Evaluation
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My music video is for quite a recent song ‘Written in the Stars’ by Tinie Tempah. He is a fairly new artist making his debut in March 2010 with his huge dance/rap tune ‘Pass Out’. However he has become very popular amongst people of many ages with his ‘futuristic’ music in which he has described it many times in interviews. ‘Written in the Stars’ was his third single and was released in September 2010 reaching number 1 in the UK charts. I chose this track because it was my favourite song at the time and I knew all the lyrics from the top of my head. Tinie is a UK hip hop artist and has often stated he has been influenced by other UK artists such as Dizzee Rascal, however he has also admitted to being influenced by US rappers such as Jay-Z, P.Diddy and Kanye West. Like many other UK artists he has come from the grime scene, however many critics have said that he has compromised his sound in order to gain a more mainstream audience. Over the past couple of years this type of music has proven to be very popular in the charts and amongst teenagers and young adults.
The ‘Written in the Stars’ video was filmed in Summer 2010 in New York in a variety of different locations including on tops of buildings, in parks and in apartment blocks. After watching other music videos from this genre, I've noticed that in parts it closely resembles Jay Z's video for 'Hard Knock Life'. Both the video and song tell a story about Tinie’s struggles of becoming famous and some of the desperate measures he’s had to take in order to become who he is today and the sacrifices he’s had to make. The video features young children wearing headphones and writing lyrics in an apartment block and in a park, this leads the audience to believe that the young children are playing Tinie and his friends, from when he was younger.
‘Written in the Stars’ was not only my chosen music video but also my inspiration as I decided to put my own spin on the original video.
Instead of filming in New York, which would have been almost impossible I decided to film in many urban locations around Middlesbrough town centre, including on top of the mima art gallery, with buildings in the background and sitting on some steps near some offices which makes the area look even more urban. I also filmed parts of it in my back garden as in the original parts of it were filmed in the corridor to someone’s apartment. Other parts of it were filmed in the middle of some fields at Bishop Cuthbert, as that is quite an urban area because it contains a couple of high rise buildings in the background. I got the idea for this concept from Rihanna's 'Only Girl (in the world)' video as she's stood in the middle of fields and also this music video is a similar type of genre to mine.
My music video uses camera and editing techniques that an audience would typically want to see in a music video. These include meat shots , long and medium shots , close ups , cross cuts, pans and motion paths. My music video is a mixture between illustration and amplification as in some scenes I express the meaning of the lyrics for example, ‘the jacket and hat’ lyric and the ‘racket and bat’ lyric. I really get into doing the actions and putting meaning into my performance to make it look like a real music video. However the majority of the scenes from my video are just linked to the music by the beat and keeping in time. This relates to Andrew Goodwin's music theory as the visual effects change with the beats of the music. When the pace of the song changes so does the video because my video is very fast paced with a lot of cross cuts and changes, so it fits in with the genre.
As my song is quite recent I’ve been able to challenge the conventions and done a lot of research into this type of music, as it’s a popular genre at the moment in the UK.
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary texts?
I think the combination of my main product and ancillary texts link well together because the song is called ‘Written in the Stars’ and the colours of my ancilliary texts are dark so that fits in with the theme of the song and the video. The font is in a similar style to ‘Tinie Tempah’s’ original font on his CD covers and advertisements. My ancillary texts are all part of a package with the same coloured background which is grey and the spines which are black, to try and keep it consistent throughout. This fits in with the theme of the song. Also I keep the colour scheme of the font similar which is white, blue, yellow and green. This is so the advert and digi-pak is noticeable and eye-catching amongst its target audience. They also link closely to my video as they all contain images of myself from my video. I’ve also included some reviews from newspapers and ratings from critics on my advert as well as the date of the album release and were it is going to be available from. When creating my ancillary texts I looked closely at real Tinie Tempah CD covers and adverts on Google images in order to get an idea of what to include on mine. To include images of myself on my ancillary texts I screen grabbed them from my video using the ‘apple, control, shift and four’ keys, inserted them into Photoshop and cut around them using the lasso tool. After that I used the smudge or the eraser tool in order to neaten the edges to make the image look realistic.
3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In order to gather audience feedback, I posted my video on facebook for all of my friends to view. The feedback I received was mainly positive however I did have some constructive criticism of things to improve upon if I were to change it or do it again. Some of them suggested to include more camera angles and editing techniques such as faster cross. I agree with my criticism and I can see were they are coming from and if I did decide to do my video again then I would probably include a few more editing techniques and a wider variety of camera shots. I believe that throughout this project my editing techniques have developed and improved significantly.
4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?
I used many media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages by using a variety of different programmes and effects for each stage. In order to edit my music video to a high standard I used ‘Final Cut Express HD’. This was so I could add different cuts, camera angles and other editing techniques to my video in order for it to fit in with that particular genre which is urban. My video is built up of different layers on ‘Final Cut’ and in order to add different cuts I added a new layer so it could flow properly and efficiently. Also to make sure the track was in sync properly and my lip sync was in time with the track. Urban videos tend to feature faster cuts and flow at a faster pace.
In the research stage I used modern media technologies such as you tube in order to research other videos with a similar genre to mine. This was to give me an idea of the genre conventions of urban music videos and what to include in my video and the story behind it.
In order to manage and keep all of my work up to date I put it all on a blog. By having a blog it is easier and more efficient for me to find my work instead of having to rummage through a bag or a folder to find loose pieces of paper. Also a blog manages to keep things in date order and makes it easier to embed videos from you tube and Prezi’s to show examples and proof of my research and planning stages. In order to complete my ancillary texts to a high standard I used Photoshop and many of its tools and editing techniques. I previously used Photoshop during the planning stages when completing my ‘Warhol-self’ and ‘Opie-self’, however previous to this I had never used Photoshop before. I found it hard to use at first however after a while I got used to it and all of the different tools and effects. For my advertisement and digi-pak I screen grabbed some images of myself from my video and inserted them into Photoshop. The tools I tended to use the most on Photoshop were the shape tool and the lasso tool in order to cut my images out. I also used the smudge tool quite frequently to make sure the images I cut out looked neat and as realistic as possible. As I said earlier I tried to keep the font as close to the original ‘Tinie Tempah’ font as possible using the ‘Whiskey Town’ style from dafont.com. After completing this task I now feel more familiar and confident with the software's I have used which include 'Final Cut Express HD' and 'Photoshop Elements'.
