A2 Media Coursework

Evaluation
Kemi Olawole

harlene Kawooya
 Question 1:
In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms
& conventions of real media products?
 Regarding the research that we did into
music videos in general we noticed that the
ways in which a piece of music is
represented in a video has greatly changed
over the years. For example, the first
videos were mainly performance based and
included the artists singing the song, not
much creativity or effort seemed to be put
in these videos.

In this screenshot above, it is the

performance based short, one song film
now referred to as the music video. It
is in original black and white, no
gimmicks, effects or editing techniques
just a performance of the song ‘Reefer
Man’.

Technology has grown and

blossomed since the days of
Cab Calloway and we are now
able to create music videos
with more creativity so that
these videos hold meaning to
the song in question,
creating lovely visuals
relating to the song.
Only after more research on the
history of music videos did we come
to realize why narratives became a
huge part of music videos as well
as performance...
 Michael Jackson was one of the
first R&B artists to start the
narrative based music video trend
that is used among artists across
the globe to this date. Narratives
have meaning and so meaning was
automatically added t music videos
once narrative was involved. The
famous video that topped the
charts and started the trend was
Thriller.

We applied narrative ( a very common

feature of a modern music video) simply
by making a small story that creates
the perfect visual for the song in
question. For example, our music video
was the story of two different people Michael Jackson in his
taking two different paths. One was in a role in the video
relationship, the other was alone. Thriller.
A common convention of R&B music videos
is ‘voyeurism’. After some research we
found that voyeurism is sexual interest
in or practice of spying on people
engaged in intimate behaviours, such as
undressing, sexual activity, or other
activity usually considered to be of a
private nature. The concept within terms
of music video is the sexual
objectification of men or women to make
the audience feel like a voyeur – a spy
on intimate behaviours.
In some aspects of our video we challenged
this convention as we did not use
‘voyeurism ’ for our artists . We did this
because we wanted our target audience to
be a more naive and vulnerable one than
many common R&B videos.
In D’Angelo’s famous video
for Untitled, he is half
naked for the whole video
with no distractions so the
audience will only focus on
him.
We tried to avoid losing track of
the meaning behind the song and
rather than just displaying
voyeurism in the artists by letting
the audience objectify them we
wanted to convey a message in the
visuals. The song Number One is one
of naivety, innocence and just young
love, if we objectified the artists
we will be overshadowing the true
meaning and feel of the song.
 Very common code of R&B music videos are
close ups, soft gaze and slow motion. R&B
videos are normally partially in slow motion
or are shot in normal time and slowed down to
match the music in order to romanticise a
video even further. Filters are also added
to them such as black and white, sepia, soft
gaze etc. In our music video we edited it in
the style of many popular R&B videos.

In our music video,

we’ve used black and
white filters, extreme
close ups and soft
gaze to romanticise
scenes between the
In these examples, there are many couple. An example
extreme close ups to invite in the from our video above.
audience to private moments . But, also
soft gaze/blur to create a soft and
romantic picture that is not to
invasive. We took not of these and
also used them in our coursework.
 Regarding my ancillary task: Magazine Advert,
I followed the common convention of the main
artist’s face being in the advert. This is
normally at the side or in the middle of the
advert. Also, the advert contains three
magazine references with star ratings as many
magazine ads do.

The name of the single

‘Number One’ and the name of
the artist.

Star ratings from

popular R&B/Music
magazines.

Release

How and where

to get the
single
Picture of
main artist.
 Our digipak cover looks very similar to the Raymond V
Raymond CD cover because of how simple they both are .
Both covers have a close up of the main artist and their
name / name if single is quite prominent over the image .

Our main artist also looks very
understated as an artist and
down to earth whereas Usher
looks like a ‘cool’ celebrity
with the sunglasses...
The 4 Panel Digipak follows the
convention of many CD designs in
the R&B genre. The artist is the
most prominent, picture and name
wise , for example.
 Question 2:

How effective is the combination of

your main and ancillary tasks?
 Our main task is a real depiction of
urban/R&B music and to some extent so
are our ancillary tasks. Because of We can see that in the
video and the advert
this I feel as if to an extent our and cd cover, similar
tasks as a whole are effective subtle colours were
together in appealing to the target used such as the
mustard yellow, beige
audience and identifying genre. and greens... This ties
in together
effectively and so
shows the link the
video has with the cd
For example; an advert such as Britney cover and poster. They
Spears’ for Circus the album, the Circus seem to be created
album cover and the video itself have huge around the video and
amounts of relativity because if the for the video instead
simple, stereotypical theme - the circus. of to accompany it.

In this screen shot of

the circus video we can
clearly see the mise en
scene matches the theme
perfectly.
 The CD cover we created is one which glamorizes the main
artist. It is not a representation of reality but a
representation of a more refined artist. We did this
because it is a common code in many R&B CD covers where
the artist is glamorized beyond reality so they can be
admired and inspirational.
However, the ancillary tasks are ones which glamorise the
star but our music video was created with our target
audience and their reality in mind. We tried to have a
very real representation of the young teen’s life such as,
hanging around with friend, listening to the trending
songs, falling in love quickly, etc.
In this sense, there is an obvious contradiction to the
usual R&B video but, the conventions of the poster and CD
covers are similar to that of famous R&B artists such as
Chris Brown and Usher.

Because of this we found a running theme with the

ancillary tasks, for example, the font style, the
background stamps and colour schemes but, the link ended
there because the video seems like a very real
representation of young people today whilst using certain
codes to keep the video within the boundaries of an R&B
genre.
The ancillary tasks are obviously grouped
together because of the reoccurring colour
scheme .

In this screenshot, the main artist looks

more real because of the mise en scene. For
example, he is sitting on a wall on a
residential street, just waiting whilst
texting. This is relatable because teenagers
are stereotyped as ‘glued’ to their phone. The
female character in the background is also
on her phone as she walks. It looks very
normal and probably something that one might
see on a regular basis.
 Question 3:
What have you learned from your audience
feedback?
Firstly, the way in which we collected information about target audience was through mini
questionnaires that were done in an interview form to a few representatives of our
intended target audience – teens.
We found that the common denominator in all the interviews was that they all enjoyed
listening to soft R&B music and watching their music videos. This gave us a push in the
right direction as to what song we would use and brainstorm ideas for a video.
This piece of research proved to be of very much importance when it came down to
planning.

Lastly, we collected feedback from our target audience by using the social platforms that
are so popular among teens such as YouTube and Facebook. Here are some comments from
Facebook on the video itself.
The video proved be
a success among many
of our facebook
friends.

The editing of the

video seemed to be
the most favoured.

The concept was also

complimented but, our
main artist seemed to
be lacking energy
while singing but the
editing and the tempo
compensated for that.
 Question 4:
How did you use media technologies
in the construction, research, planning
and evaluation stages?
We used various of media technologies within the construction of our work such as
the digital camera the tripod, SD card Adobe photoshopCS5 and Adobe premiere pro
CS5 which were the crucial media items for our music video.

The camera we used was a Canon Digital Card Camera with clear zoom, pause and
allowed us to film very well, exterior and interior. At parts where the camera was
required to be hand held to create a shaky hand effect the camera worked very
well because of how light it is to hold. Together with the camera we used a
tripod which helped us carry out the steady shots seen in the video. Adobe
photoshop CS5 was used to edit and create our CD cover/digipak and advertisement
poster for our music video and Adobe premiere pro CS5 was used to edit the raw
footage of our music video. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to create some
of our transitions and sync the footage and the music together with the lip-
syncing. Within research and planning again we used adobe photoshop cs5 to do a
rough sketch on how we would like our cd cover to look like and also to have a
greater knowledge of some of the tools within the software.

In order for us to carry out research on the history of music videos and existing videos we
used the internet. Websites such as Wikipedia and music blogs helped us gain some
understanding of what music videos are where they came from and how they became so
important for artists today. We used websites such as YouTube and Muzu where we were
able to analyse existing videos within our genre and others. Google and existing music
blogs helped us find our history within the artist and our music genre and also
other images of CD covers and digipaks and also find tutorials in creating
digipaks.
In evaluation we used YouTube to upload our music video so everyone can access it
so they can watch and give us feedback on facebook and possibly our media blogs.
 Above is a screenshot from the making of the
digipak’s front cover. We were able to edit the
photo and turn it into a professional looking
CD cover due to Adobe Photoshop.
Below is a screenshot from YouTube where our
finished project is at the moment awaiting
comments and receiving views.
These are some examples of the
technologies used in the
construction, research and
planning of the project. Above
is the digital camera we used
with decent quality.
The editing software we used
(Adobe Premiere Pro) is one
that allowed us to refine our
footage and create a very well
edited piece.