Digipack

Advert poster

This is the advert for Drakes album 'Thank me later' Drake' album, advert and concert poster is very odd because it is all the same picture (picture shown below) it is always the same font and rarely has alot of information. It clearly just says 'Drake' and 'Thank Me Later' the denotation of this image is a close up of Drake, a music artist that is releasing a new album, whereas the conotation could be of am individual independent man who is solely focused on his music.

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'

Brief

The task that we have been set for this is year is to make a Music Video, my group consists of Me, Nathan Powell, Nathan Oliver And Tyler Chambers. We have had to think of what genre of music we are going to use and then think about the conventions that we will have to out into our video to make it successful.

Analysis Of Pop Video 1 (The Wanted - All Time Low)

Sound:

• Music is in time with dancing
• Lip Syncing

Cinematography:

• Rapid cutting among members of the band is continuous
• Variety of close ups of each member. (shows they are a band)
• Also long shots of whole group dancing to make clear they are a group

Mise-en-scene:

• Stereotypical boy band dancing, costume & lyrics

Editing:

• Rapid cuts
• Montage editing

Performance:

• Eye contact with audience
• Dancing
• Jumping around stage
• Lip syncing

Analysis Of Pop Video 2 (Proffessor Green ft Lily Allen - Just Be Good To Green)

Sound:

• Lip syncing
• Typical rap beat

Cinematography:

• Close ups of professor green; shows he is the main main of the video
• Lily Allen and Professor Green appear in same shot to show they are a duet

Mise-en-scene:

• Bright colours - relates to lyrics and high tempo music

Editing:

• Montage editing

Performance:

• Lip syncing
• Long distance cuts when the artists are singing on their own
• Eye contact with audience
• Lily Allen pushes over the other women is the concept of the story - she is getting the better of the other women.

Analysis Of Rock Videos (Kings Of Leon - Sex On Fire)

Camera:

• Cuts with beat
• Typical 'crazy' rock actions
• Panning across different members of the group to show they are a band not a solo artist.

Editing:

• Montage editing
• Quick cuts between group members to make it clear that they are a group

Sound:

• Beat cuts with camera movement
• Typical 'hardcore' beat and voice
• Typical instruments

Mise-en-scene:

• Dark colours
• Not alot of light
• Typical rock costume (vests, black clothes)

Performance:

• Lip syncing
• Playing instruments
• Eye contact
• Reaching out

Video Analysis 2 (Young Money - Bedrock)

Camera:

• Panning around the house to show how the members if the group live
• Shows the audience the groups lifestyle
• Actions show how they enjoy themselves

Editing:

• Montage editing

Sound:

• High paced music - goes with crazy dancing and crazy lifestyle
• Several artists sing - shows they are a group

Mise-en-scene:

• Bright colours represents that the group are enjoying themselves and enjoying their successful lifestyle.
• costumes are mainly bright colours - again goes with happy successful lifestyle.

Performance:

• Dancing
• Eye contact
• Lip syncing
• Reaching
• Pointing

Video Analysis 3 (Eminem - Beautiful)

The name of the song that I have chosen to analyse is beautiful by Eminem. This song is part of Eminems recent ‘Relapse’ album which was released in, May 2009 and was considered as one of the best songs on the album. The video was shot in Detroit and was directed by Anthony Mandler, it first premiered on Yahoo Music in, July 2009.

The song is about Eminem’s feelings of people being put down, this is shown in the lyrics when Eminem says; “And don’t let em say you aint beautiful” this song is also about Eminem making a crucial decision regarding his next album, this is again shown in the lyrics when he says “I don’t know how or why I when I ended up in this position im in, I started to feel dissin again so I decided to pick up this pen up, and try to make an attempt to vent, but I just cant admit or come to grips with the fact that I may be done with rap I need a new outlet.” You can see that Eminem no longer has the inspiration that he once had in the lyrics of this song, and that he is not sure about continuing his music career. This song is also about Eminem being on his own lately and becoming more independent as a person, we see this in the opening lyrics when he says “lately I been hard to reach, I been too long on my own, everybody ha s their private world, when they can be alone” this shows that at times Eminem likes to be on his own.

This video is Eminem representing him being independent because he is on his own in a brokenndown warehouse, which is very derelict and somewhere that people are not allowed to be, the video shows in many ways him being on his own through eye contact and lip syncing, walking on his own and rapping is a very independent look that goes with the independent lyrics.

The first 45 seconds of the video is just setting the scene, we see Eminem walk past a lady and she totally ignores him, giving the first signs that Eminem is individual and no one takes note of him any more, then we get into the music and we understand why the video is doing this. The lyrics “lately ive been hard to reach” give the audience the impression that if the lady that he walked past wanted to talk to him then she would not have been able to because he is ‘hard to reach’. In the second 45 seconds of the video we see Eminem come into his element, he raps for the whole 45 seconds about taking his responsibilities and we see that he has suffered from some of them because of the lyrics we here and the actions that we see, the lyric that shows he suffers are; “I took my bruises, took my lumps. Fell down and then got right back up”. This shows that he has suffered but is prepared to get back up and deal with life as it comes, during these lyrics we see him

Analysis Of Videos 4 (Lil Wayne ft Jay Z - Mr Carter)

The artist of this song is Lil Wayne; however Jay Z features in the song. The song title is Mr Carter, and the song is from the album ‘Tha Carter III’.

The song is predominantly about Lil Wayne reportedly going missing for a while, and now he has come back on the scene and is now addressing his fans again, we see this in the lyrics because one of the lyrics are “hey Mr Carter, tell me where have you been?”

This song is also about Lil Wayne’s fans asking where he has been because he had been off the scene so his fans were worrying when he was going to release a new song. But Lil Wayne also used this song to reassure his fans of his devotion to music and that he will never completely leave music, this is again shown in the lyrics “two words ya never hear, Wayne quit”

The main content of the video is Lil Wayne returning to his home town and catching up with his friends, we see him in several different scenarios with different people, a few of these are with boys and another is with a girl, this shows that he is catching up with his friends that he hasn’t seen in a while and possibly a girlfriend that he is eager to get back together with after his absence.

The first 45 second of this video shows Lil Wayne in a few different locations, showing that he is just trying to cover as many places as he can to catch up with as many people as he can, because of how long he has been away, the lyrics are mainly just the main chorus “Hey Mr Carter, tell me where have you been?” so overall the first 45 seconds are just breaking the viewers into the song.

The second 45 seconds shows Lil Wayne with different people and even more different locations, he is cuddling and shaking hands with people, showing that he has missed his friends while he has been away and has lots to share with them, the lyrics give us more of an idea as to where Lil Wayne has been, because the lyrics say; “around the world and now I’m back again”, so this could give the impression that he has gone on a long trip to get his mind off of music for a while.

The third 45 seconds focuses on Lil Wayne addressing his friends, and letting his friends now that he is back in town, the video shows Lil Wayne in a car with a man and they are enjoying themselves, laughing and joking, so we assume that they have been friends for a long time and they were really close before Lil Wayne went away. He again uses the lyrics “around the world and now I’m back again” – he also uses the lyrics “I am here”. This just reassures everyone that Lil Wayne is back.

The fourth 45 seconds is the last time we see Lil Wayne in the video on his own because Jay Z begins his part of the song, in the video we just see Lil Wayne occasionally among his friends and the attention turns to Jay Z.

The type of video is mainly a narrative type of video, however it could also be deemed as a mixture of abstract and performance, this is because there is no main storyline. There is a bit of performance but not enough to determine the video as a performance video. And there is no specific structure because of the montage editing used.

Conventions Of A Music Video

In the music industry there are many different conventions of music videos. They are:

• Eye contact with audience
• Lip syncing
• 3-4 minutes long
• Camera shots make it clear whether the artist is a solo artist or a group
• Quick shots
• 3/4 main locations
• Performance relates to lyrics
• Cuts match beat
• Montage editing
• Actions match beat
• Costume changes
• Different scenarios
• Performance - Dancing, singing, playing instruments
• Concept - Not looking for story line

Theories 1 (Bordwell and Thompson Theory)

Bordwell & Thomson are 2 theorists that created a theory on four categories of film editing; Graphic Editing, Rhythmic Editing, Spatial Editing and Temporal Editing.

Graphic Editin

g:

• Graphic Match - Shots link together by graphic similarities
• Graphic Dis-continuity - Playing around with colour, footage, mise en scene.
• Graphic Continuity - P.O.I remains constant throughout everything.

Rhythmic Editing:

• Different shots and cuts have different effects on audience.
• All shots are the same length
• Shots can become shorter and shorter
• Shots with good length are steadier
• Longer or quick rapid shots

Spatial Editing:

• Continuity editing and establishing shot
• "Kuleshov Effect" There is no establishing shot but audience still know where it is set
• Cross cutting or parallel editing in different locations.

Temporal Editing:

• Order of things can be changed by reverse shots
• The story/plot can change to interrupt normal order of time
• The events during the story can be altered through an eclipse
• Continuity editing - an event happening only tends to happen once.

These 3 images are an example of Graphic editing from the film Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock directed this film and was a fan of Graphic Editing and in this particular part of the film he chose to focus on a circle theme; using the shower head, plug hole and the victims eye

Theories 2 (Vernallis Theory)

The pictorial qualities within a video.

• Patterns, light and dark, color similarities and differences
• Can be used to create smooth continuity or abrupt contrast

• Graphic match - shots link together by graphic similarities
• Graphic continuity - point of interest remaining contrast throughout cuts, maintaining a color theme, same lighting levels.

Rhythmic

• Editing the footage and thinking about the duration of each shot - how long each shot runs for before cutting to the next
• rhythmic editing will show that each shot runs on length according to the beat and tempo of the music
• Different shots will give different effects ( the faster the beat, the shorter the shots).

Spacial - basically maintaining continuity through thinking about the space where the events of the music video takes place.

• Continuity (establishing shot)
• The "Kullshov effect" (no establishing shot)
• Crosscutting ( parallel editing)

Temporal
Still uses continuity
Based on the time frame that the action is taking place in - and how the video footage maniplates time.

• Order (order of the events)
• Duration (how long for)
• Frequency (how often)

Carol Vernallis

MTV Stlye Editing:

• Frequent
• Disjuncture
• Different to film editing

Pop video editing has many functions, these change rapidly. Not one element must gain the upper hand and it must keep up in the present moment.

These changing rapidly, not one element must hain upper hand and it must keep us in the present moment

Shots and edits:

• pop video editing
• Hollywood editing
• Continuity rules
• Prevents time and space overtaking
• preserves time and space

Theories 3 (Goodwin Theory - Jason Derulo - In My Head)

Jason Derulo – In My Head;

In this video we see a lot of dancing from Jason Derulo and his moves always catch the beat, a way of noticing this is that when he is dancing with the change of beat we see him in a shadow form on a white background where we see his main dancing moves.

This always pops up when the beat changes and the lyrics are usually changed to “In my head” We see the meaning of the lyrics in Derulo’ face and body actions, when he sings; “in my head, I see you all over me”. We see him touching a woman’s face and when he s singing the more “emotional” lyrics we see a type of pain in his face.
Derulo is dressed and acts in the video how we would expect, he is dressed in his normal costume of a jacket, and jeans. We see a lot of dancing in the video which is typical Derulo. His image in this video is projected as a bit of a “playa”. He is trying to get a girl and is doing so in a very confident way.

The video cuts on the beat to make emphasis of Derulo’ dancing, we only see a few different types of shots; these are mainly long shots of the whole body or close ups to emphasise facial expressions. The images that we see in the video help to understand the lyrics more, for instance although “in my head, I see you all over me” could quite easily relate to a girl we can not be 100% sure of this until we see the video.

Although it seems that Derulo is not playing a fictional character it may seem that he is, however judging from other songs you could think that this is actually him; with songs such as ‘Ridin’ solo’, ‘Whatcha Say’ and ‘Queen of Hearts’. These are all pretty ‘emotional’ type songs about girls so it seems that this song is very much about him and not a fictional character.
This video is put together well and this shows because the music always cuts on the beat and never off which shows the sign of a bad music video, however this video never has silence in it and the beats are always cut spot on so this is a good video.
The image in the video relate to the lyrics that we here in the song which also shows the sign of a good video because it helps the audience to understand the lyrics more whereas other videos where the image does not match the lyrics would be a bad video because If the audience don’t understand the lyrics then they would look to the video to help understand more. The image that we see Derulo in is an image that we see him wearing regularly which shows consistency in his image which I would consider a success.