Evaluation 7

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluate stages? (Music Video)

The main media technologies that i used was online on www.youtube.com, because i wanted to analyse as many grime videos as i could to be able to make my video look like it belonged in the grime genre. I decided to focus on particular artists videos (Devlin, Drake, Tinie Tempah & Giggs) I also looked at some low budget music videos (The Unit and Sloozie) the low budget videos were more realistic for us to look at because we were never going to have the things that a Drake video would have for obvious money reasons. So we looked at Sloozie videos because alot of her footage is on the street. So this is how we came up with out idea of going to London to film. We thought that London is a good place to show that 'MC Cabe' has come through and underground lifestyle and through his music he has become wealthy.

This is a quick preview of when we used the green screen, we done this so that we could get a rough understanding of how lip syncing would work and how we could improve it when it came to the real music video, i think that this was very effective and really helped when it came to filming.

Evaluation 6

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluate stages? (Ancillary Task)

Throughout the planning, evaluating and research of my ancillary task i was constantly referring to two certain digi-packs/cd covers, these of music artists 'Drake' and 'Tinie Tempah' these two artists create very similar music but also very different at the same time, Drake is american and creates rap music with a feel of hip-hop/R&B to it whilst Tinie Tempah also does rap but with a Dance or a techno feel to it, both in his music and his cd cover, his cd cover uses alot of vectors which i have decided to do on my digi-pack, but my digipack is also similar to Drakes which is just an imagine of him with 'Drake, Thank Me later' written on it, mine has 'MC Cabe' and 'Millions Dont Come Easy' written on it so clearly my digipack is similar to both of these.

Another thing that i dont in regards ti research for my ancillary task was watch alot of music videos to get more of an understanding of the conventions of the grime genre, this then helped me with regards to taking photos for the digipack, what types of font to use, what vectors would suit the genre and what types of colours i should use. i dont this by looking online on websites such as www.youtube.com i then posted alot of different videos onto my blog and analysed them by stating what i thought was good or bad about the videos and how i could use some of the ideas that i saw in my video and then relate these ideas back to my digipack.

The internet was a massive help during my research for my ancillary task as i was going onto websites such as www.play.com and typing in artists names and looking at their CD cover which was giving me some ideas for my own. i also looked at other students blogs from other schools and looked at their ideas for their ancillary tasks and compared mine to theirs, this made me change a few things because i wanted to make mine look better than the ones i had seen.

Evaluation 5

What have you learned from you audience feedback? (Music Video)

From audience feedback I have learned that our music video suited the grime genre exactly how we wanted it too, as a group we have been told that we 'matched conventions excellently' from feedback from showing people around our school whilst showing them the typical conventions of the grime genre.

We also asked what type of artist that people thought MC Cabe was, (we planned him as a young man who has come through a tough lifestyle to becoming a millionaire. 'Millions dont come easy' and although we did not get this response as clearly as we would have liked our audience certainly felt that he was an artist that came from the underground scene and made his career through a tough road which is similar to what we had in mind.

I also learned that in future we need to have more girls in our music video, because we were asked the question 'why isnt there a girl in it' alot and we never had an answer to this, so if i was to make a music video again i would definitely put some girls in it, particularly from a grime video because since doing this project whenever i watch a grime video i tend to see girls in them.

Evaluation 4

What have you learned from you audience feedback? (Ancillary task)

With my ancillary task i took some photos of it on my mobile phone and uploaded them to 'facebook' asking my friends to comment on them and help me by giving me ideas of way to change it to make it better and what they thought was good about it. I got relatively good feedback, one person said that my cutout was very good on the front cover of my digipack. This is something that i was very happy with as i spent alot of time using the pen tool on photoshop trying to make sure that the cut out of my image was at a very high level. Others said that they feel that i should not have had an image of 'MC Cabe' on the front, this is some criticism that i took on board but in the end decided to disagree and keep the image because looking at conventions and real media products more often than not there is an image of the artist on the front of digipacks.

I have also got comments from some friends in school who i haved showed up close and when i have printed my ancillary task out and they have been really suprised at my work, they all thought that it was very good but at the same time gave me areas to change and improve.

for instance one person said that on my front cover of my digipack maybe i could have added more vectors, this is something that i considered taking on board but in the end i liked my front cover as one of my favourite panels on the digipack so kept it how it is.

I asked my friends what they thought was my best panel on the digipack to see if they agreed with me (track list panel) and the majority agreed, when i asked them if the digipack looked like a grime genre, most people said yes but mainly because of the images that i took. Alot of people said that the background may not match a grime genre so this is something that i could consider changing and something that i learnt from my audience feedback.

Evaluation 3

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

The combination of my main product and my ancillary task is very important, I tried to wear the same clothes for the pictures that would be taken for the ancillary task and for what I would be wearing in the music video. This is so that my artist would then have a particular style and people would recognise that this is his 'style' or his 'swagger'. This is a continuous theme throughout alot of Grime artists, we tend to see alot of sunglasses, leather jackets and jeans. Howver 'MC Cabe' is different to this. As a group we decided that he would wear alot of 'Ralph Lauren' (Polo top and wooly hat) was regularly seen and another brand named Duffer. (Jumper, body warmer and tracksuit bottoms often seen also)

This was the same for the ancilarry task, for our front cover on the digi-pack 'MC Cabe' is wearing the Duffer jumper that was seen in many shots of the music video and in another image he has the same jumper on aswell as the 'Ralph Lauren' wooly hat that i mentioned before because we wanted to keep a consistent theme going throughout the whole production.

We feel that this worked very well because we had alot of comments from other groups and from out audience about 'MC Cabe' wearing the same clothes and they mentioned him to have 'Swagger' which ultimately was what we were after when it came to his costume we wanted people to be talking about his clothes and we succeded in doing this so we feel that this was a very succesful area of our work.

We also tried to keep the location types similar, this is why the photos that we chose for the digipack and posters that we created were taken in the music studio where we filmed alot of our music video. This was deifinitely succesful and something that we thought about carefully because if we had completely different locations in the digipack and the music video this could cause confusion for the audience.

Evaluation 2

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Ancillary task)

Our media product does not specifically challenge or develop the forms and conventions of real media products, it does a bit of both, for instance, the digipack that we put together has a hint of the 'Tinie Tempah' style of grime/hip hop where we used different types of vectors for different effects on the image, whereas other parts of the digipack used a more 'Devlin' or 'Drake' style of the genre which would be considered as more undergroud than others.

The image below is a 'mind map' of what we done in class about rules of our media product.

The image shown below is the image that I was talking about when I mentioned us using vectors to give our digipack a 'Tinie Tempah'style to it.

The image shown below is the image I was talking about when I said our digipack had a 'Drake' feel to it.

Evaluation 1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (Music Video)

Concerning the music video, we stuck to conventions in some shots but in others challenged them, for instance alot of our music video is shot in London, with things like; 'Big Ben, The London Eye, and London Bridge' in the background of alot of are shots, this is because we were showing that out artist was an underground artist from London, which was sticking to conventions because alot of underground artists are from London (Devlin, Example). However we decided to use Big Ben and The London Eye to show that our artist is wealthy and has come through the tough underground scene and is now of a higher class, which played on the name of the album that we decided would be 'Millions Dont Come Easy' showing that 'MC Cabe' has earned millions but it has been a difficult road.

So whilst the shots that i have spoke about have in a way, challenged the conventions of real media products we decided to add some shots to our music video that were similar to real media products, this is when we began to look at some music videos from artist 'Devlin' we looked at videos such as 'London City' and 'Brainwashed'. Two very simple videos which show Devlin shooting Low budget music videos as he is new to the music scene, so we thought that we would use something like this which shows in a shot where 'MC Cabe' is stood lip syncing on a white wall with graffiti all over it, so we do not feel that our music video neither breaks nor stays with conventions we feel that it is a mixture of both.

I have uploaded the Music Video of 'Devin - london City' our song is very similar to this, it has alot of shots around London like ours and is relatively slow compared to alot of Devlins other songs. Seeing this video did give us some inspiration to film alot of shots in London.

This is the video 'Devlin - 'London City'