it in stores.

• This challenged the conventions of real media products because many uk artists don’t seek out for American magazine interviews and adverts but I believe this is the most effective as if you get a big audience from America then people will start to like in UK also because the artist is from the same country. So by having an American advert it makes it effective for both the grime audience and the rap audience as I needed to appeal to both types of audiences. I got this idea from my research by looking at a range of adverts and the ones that caught your eye the most was the ones from XXL that contained a big picture of the artist.

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

• I believe I have a strong connection between the digipack, magazine advert and my music video. As I keep a constant synergy between all 3 to allow the audience to get a real feel of the music and the artist as both go in hand, if you don’t like the artist you wont want to listen to his music and if you don’t like the music then you wont like the artist. Therefore by doing a lot of research of the popular artist in the grime and rap genre being Jay z and Skepta it showed me that I need to keep a synergy throughout and this is why my digipack, music video and advert have a dark theme throughout because my overall music video is about the artist life and when listening to his album this would be the first song you would hear so you can understand the struggles of the artist and what he has gone through.

• I didn't want to make it seem depressive which is why my magazine advert and digipack is not a very dark colour only simple colours as the mood I believe is created by colours and colours connote what the music is about so if I put bright colours the audience will expect a happy song so if I put dark colours in my 3 ancillary texts it would connote to the audience that the song is about something serious.

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

• I believe my ancillary texts are very effective and combine with each other but I would improve my music video to go together with my digipack and magazine advert as the audience mostly see the digipack and magazine advert before the music video so if I was to add in anything to my music video I would maybe add a grey effect or a pixelated effect to go with my digipack and add in more artists with Kameron to create a big synergy that it is not just him but a lot of people in a team trying to tell you about the struggles of their personal life's.

• The combination through all 3 is as you can see below they all go with each other well and you wouldn’t expect one of them to be for a different type of media as they all contain a picture of the artist so if the audience can not relate between the 3 the picture will tell them that they are linked which is very effective for people who have physically not seen the artist so they can get a image of him.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• I done audience feedback to allow me to know what to do better next time for making a music video and overall to get the audience response to see if they enjoyed watching my music video and what they think went well. By doing this it allows us to know what to carry on doing for next time and what not to do in the future.

Here you can see that out of the people that watched my music video the majority as suspected was male, this is because I think grime music and rap is more associated with the male gender but still did have 1 females response.

Here as you can see my main audience is in the age range of 16-18, as you have to be 18 to view the video anyway as I believe it contains swearing in this is why there is 0% for under 16. There is 40% between 19-21 which is good as it means the older generation are still listening to grime and rap but only 10% over 21, so I believe they mainly stop listening to these genres of music at 21 because it seems “childish”


Here as you can see 80% thought the video was good and 20% thought it was outstanding, this tells me I have done a good music video and my audience think it is good. Not many people said it was bad but this may be because they like the overall genre and style of music.

Here you can see I have a good job on keeping the right codes and conventions for my music video genre as my audience feedback shows me that 90% knew it was grime and 10% thought rap. This is good as I combined both to create a hybrid but mostly the genre would be grime due to the beat being 140 bpm being grimes platform.


As you can see the overall problem with my video would be that it needs to be longer which I agree with as it is only 2 minutes but as its more of freestyle video it would be boring if it was longer than 2 minutes but for future projects I will consider making the videos longer

Here you can see the majority of audience feedback said they liked how it was “filmed in the studio because it was different from other artists” this is good because it means I have the originality which will make more people likely to view it and take an interest in it. Also they also said they liked the camera and how by having him rap in front of the camera it “breaks the 4th wall” which is good because I am engaging with the audience then and they feel like they are being directly spoken to. Also they liked the dark light editing as it creates a grime atmosphere as most of the grime shows everyone is dressed in black or the lighting is black so kept with the right conventions.


Here I asked the question what would they add to the music video, I done this because I wanted to find out what to add in to my music video next time I do one. The main answer was to make it longer and add more people as this might of made more interesting if the audience saw more people in the video.

Here I wanted to ask if my audience liked my digipack, to get their idea on my digipack. This told me that 80% thought by digipack was good that tells me the audience like my product.


Here I wanted to ask the same question for my magazine advert and got the same response 80% liked the magazine advert so this tells me I have made a good magazine advert

Here I wanted to find peoples opinion on the artist being Kameron, I done this to find out what the audience think of the artist by seeing 3 different ancillary texts being the digipack, magazine advert and music video. The audience gave all positive opinions which is very good as it means my artist is doing good.

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

stages?I used a lot of media technologies to aid me in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stage because I needed to use a lot of resources to make my music video the best I could make it. These range of different platforms for research allowed me to explore my genre of rap and grime in further detail and getting the codes and conventions correct.

Research

YouTube aided me a lot in the research stage due to the fact that many freestyle videos are put on YouTube on a daily basis from people that haven't been signed, so this gave me an idea of what to do because I don’t have a big budget to create a big music video but by using my resources and surrounding YouTube helped me to create a music video and helped me get ideas from other artists video. For example I watched Skeptas – nasty video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKutTL_KLig&safe=active) and this was him sitting on a chair rapping over a beat and was very effective and a lot of people liked the video as it felt “dark” like his lyrics.

I used google mainly for the research stage as I wanted to get a different range of ideas from the internet and combine them to create my own hybrid music video that combines elements from rap and grime together. Google helped me explore both the backgrounds to rap and grime and gave me the history of how it has evolved which helped me a lot in the research stage because it helped me choose my idea and keep the codes and conventions of the grime genre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKutTL_KLig&safe=active

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKutTL_KLig&safe=active


stages?I used a lot of media technologies to aid me in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stage because I needed to use a lot of resources to make my music video the best I could make it. These range of different platforms for research allowed me to explore my genre of rap and grime in further detail and getting the codes and conventions correct.

Research

I also used Twitter and Facebook in my research stage as I wanted to ask social media what they wanted in the artist music video directly and uploaded my survey on there on many grime forums so I get surveys from my target audience being grime and rap audience as this would give me the best results and ideas on what to do.

Blogger helped me to track my previous work and to upload my research work so I could go through it after all the research has been done and start to plan. I also created surveys on blogger and uploaded these to grime forums to get the best responses.


stages?I used a lot of media technologies to aid me in the research, planning. Construction and evaluation stage because I needed to use a lot of resources to make my music video the best I could make it. These range of different platforms for research allowed me to explore my genre of rap and grime in further detail and getting the codes and conventions correct.

Planning

Blogger helped me to upload my work on it so I could change ideas of the planning and combine my research with the planning to get a overall idea of what I want my music video to look like. Also allowed me to upload storyboard, shooting schedule, type of shots and general listing to aid me in the process of making a music video.

Adobe premiere helped me a lot in my planning stage as after I created my storyboard this allowed me to put the images in premiere and see how it will look when all pieced together. This helped me as after I done my first storyboard I put it together in premiere and realised I didn’t like the idea and decided to change it.



Construction

Adobe premiere helped me a lot in the construction stage as this was what I edited my end video on and allowed me to add in effects and piece together my music video so it looks professional. I have used this same program in AS so am familiar with the program and the certain effects that you can use on there. But to do the effects I did not know how to do I had to look at various tutorials online to show me what effects were the most effective to use. I also used this to do the most important thing to my music video as I needed to create a dark atmosphere and theme so by using colour correction it allowed me to make my overall music video have a darker theme.

Here as you can see I used a very good handheld video recorder which filmed In 720HD which was good as I wanted a HD video that looked professional and have a high quality. This camera was very good and was easy to use as I used the same camera last year in AS therefore I found it easily accessible and easy to use.



Construction

I used Photoshop to create my digipack and magazine advert and found it was very easy to use as I followed certain tutorials online that helped me create a professional magazine advert and digipack, at first I found this program was hard to use but after I watched the tutorials it was easy to follow and create the two ancillary texts being my digipack and magazine advert.

Here I used a big light which my first shot was outside but decided to bring this into the studio and turn most of the lights of in the studio and keep this bright light on as I wanted to keep a dark atmosphere but still have some sort of light which was bright so I could also colour correct it depending on how dark or light I wanted the music video.



Evaluation

For my evaluation stage I decided to use google forms to create a survey for the audience feedback, by creating a survey on here it creates graphs and charts for the responses of my survey. I also used this last year for AS because it was very effective and gave me a range of ways to compare audience feedback

I also used PowerPoint for my evaluation stage because I wanted to create a smooth PowerPoint that goes through the different stages of my planning, construction, research and evaluation. I used screenshots from various stages in my production and planning stage from adobe and my blog to allow whoever is seeing my evaluation to see what I done by pictures and text.

media evaluation music video

Art & Photos

hybrid music video

music video im

big music video

freestyle video

high end music video

different genres of

traditional rap music

mise en scene