I have decided to analyse the video Should've Kissed You, the reason I have chosen this is because it relates to the genre in which my music video falls into which is the category of R&B and Hip Hop and I felt that it would be useful to compare between this video and my own to see what conventions they have met, challenged and developed.
The video instantly catches your attention because they have used a mid shot of the artist introducing him to the audience and this emphasises his emotions and his time to reflect upon perhaps something bad or something he missed out on . This is a technique which isn't just interesting for the audience, but it tells them what the story is going to be, so it is clear for them at the beginning.
I felt that there was a good balance of performance and narrative in the video which is common in music videos and so it looks professional on the eye and establishes the band whilst showing the story line that is appropriately related to the lyrics.
Chris Brown is in the genre of Hip Hop and R&B and so I think having the artist singing in different locations, is a good convention for this genre as it shows the various urban areas which would be associated with this genre. I felt the shots on the roof which was effective because of the silhouette and the various close ups to portray the artists emotions this draws attention to the audience and keeps their focus on the artist which I felt worked particularly well.
Different shots and angles in the video contribute to how the actors are feeling. For example, at 1.01 there is a low angle shot to show the male character power and that perhaps he is feeling like nothing can touch him and he is everything is going well for him. There are various mid shots used for example at 1:27 which allows the audience to interpret that the artist is reflecting and regretting on missing the opportunity he had. There are a number of mid shots which may suggest a equal balance between the artist and the characters involved within the video.
I felt that the transition between shots at 2:02-2:04 worked very well because the artist is spinning around and halfway through this motion the location changes. This is a interesting type of technique and I felt that it keeps the audience interested and reflects the artists emotions as spinning and not knowing what to do.
Although the performance shots kept interest towards the video I felt that there were perhaps too many and there could of been more narrative shots to tell the story behind the video more clearly and for the audience to understand it more. They do cover this by using varied shots but I feel that another location was possibly needed for the artist to perform in to keep the audiences attention.
Overall, I think it is a strong music video. The video itself is completely different to Chris Browns' and this is something essential as you don't want to imitating.
Firstly we produced target audience questionnaires in which the questions we asked were as follows; how important do you think a music video introduction is, on a scale of 1-10, Where do you watch music videos, Music video expectations, Number of music videos you watch a week, Favourite music genre, Gender and Age group.
From creating these questionnaires on Microsoft Word, and spending time on deciding upon suitable questions for the questionnaites, I have learnt about the forms and conventions which are expected to be seen in a music video from a small audience. They have also helped me to look at my work, and enabled me to see more clearly what may need to be improved.
Participants taking part in this questionnaire answered that one person rated the importance of a introduction in a music video as ten and that the most common number on the scale chosen was five and seven with two people rating that for each. This shows that the introduction to a music video may not necessarily be that important to our target audience. Our target audience is between the ages of 16-18 as our group feels that the song itself would associate with this age range as this is the younger generation and I feel it would have more of a impact on them and the society in which they live and the music genre itself which is hip hop/R&B would more likely appeal to this age group. In the second question which was where do you watch music videos the most common answer was the internet with 8, next was television with 7 and Itunes with 1. This shows that the internet is one of the easiest ways to consume music videos and to be distributed easily and faster with the internet becoming increasingly better and faster.
From the results of the music video expectations question it showed that varied shots, shots of the performer and artists singing were the most common answers . This is vital to us and helped make our decisions in deciding what to add to our music video. From these results we knew to add lots of varied sots, shots of the performer and artists singing to make it more appealing to our target audience. The next question which was the number of music videos you watch a week we found that the most common answer was for 4-7 times a day for the question how many pop videos do you watch a day.
The next question was favourite music genre and we found that the most popular genre of music is acoustic. This means that will we have to make it more appealing towards that genre in order to interest the audience. The next question was gender and we found that the results showed that 7 out of the 10 participants where male and 3 where female. In order to attract both genders we tried to make our video appeal to both male and female by including male and female artists in our music video and to give these artists a positive promotion to the audience. The final question was age group and we found that 100% of the participants that took part in the questionnaire were aged 16-18, therefore this will be our target audience as it relates more to the younger generation and will more likely appeal to this age range. In order to make our video appealing to this young audience we created a storyline which was focused on the young generation and how they are suffering from a lack of love and are living in a poverty stricken environment.
During the process of our music video we received large amounts of feedback from our media studies teacher and students within our media studies course. At first the majority of the feedback which was said was a lot of narrative to performance shots. Over the months we focused on the narrative part of the video with few performance shots. We took this into consideration and we came to the conclusion of sticking to the conventions of a R&B genre music video consisting of a balanced ratio of narrative to performance shots.
With regards to formative feedback we consumed this throughout the construction process of our portfolio. We showed our music video to peers in our media studies class and they gave us lots of constructive feedback. At the time we showed our music video it was roughly half finished and this was mostly the feedback we received that it was not finished and also that there as much more narrative than performance.
This helped with the construction of our music video because we realised we had to shoot more performance shots in order to match the ratio with our narrative shots and also helped us deciding
We uploaded our finished music video onto websites such as Youtube and Facebook with the help of our parents and friends as well. We collected all types of feedback such as constructive and critical feedback as well as positive feedback. Here are some images of the feedback we received off the website Facebook:
The reason I uploaded my music video to Facebook is because it is a great way of sharing my video with people my age 17-21 years old and as they were the demographic I was aiming my video towards i could get the most constructive and informed feedback.
From the feedback we gathered we found that most people commented about the narrative of the music video and how it relates to everyday life because of the suffering and lack of love and also poverty around the world.
There was one comment of feedback that was the most important and this was 'Loved it!! showing the social degradation and breakdown of respect in modern times, but proving that not all young people are the same. Like the 'Concrete jungle' juxtaposed to the open country and feeling of freedom, giving a feeling of hope and escape from the inner city social problems'. The reason why this particular feedback was important is because it shows that our target audience understands the narrative of the music video and the story behind the video which is what we wanted to portray to our target audience and knowing that they have understood it means that our video can be clearly interpreted.
We also uploaded our music video to the website YouTube hoping to gain views from a wide range of audience and also to gain feedback. Although we did not get as much feedback as we hoped with only two comments that weren't constructive but we did get a large number of views.
Here this image shows the feedback we received from YouTube and shows that our target audience enjoyed our music video but did not say anything critical or constructive about it. The reason why we uploaded our music video to YouTube is because we wanted to access a more wider target audience and also to gain as much constructive feedback as we could to help with the evaluation of our music video.
It was very important to get audience feedback throughout the process of making our music video and also showing it because it helped with decision making such as what camera shots to use for example close ups of artists to emphasise passion, it was also helpful as it helped determine our choice for the genre and song of our music video and also helped with deciding a age range for our target audience and to also decide which gender it would most likely appeal to.
We received various amounts of formative feedback during the construction process. We showed our music video to our peers in our lesson on numerous occasions. The feedback we received was comments such as the ratio of narrative and performance and also simple tasks such as filling the gaps in the video that were missing and also re shooting shots that did not work.
In conclusion the things I would changed it if I were to do this again would be the cast, I would choose a much more professional looking cast that suited the voices of the actual band members. The costume because I felt that it could have been more realistically done by using more scruffy and worn out clothes for the main character and a more wealthy look for the band members to portray their success. I would change the narrative of my music video to make it much more clearer that the young generation are suffering although the audience understood it well I would introduce a more sympathetic storyline to create more emotion for the audience to consume.
I felt that the aspects of my music video that went down best were the ratio of narrative to performance, types of shots used, locations, and performance shots. I felt that the ratio of narrative to performance was roughly equal at half and half and that this helped the music video associate and link to the genre of Hip Hop and R&B because it usually tends to have a equal narrative and ratio.
I felt that the types of shots worked well because of the interesting range from mid shots of the artists performing to close ups of the artists to emphasise passion and seriousness and also the use of handheld shots of the main character running which connotes a imbalance of equality in the video. The locations worked surprisingly well for example the train station shots worked well in conjunction with the narrative and lyrics of the song and also the concert worked very well as it made the video seem much more realistic. I also felt that the performance shots worked well with the use of a dolly shot around the female artist emphasise the world and how its spinning round and also I felt that the individual shots of the artists in the recording rooms worked well because of the shots used and gave their roles more professionalism and realism.
After reading through my questionnaire results and talking to many different people about my ancillary task, I found that the majority of the people only had good things to say about them. They said that there was clear signs of brand identity throughout my products, this was probably the main reason I think why they worked so well.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our brief was to create a music video, magazine advert and digipak to promote our chosen artist, in order for me to do this I have looked at various music videos to get ideas and inspiration for the song that we chose, Black Eyed Peas - Where Is The Love. The Black Eyed Peas are difficult to place into one specific music genre as they vary in their types of music. Although we found it difficult we thought that they would best fit into the categories of R&B, Hip Hop and Rap. I therefore have decided to merge these conventions associated with the genres into my music video. Throughout all the videos I have watched the various genres are represented as wealthy rich black males, often fairly run down locations, glamorous girls, money and parties. We have challenged some of these conventions as we wanted our music video to stand out and we did not want to portray the same effect of these videos with ours, we wanted to portray a sense of guilty towards the video.
Firstly I am going to talk about how my music video has used forms and conventions of real media products from the same genres of mine. In terms of location in the music video Akon - Ghetto, it is situated in a urban area which we have also used throughout our music video, the urban setting gives the video a more poverty based feel to it in terms of the run down areas. There are tracking shots of Akon walking which we have also used in our music video, this is used to promote the artist as one and gives the artist a more important role, these tracking shots are often used throughout videos of the genres of R&B, Hip Hop and Rap. Various handheld shots are used in the video which suggests to the audience a poverty-stricken scene and portrays the artist, showing that he is not formal and is perhaps a fairly rough character.
In the music video Eminem - Lose Yourself it uses forms of conventions similar to our music video, the artist performing in front of crowds which is often seen in other various music videos relating to this genre which is rap we used this convention of some extent.
Here is a example of our concert performance within our music video, similar to the concert performance in the music video Loose Yourself by Eminem.
We have the whole band performing in front of crowds which gives the video a more realistic feel to the audience. The costume that the artist is wearing is fairly poverty stricken by the use of a plain t shirt and trousers which we have used in our video with the main character to portray the lack of wealth he has. The urban setting used in this video is similar to our music video and is generic and reflects the lyrics which we have done in our music video as the lyrics talk about war and suffering.
This image represents a urban location which is a common occurrence in music videos relating to the genres of Hip Hop, R&B and Rap. We used urban locations throughout our music video to emphasise the lack of wealth the characters have within the video and to illustrate the locations to the lyrics in the song.
The ratio of performance to narrative is roughly half and half which also is similar to our music video. This is a convention of most videos we have looked at and found it would suit the genre well if we included it within our music video.
With regards to the music video 50 Cent - In Da Club it is very different to our video in terms of the conventions used and therefore we have challenged the conventions of this video to our music video. There are various black males starring in the video and glamorous girls which we had not included as we wanted our video to focus more on the artists and the lyrics poverty of the characters, whereas in the video by 50 Cent the artists are portrayed as very wealthy and muscular.
The characters in the video are wearing various amounts of jewellery which emphasises their power and wealth which we have challenged as we have used to jewellery to portray the lack of wealth and suffering the characters are going through. Here are examples of wealth portrayed in the 50 Cent music video and the artist can be seen with various amounts of jewellery whereas in the two other pictures you can see that the costumes we have used are much more plain and emphasises the lack of wealth.
In the music video Rizzle Kicks - Down With The Trumpets we have challenged the forms and conventions used. The artists in this video are dressed more casually and stereotypically dress as teenagers do, which we have not used, we have portrayed the artists as more scruffy and poor which emphasises that they are underprivileged.
In terms of narrative and performance this video consists of all performance and no narrative which gives the artists more importance whereas in our video we have used a equal proportion of both narrative and performance to focus on the artists as well as the locations and the storyline within the video.
Also the artists are always shown together performing as one throughout the video whereas in our music video the artists are shown separately which introduces the characters effectively here we have developed the convention of narrative and performance roughly having a equal amount.
In the video Don't Go by Wretch 32 we have challenged the various conventions in the video which consists of a smartly dressed black male and many different cutaways. In our music video we have used a equal amount of narrative and performance compared to this video it has no clear narrative but a series of cutaways.
Although we have challenged conventions in this video we have also met some conventions relating to our music video. We have used many close ups of the artists performing and many long takes that are kept consistent in our music video which is similar to this one which helps focus on the main artists and their importance throughout the video.
These images show the conventions we have met by using close ups of the artists performing and are used throughout the video to emphasise that we have followed this typical convention of this specific genre.
There are large amounts of fast takes in Jay Z - Empire State of Mind music video which suggests a more upbeat and modern tempo, unlike our music video which is a more slow and calm atmosphere with a series of long takes to emphasise the journey the character overcomes.
The video consists of more industrialised locations which again we have challenged as we have used a more urban like area to portray and relate the location to the lyrics.
Digipack
Here we have challenged conventions within this album cover as a city can be clearly seen, where as for our digipak we have used a urban setting to emphasise the poverty and relation to the lyrics of suffering with the use of run down areas.
Below is the image used for the front of our digipak
We have met the conventions of this genre in terms of the artist on the front of the digipak, from example digipack album covers have a reoccurring theme of the artist on the front of the cover which promotes the artist and shows the importance the artist has. We have followed this convention as you can see from the picture to the left, this is our front cover for our digipak and we have promoted the artists on the front to introduce them to the audience and to portray their importance. We felt that this would make the digipak stand out more and also promote the location of a urban area and this importance throughout the video.
The conventions of a digipak include things such as:
Record label
Bar code
Track list
A image usually the artist/s
The artists website
Release dates
A sticker saying 'Featuring..'
Copyright logo
Producer
Artists name, and song title also seen along the spine of the digipak.
We have used all these conventions as they are normally seen on a digipak, although we have developed the conventions of a digipak by using a QR code on our digipak back cover along with a bar code so that audiences are aware of newer technologies and can attract different groups of audiences that use this technology.
We have met the conventions of a digipak with the use of our artists placed on the front cover as in most digipak front covers you expect to see the artists on the front which you usually do. For example the image below shows the band Black Eyed Peas with all 4 members of the band on the front cover which is similar to ours as we wanted emphasise the bands importance and them being as 'one'.
This image is our front cover for our digipak and as you can see is fairly similar in terms of the artists all together as one on the front like the Black Eyed Peas album cover.
The font we used looks fairly urbanised and modern which is how we wanted it to look to relate to the rest of the music video as being set in a urban area. We have developed this font from the Black Eyed Peas album as the font on their album looks very futuristic which we did not feel would look good, and we thought that a more urban looking font would look better and fit better with the song and the artists.
We also have developed conventions of digipaks from our specific genre as we found on most R&B, Hip Hop and Rap album covers there are is a large amount of songs on the back of the digipak. We have developed this by only using a small number of songs so that the audience are able to focus more on the image on the back and we felt a large amount of songs would not be needed, below is the image showing the small tracklisting.
For the inside cover of our digipak we challenged conventions from our specific genres as we decide to include all the artists sat down together to emphasise that they are a band and that they are important, we did this so that our ancillary tasks would give a clear message to the audience as to who our artists are.
Although we have challenged conventions for the inside of our digipak we have also met forms and conventions, inside of digipak covers tend to be simple but effective which we have tried to carry out in order to create a relationship between the ancillary tasks and our music video to our target audience.
Magazine Advert
Some regularly occurring conventions for a magazine advert are as follows:
Logo
Website
Same image as the digipak
Name of artist/band
Record label
Release date
Same Font/Colour Scheme
Sticker that says 'includes the single..'
We have met all these conventions of a magazine advert apart from the sticker that says 'includes the single..' we did not include this as we didn't want the magazine advert to focus on the song but more of the artists and their importance of the advert. We have also challenged and developed our magazine advert as we produced it in a landscape format which is not usually seen or used with magazine adverts.
This magazine advert below is very colourful and and attracts you from the corner of your eye, and also the font and artists are clear and gives the audience a clear understanding of who these people are. Also the text is style is fairly similar to our magazine advert as we wanted these to look similar in terms of the artists on the front and the font used which we have done so in order to make it look more professional and one you would see in everyday life.
These images are similar as they both include the website, where it can be purchased from, the artists on the front, the logo, the digipak front cover and the name of the band. This shows that we have met conventions specific to this genre which is Hip Hop, Rap and R&B.
We have developed conventions of a magazine advert as on our advert we have included quotes along with a star rating which is not usually seen on magazine adverts within this genre. This made the advert look more professional and realistic and gave the audience feedback and information that they could use.
In terms of challenging conventions of a magazine advert, we have done so with the use of black and white. We have created the image with a black and white background and the artists are in colour and clear to see, this usually is seen on some magazine adverts within this genre and we did this to make the artists clear as to who they are and as being 'one' and to also draw the audiences attention onto them and create more power and importance towards them.
We met with the convention of using a similar or the same picture as to the digipak. We edited it so that the background is dull yet the artist stand out with colour.We did this so this image which is used for the magazine advert can promote the artists more than the song because we wanted the audience to know what the band looks like to make them more recognisable.
One of the major convention that sets it apart from a digipak is the release date. We did not see any release dates on the digipak which led us to think that this convention isn't normally used within the RnB/Hip-Hop music advertisement industry. However apart from The Black Eyed Peas magazine advert, it was a very common conventions used within all genres. We wanted to use the same font as the title of the front cover of the digipak because we felt that because this was a different advertisement, it should include something to make the band stand out and be recognized which in our case was the same font.
Another convention we met was of the website. We met this because we wanted to give some leading information to the audience if they wanted to know more about the album or the band as a whole. Not only that but we felt by imprinting this onto the magazine advert it would give it a more professional finish, which it did.
In terms of developing conventions we have again developed many conventions for example we have included a website which is towards the bottom of the advert which is often not used on magazine adverts and we used this to give as much information as possible to the audience and to make the advert look more professional.
In conclusion we mainly used conventions as we felt it would fit in more with the specific genre and look more similar to other music videos relating to this genre, although we have developed and challenged various conventions to make our music video stand out from similar products.
This is our music video and I felt that overall it works very well in combination with the lyrics. The reason for this is because of the narrative and the shots used, for example a number of close ups have been used with the artists to emphasise their passion and seriousness and with the actual storyline it helps send out a message to the audience about the young generation and what they are going through. I felt that some shots in the video did not work for example some handheld shots of the main character running and I felt these did not fit in to some extent but I also felt they did work in a sense of giving the video a feel of imbalance.
I also felt that the cast was not correctly chosen as the cast chosen did not fit with the actual artists in the song but overall it still worked fine.
This is the front cover of the digipak and I felt that it works well in terms of sending out the message we produced within our music video which is about the young generation and the suffering and lack of love they go through everyday. I felt that the urban environment works well and there is a clear brand identity between this product and the music video. The long passage way works effectively as it indicates that they have all experienced a journey and the close up and direct address of the artist suggest that they have reached that goal and have overcome the journey
I felt that the inside cover of our digipak worked particularly well in terms of the thinking space that the artists have which emphasises the journeys they have been through throughout their lives and their time to reflect upon this time. I liked the use of a train station in keeping with the urban environment which relates to the genre of our video.
This image worked suprisingly well for our back cover as although it is fairly simple it has many hidden messages within it. For example the artist looking out into the city connotes his time to reflect and think about the suffering he has gone through which has changed as he is now in a band. Also I felt that there was a message of him thinking about all the other people in the world and the lack of love their is and a huge amount of suffering and perhaps he wants to change that with his music.
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