Alex's Evaluation

Media Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our song was by Toddla T feat Wayne Marshall called Sky Surfing. The genre of this song is primarily dancehall; however there is rap and grime within the song also which brings diversity to the song. In our video we decided to have an urban/grime feel to it. We used codes and conventions of this type of genre to make our video. Grime artists are usually located in a urban setting to give the video a UK feel and also the way grime artists dress such as leather jacket, jeans, high top trainers etc. By watching videos by Skepta or Friscos – Darkside you can see similar styles of video. Reasons they are alike is because they all dress similar either with designer sunglasses or designer jackets, all of their clothes have an expensive feel to them. Also, they are similar by the way they act on camera and the way they are filmed such as the artist is always ‘ in your face’ and also have lots of swagger about them. We have tried to incorporate some of these aspects within our music video. We used similar dress style for our artist with a leather jacket, jeans and stylish trainers to make him have an identity and follow suit with other artists. We also had an urban setting in an estate to film part of our video which gives it a UK feel and makes it seem believable. The performance of our artist was very good also, he had swagger and presence on camera and the shots we used such as low angles portrayed the artist very well. We also challenged conventions of a grime music video by adding in DJ decks to emphasise the backing track which was mixed. In conclusion, I believe we used and challenged the conventions of real media products in a professional way by using conventions from other media and analysing and applying our genre well.

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

The design of our digipak was to keep it very basic however to keep the same theme as the music video with an urban feel to the overall pack. We also wanted the magazine advert and the digipak to be very similar according to colour, fonts and style. We achieved this by keeping the colours black and white similar to parts of the video such as the estate and block of flats which are featured in the video. Also the font is the same throughout the digipak and advert, the font is very recognisable meaning people will be able to know that the digipak and magazine advert are linked and associate this with Toddla T. In our video we had our artist dressed like a grime artist with a hoody, jeans and high top trainers, therefore for our magazine advert and digipak we have him dressed in these clothes to link in with our video, also this link means that our audience can see the definite similarities and be able to recognise the video with our digipak clearly.
We wanted to make sure the whole style of our texts and video really integrated with each other through the colour. This was achieved by having dark colours such as black and white which is heavily associated with grime videos and album covers by grime artists such as Skepta. We also used logos on our magazine advert such as the HMV logo and the record label ‘Ninja Records’ logo. The HMV logo is to inform our audience of where they can buy the new album and the ninja records label is there to promote the label and would be on anything the artist produces.
Furthermore, we promoted a tour on the magazine advert for Toddla T; the reason for this is to promote the album and tour at the same time which is a common occurrence with most artists. On the adverts we had the dates and venues of the tour so people knew where and when it was happening and we also had the name of the website where people could buy the tickets from to advertise even more.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Our audience feedback was helpful for our video and we got some good ideas from listening to others. We started off by making a questionnaire on facebook and asking our friends to answer questions such as how do they buy their music, ways they listen to music, fashion questions and more. We found out our audience were aged late teens to early 20s for our type of genre and they generally bought their music online from iTunes or play.com. This gave us a general idea of how to market our video and how we should go about making our video appeal to our audience.
After we made our rough-cut we posted it on YouTube and on facebook to gather more feedback from our class and friends. The comments we got were positive such as our cuts towards the end were in perfect positions in relation to the music and also that our lip syncing was very well edited. Other positive feedback included the way the artist was a good performer by the way he had charisma and presence on camera which grime artists all have. Another positive point was the urban feel of the video due to it being set in an estate and how it has a very UK feel to it which was similar to other music videos. Furthermore because our video features two people, Toddla T and Wayne Marshall this widens our audience because of one being white and the other black this make our video more diverse and make it appeal to both ethnicities. We also had feedback saying how we could improve our music video, the comments were to film more footage and extend our range of locations in the film. Also, people said some of our footage was a bit dark so we changed the brightness on some of the shots to make them clearer. Lastly, the clothes of Toddla T were quite dark which some feedback stated there should be more colour in his clothes. We decided to use some of this feedback in our video, such as we used more locations around college and outside of college in the estate of Arbury to add to our video. The comments about the colour of the clothes, we decided to leave the clothes as they were because by our research the clothes he was wearing were suited for the genre and the colours are similar to that of this type of artist. We used our audience feedback really well and it gave us great ideas to improve our video.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
For our research and planning we mainly used the internet to find out facts and look at ideas of what to include in the video. We also used YouTube a lot to look at other videos in our genre for shot ideas and to find out what type of props and clothes we needed to make it seem like a grime/rap video. This was a great way to research because it gave us inspiration and a really clear way of how to achieve a well done video. Furthermore, we used the internet to search for magazine adverts and album covers from other artists to find out the conventions of a grime artists CD cover and adverts. We also used blogger to note down our plans and ideas, this was a great tool to share ideas and we could always make reference to our notes. We also posted photos of locations and gathered feedback from other people in our class.
In addition, our group used facebook to make a questionnaire for our friends to gather feedback and what people like to see in a music video of this genre. Also we used findyourtribe where you enter information and it calculated what social group and age our audience would be which helped in the making of our video. Another piece of technology used was a still camera to take shots of our locations, props and the artist for the digipak and magazine advert, we got an array of shots for the magazine advert and chose the one which fitted in the best. To make our magazine advert and digipak we used Photoshop which really helped us making our texts look professional and very believable as real adverts, it helped with the colour, fonts and the overall styling of both the advert and digipak.
To edit our video we used Final Cut, this is a great piece of software to add effects, test footage, filter colours and more. Also the software allows you to convert it into internet ready footage for YouTube or other websites so we could share rough cuts and receive feedback. Although we used lots of technology and a computer we still used a lot of paper for mind maps, storyboards, designs and check lists this was due to it being an easier task to write out and draw mind maps than set them out on a computer.

Ceri's Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The music that we choose for our music video was rap or alternative pop; as it was quite a kooky song but also featured a well known rapper Wayne Marshall so fitted in to the rap and grime genre of music. We decided to go along with the normal conventions of this genre of video especially after watching the original video for the song which does challenge conventions because we did not think it looked very good. To help us create a good idea of what the conventions of our music video should be we looked at a lot of videos from similar artists and similar genre of music, for example Frisco Training Day, mostly by using the video sharing website ‘YouTube’. Frisco wears mainly black clothes in this music video with baggy jeans black top and a black body warmer, compared to what are artist wear it is slightly different however overall it is a similar image and they have similar body language in the way they rap to the camera. We thought these artists were similar by the beat and the potential audience they have for their music. We also looked into other videos from Toddla T however he hadn’t made many and the ones we found where obviously low budget, and didn’t seem to be conventional. We portrayed our artist in a similar way to how Frisco was portrayed by having mates around him and especially in relation to the music to make him look quite gangster by the way he is dressed lyrics he is rapping and his body language throughout the music video –
A lot of these videos where set in urban towns and council estates with big tower blocks of flats so we decided to film some of the video in Arbury in Cambridge as it fits the criteria. The main feature in a lot of these videos was the artist therefore we knew there mise-en-scene and image was very important especially as that was going to be the main interest to the audience and it had to look right for the genre of music. Similar to the conventional rap artist areas wore a hoody and leather jacket with a ‘Nike’ branded t shirt, also he fitted in with the genre ethnically as well. As our song included two artists we had Michal in it as well who as he is white opened up the potential audience of the song to a wider range of ethnicities, we also got him to dress more like a dj and he wore a checkered shirt as well as headphones around his kneck. Overall the look we gave our artists from the location and outfits i think seemed quite genuine and believable as we did not over-do any part of it to seem like it is making fun of the genre for example if we got the artist to wear a lot of bling. I think that Arbury was a good setting for the video unfortunately we had to film some in college corridors which i think makes the video look a bit less convincing and professional but the artists do draw most the attention to them which works well with attracting the viewers away from the location.
Also are ancillary texts have a strong link to the usual conventions of magazine adverts and album covers, I think this is because we choose quite a simple design and also did a lot of research into them and based our ideas on ones we had already seen from research.


How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
As part of our media project as well as making the music video we had to make a magazine advertisement and an album for our artist. We made these mainly using Photoshop as well as photographs of our artist played by Msena.
We decided on the basic design of our ancillary texts by researching other artists album covers such as Tinie Tempah’s album discovery and also Kano’s album 48 bars, as they’re the same genre of music as Toddla T, then drawing a rough draft of what we think we should include and what is essential to include for example the record company’s logo. We didn’t use anything that directly relates to the video such as stills from the video instead we took photos of the artist which were of better quality. I think the overall effect of the three pieces of work is very effective and the themes and styles we used throughout help portray the genre of our music that are song is, rap and grime. Throughout our music video there are lots of images of the location, an urban council estate this was also shown in the album cover by having a black and white brick wall behind the artist. Also throughout the video and photos of the artist used on the magazine advert and album cover we dressed Msena in similar outfits with a leather jacket, hoody and branded t shirt which from doing research on mise-en-scene of other similar artists this was the general theme of what they wear in their music video. As it is a black and white photo and background and the artist looks quite serious on the cover it brings quite a sombre tone to the whole cover which can relate well to a lot of rap songs which lyrics are about important issues however the song we made the music video for is quite light hearted and tongue and cheek so you may think that the less serious photo of the artist that we used on the back would be more appropriate. But I would say that the font we used is quite cartoony and looks like a bit like graffiti which works well with the brick wall and urban feel of the whole album cover and does lighten the tone of the album.
The magazine and album are very similar to each other which we did by using the same photo on both of them as well as the same font on both, we thought we should keep them similar to make it obvious that they are both advertising the same album and we found that keeping it similar was quite easy to do. I think our two ancillary texts look quite professional as we have used all the symbols that albums and posters have which we found out from doing research mostly on Google images on other magazine articles and CD albums. Also from carrying out this research mainly on magazine adverts and albums from artists of a similar genre we managed to make ancillary texts which follow the conventions of rap and grime music, mostly the fact that the album just features a image of the artist. We decided to include tour dates on our poster as touring to promote the album would be appropriate for a new artist trying to gain credibility and popularity. Also as an MC he may feel that he has to prove credential as a live performer to be respected in quite a competitive market and genre of music.
On our Magazine advert and CD album we included a logo from the recording label Ninja XX as this is the one that Toddla T is signed to so we felt it was the appropriate one to use and the most realistic one, it also went well with our ancillary texts as was a black and white image. We felt that we should have the recording studios logo on it as other albums include it and it shows that we have taken them into consideration and makes the album cover seem a lot more lifelike in my opinion. On are magazine we also included a logo for HMV which is a music shop so we incorporated it to promote the album and let customers know where they can get it from.
We got feedback on our album design from a professional designer who thought that our work would “slot right into Big Dada Recordings” which is part of the recording label ninja records, this shows that ours is quite authentic and this feedback was quite reassuring for us.


What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We got audience feedback quite a few times throughout the research and construction process of making our music video.
We got information from our peer groups about where they get there music from and what music websites and magazines they look at from making a questionnaire and posting it on the social networking site face book. This was useful as it gave us advice on websites we can look at when researching music videos as well as we asked them what they expect to see in a conventional rap music video and the answers we got where Girls, money, hometown, cars, gangs, so we thought about these aspects and how we could include them in our music video to make it suit the genre and conventions. The ones we used was probably gangs and hometown by filming in the urban area that they live and the two of them making a lot of hand symbol’s which could represent there gang.
We also had a question on the questionnaire which helped us decide what we need to include on our album, we asked what they like to have on an album which is important these days as if there is bonus features on the album it may stop people from downloading it illegally which the artist will not make any money from. One answer we got was bonus tracks and remixes of tracks which we agreed was a good idea and what we like to get when we buy an album so we included this on the track list of the digi-pack.
Also we got a lot of feedback from other media students in our class which we found very useful as they are doing the same thing as us and making a music video they know about the genres and what we can possibly do with the programmes we have. We got class feedback after finishing our rough cut as well as when we were pitching our ideas about what we want to and what we plan to do in our music video.
We also got a lot of feedback on our video from a teacher at long road who has had a lot of experience and knows a lot about music video, he did give us a lot of positive feedback which was pleasing to hear but also gave us advice to make a lot of cuts and possibly use an editing effect on the part of the song where the beats slows down nearly to a stop then picks up again as he felt this was a key part to the song and a part that people who listen to it will love. We listened to his advice and made a lot more cuts between different locations here and then added a slightly shaky effect which looked good.
It was good to get ideas and thoughts from other people especially as we have seen the music video so many times whilst editing it we got use to it and may not have noticed glitches as well and it was good to get a new perspective on our video.


How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In our media project we used a lot of new media technologies throughout all the stages, however I would say that the Internet was an essential part for all the stages which helped make our video true to the conventions as well as professional looking as we could get it.
In the planning and research stage we used the internet a lot especially a video sharing website YouTube which we used to research other artists music videos of a similar genre which we realised a theme in rap videos which were predominantly the artist rapping or singing to the camera so we decided this would work well and suit this style of music in our video. We also used a blogging website Blogger.com to store all are ideas write down are planning and research so we could keep track of what we have done and what we need to do and this was very useful to us and the planning stage in order to share ideas. Also still cameras where use full for us when going around Arbury which is the location we were filming in to take photos which we then looked back on to decide which would be the best places to film and also of our artist to plan what he should wear after doing research online into what other rap artists wear.
For the construction stage are main technologies we used where the HD camera which and the editing programme Final Cut Express, it would have been impossible to create a professional looking video with so much editing in it without the use of this programme. We used this programme to piece together the footage and make sure that the lip syncing was in time to the track. Final cut express also allowed us to add effects to our music video; for example during the final few seconds of the video we put the clips in to black and white and slowed the speed down so it was in slow motion and got the clips to fade out. We did this as we thought it would be a nice way of finishing the video rather than a cut to a black screen it also went well with the way the music fades out. Another essential programme was Photoshop which we used when making our ancillary texts, this programme helped us make an effective and professional looking Album and magazine advert. We used the programme to edit photos we took using still cameras and using a magnetic tool cut out the photo from the original background and lay it on top of a brick wall photo. We thought this looked good as it made the artist stand out more. We also had a good range of fonts to choose from on the programme and could add on pictures of the logos and barcodes.
To help us get evaluation and feedback from our product we put it on to the social networking site Face book and also uploaded the video on to YouTube so it can be seen nationwide and by our peers. We again used face book during the research for our video by putting a questionnaire to our peers on it about where they get music from and what music websites they go on, as it is a quick and easy way to communicate with a large amount of people of our age group.

Evaluation

Digipak - Magazine Advert

Digipak - CD cover

Finishing Digi Pack and Magazine

Today's lesson was are deadline and we finished the digi pack by doing the inside of the CD, we did not draw out a plan but we did discuss and decide to keep it quite plain so we just played around on photo shop using the same sort of theme we had on the rest of the album.
We also did our magazine this lesson, we used the same image from our album as it's part of the same advertising campaign, as well as keeping it the same style with the font and using black and white as the only colors on it. We kept our magazine advert quite similar to the plan apart from we swapped it around a bit by putting the on the right instead of the left as we thought it would look better because of the way the artist is facing in the picture.

Analysing Past Students Magazine and DVD

What i like about there poster is that it is very bold and eye catching i think the font they used looks good and i the scribbles over the font that border the left hand side of the poster makes it look different to most magazines especially other students work, they have obviousloly thought about the colours they have used and matched his shirt with the font colours and the purple and grey fonts look good together. I think they have included everything that is essential to include such as picture and name of the artist, logo of where they can buy the album from and a logo of the record company, although they could of included more advertisement for the artist such as his website or the website of his record company. In a way this poster is similar to what we are planning to do as we have used a scribbley effected font as well as a large cut out image of our artist. The way they've used a different and quite bold font for 'out now!' is good because it stands out and looks like realistic advertisement.



This is a very colourful and different looking dvd which suits the music that this group had to make a music video to, again they have included all the symbols and logos that are necessary. What i would critisice about this cover is that the track names on the back don't really stand out well against the brick wall and i think it would have looked better if they used the purple font that they used for title on the front page. Again they have done similar things to our dvd cover but the image that they have created for there artist is completly different to ours as they have used lots of bright colours and a playful picture of the artist where as we used a black and white photo and brick wall as well as quite a serious photo of our artist. I like the way they have put star rattings on there dvd as i think it is a good idea and makes it look more like a realistic dvd.

Magazine Advert Rough Draft

We plan to make our magazine advert quite similar to the album as from doing research I found that a lot of other artists keep a consistency between these two especially as the poster is advertising the tour of that album from Toddla T. For example we will use a similar photo of the artist and keep the font the same, although we were thinking about changing the colour of the background as most of the posters used bright coloured backgrounds which are more eye catching and interesting and also have similar images and website addresses for the review strap line of the poster.We could use the same brick wall backdrop again but edit the colours of it in photo shop to a bright blue or something, but i think if we did this it may look like there is to much going on and will be a bit busy.

Album Cover on Photo shop

Here is what we have done so for on photo shop, we still need to add a few things to it like the names of the bonus tracks, a price and website address for Toddla T and his record company. We decided to change the font from our original idea of having big bold font like in our practice one which we posted on the blog previously, we decided this one looks better and goes with the genre of music which can be quite tongue and cheek and upbeat, it overall made the album cover look less serious. Although the photo we took had a brick wall in the background we decided to put a different one behind him and put the photo layer ontop as this made the artist pop out more. I really like what we have done so fat as i think it looks good and eye catching.

Practice in Photoshop

This is my attempt at playing around with photoshop and getting use to the software. I played around with different fonts and how ot edit text and pictures such as colour fades and found out there was loads of things to do to just an image. I learnt a lot because I had never used it before and got help from my group and teachers.

Complete Film - Goodwins 6 points analysis

Goodwin's 6 points

Our video shows the characteristics of the genre in a grime video. The main rapper is wearing a leather jacket and stylish jeans with high top trainers, this is a typical look for a grime artist. Also the rapper has a slight 'swagger' about him which grime artists have and are always striving to be the best in the business. His stage performance is similar to other artists in this genre of music with his hand movements and the way he acts on camera

The lyrics and visuals in this video are not very apparent due to the lyrics in the song being very random, however the song is about smoking weed and drug realted so we have a joint in our video to represent the lyrics. Apart from this, it is very random lyrics which are hard to understand what the there saying especially without the lyrics anywhere on the internet!

The music and visuals were a really creative way of making this video what it looks like today. We have many cuts in the fast parts of the song and also when the song slows down we have the visuals with slow cuts. We watched simlar videos and began to work from there, this type of editing is very common in grime videos with close ups and the artisit filling the screen with their swagger. Also when the song 'drops' we have more cuts than normal to emphasise the pace and tempo of this part.

The record label is Ninja Tune for the real Toddla T. They have been developed by 2 men called Matt Black and Jonathan and lots of close ups of our artist and i believe we sell the artist well by having him do hand signs which act as a motif of the video and things people can do at concerts to follow a trend etc.

There is a slight notion of looking in our video where there is Toddla T making up his lyrics in his bedroom and is quite an intimate moment in the video. Another notion of looking is wayne marshall on the decks ming records. However, most of our video is performance based and we are really happy how it has been portrayed and the response we have had from our audiences

There is some intertextual reference in our film such as in other music videos there is the artisit hanging out with his mates and walking roud the streets etc. to explain where he is from and where it all began. We also have the right clothes for him to be wearing such as a leather jacket, stylish jeans and high top trainers. This completes the look of a classic grime/rap artist such as skepta and JME. Also our film can represent other movies such as Kidulthood and Shank by where it is filmed and the way he acts such as the 'big man' in the music video. This means it appeals to our target audience also, and we feel we have used intertextuality in a clever way in our video.

Album Cover Rough Draft

I drew a rough draft to help us plan out what we need to put on our album cover and where everything will go such as the record label and Toddla t's website address. The simple layout on the cover was influenced a lot from the research I did earlier on different artists album covers, and then I looked at albums I had to see what other information they included and logo's as when i looked at albums on Google images a lot of them didn't have the logos and stickers on them

Things we are going to have on our album:

For if we add a the music video to the bonus tracks

Ninja records logo

www.toddlat.com

www.ninjatune.net

Track names
we choose the track name's from a variety of made up ones and ones from Toddla T.

1. The Criss Cross
2. Skanky Skank
3. Sky Surfin, feat Wayne Marshall
4. Essentials
5. Shy Child
6. Bonus tracks
7. Sky Surfin Remix
8. Sky Surfin Music Video
9. Doller Bills Cover

Final Music Video

Final Cut Express Screenshots

This is a screen shot of our music video, from this you can see that we have a lot of short cuts and a variety of clips to cut between.

Magazine Research

I have been looking at ideas for what we can do for our magazine which is part of our digi-pack i have looked on online magazines websties as well as magazines such as rolling stones, rwd, i like music and Q the music.
http://www.ilikemusic.com/ was a good website as it does a variety of music as well as lots of urban, grime and rap music which is the genre of our song they have lots of articles on artists and images of them which was useful for us as we are planning how to do the magazine article as well we need to take a still image of Msena for the album cover so these will help us see what settings look good for example.
Here is an example of a music magazine article:




Here are some pictures i got of other magazine adverts which are of a similar genre to our music, from researching them i found that most of the tour posters are similar style to the artists album and use the same style of font which is something we could do for our album cover and poster.

Practice CD Cover

We did a practice cd cover using an image of Tempa T who is a rap artist who looks similar to the rap character we used in our music video, we just used a simple black and white photo of him and put it on to photoshop after testing out the different effects available we thought the GLOWING?? one looked good we also tested out the different fonts. As we are pleased with this practice CD cover we will probably try to produce a similar one using a picture of Msena instead though for our real thing.

Evaluation of Filming

We have just loaded all our footage onto our computer, i am pleased with most of the shots and filming we have done even though we were not able to use the recording studio and dark room like we planned. We tried to get a range of moving and tracking shots and to make sure the artists move around more in the video, although i think it would have been good to get more close ups of the artists. We now have two lessons to edit together the rest of the footage. We should of made another shot list and taken it with us to of ensured we got more of a variety of shots that we wanted to get, we also took a dolly and tripod with us this time as some of our feedback mentioned that a couple of the shots where a bit shakey.

Filming Plan

Today we are going to film more footage of our rapper and the dj in our music video rapping and dancing along to the music, we will focus on getting footage for the second half of the song starting at 1.30 as we have already got and edited footage for the beggining.
We were planning on filming this in the colleges dark room as we though this would look more proffesional especially compared to previous students work which they have obviously filmed around college and on college grounds which we thought did not look as good. We also thought that this would highlight that the rapper in the video had been signed which we wanted to be the story line in the music video. However unfortunately they are doing unplanned building works on the dark room so we can not do it there anymore, as we do not have time to take the cameras out to film it somewhere else we will had to film around college, we found a corridor to use which did not have too many college posters up and also had good lighting through the window, as this was a problem in our first bit of footage. We also got our character Msena to wear a bright red top so he stnads out more but also a hoodie as this is what most rap artists wear with this genre of music. We also wanted to use the music department's recording studio unfortunately the teacher who said we could film there was too busy so we couldn't use it in the end.

CD Cover Research

From looking at a variety of different album covers from artists which produce r'n'b genre of music, i found that the majority of them are quite simple and only include a photo of the artist and the name of them and the album. So for our album we will use a similar idea we will take still photos of the rapper character in our music video which we can use for the album.

What i like about these are that they are simple especially kano's one which just uses a black and white photo this would be easy and a simple design to replicate for our artist however i do not think it is very eye catching or show a good use of skills. Especially compared to tinie tempah's album which has a very futuristic look about it and stands out a lot more to the potential buyer which goes well with the theme and name of the album "disc-overy". I think that this kind of album cover would also not be to hard to do by taking photos of the artist in the green room and editing the picture on photo shop by adding a background to it. They also both use the same font for there name on the album which is like there branded logo for them the artist.

Digipak Research

This is one of Skeptas album covers called 'BEEN THERE DONE THAT'. The cover is very brightly coloured especially on his name at the top with a yellow background and black writing which really stands out and is the first thing that draws your attention when you first look at it. Also, I noticed that the SKEPTA title looks like a number plate on a car. This could try to represent the culture of a grime artist due to them having expensive cars and a generally wealthy lifestyle. The video cover also shows Skepta in a recording studio which is featured in some of his music videos and is featured in a lot of grime artists videos. Our group has decided to do something similar to this alum cover however we are going to change the fonts and colours to suit the artist and the title of the song.

Feedback

We showed our rough cut to the class and got feedback from all the other groups. In general the other groups in our class liked our idea and concept of our music video and what we have done so far. The positive feedback we got were the cuts in our film were good towards the end where the music speeds up. Also people said the lip syncing was well done and that the performance was good, they also like the urban setting that we used as it suited the genre of music. Things they said we could improve on to improve and make our music video look more proffessional would be to obviously film more and to possibly change the brightness of some of our music video clips such as where the rapper is sitting on the coach to be brighter so you can see it better. Also we obviously need to get more footage to finish of the video which we plan to do. We will also get Msena to wear brighter clothing to help with the brightness and we also agreed we think it will look better if he does.

We also got feedback from a teacher from the media department who has helped to make professional music video. He said he really enjoyed our music video and gave us a lot of positive feedback saying he thought our cuts were in perfect positions for the music. He also liked our camera movements with the zooms and parts which are shaky which give it a real urban feel. Another piece of feedback was that the dj decks were a real asset to our video and they gave it a real unique quality about the video becasue no one else has this in their videos. Another thing he really enjoyed was the ethinicity of a white and a black guy in the video because this will appeal to a wider audience other than a single ethinicity audience.  A few points in the video we need to improve on, are the end drop because we need more cuts in this part apart from the singing as this is a key part to the song and is upbeat so we will edit this and are thinking about adding an effect to it, we also need to improve some cuts when they flicker in parts by watching our video through in slow motion.

Style of our Artist

Our song has two artists in it Toddla t who is a disk jockey and Wayne Marshall who raps in the song, so we are going to have two people in our music video Michal Kolesnik who is in our group and we think would suit playing the disk jockey Toddla t, as well as Msena who is a friend and looks good as a rap artist and is good at performing and miming quickly also his ethnicity helps make the two together appeal to a bigger audience as we are using a white person and a black person. Although technically speaking Msena is playing Wayne Marshall in the video as its actually Toddla T's song featuring him we are going to have him be Toddla T and use his image for the album cover and Poster later on.
They are a bit similar to the, alternative hip hop, duo Chiddy Bang:

Rough Cut

This is the beginning of the music video which we have edited so far we still need to get more footage especially for the song however I think what we have done so far looks good especially because we have got lots of cuts which earlier on in the blog we researched and found that most professional music videos use lots of short duration shots especially if the song is up beat.

We will get people who seem to be our target audience to evaluate and tell us what they like and don't like about what we have done so far so we know how to improve the video.

Photos 2

Before we posted on our blog about having scenery photos of the urban town at the begining of our music video however since we have started editing we decided not to put them at the beginning and just incorporate in certain places throughout the msic video instead.



Here is an example of past students work which used a lot of still camera shots to set the scene in there music video, however they didn't take still images they just held the camera still or set it up on the dolly but it still creates a similar effect that we would like in our muskc video but for our genre and to set our urban scene which will represent our stlye of music and the rappers life. There's are also quite long duration shots as they have a much slower song in comparrison to ours.

Rating of Music Video

After looking at BBFC (British Board of Film Classic) we believe our film would be a rating of 15 bacause there is mild drug reference in the video. The lyrics have the words 'high' which is a mild drug use meaning it will not be suitable for people under the age of 15. This may be a problem as if we were making an actual music video which would be played on music channels they may not allow it or just may not show it.

Change of plan

We can not film what we wanted to film this lesson as Msena who will be doing the rapping in the video is ill, this means we will just carrying on editing and will have to wait till after the rough cut deadline to finish filming our video. This is not too bad as we were planning on having the first half of the video with most of the clips him writting and singing the song casually with his friends and then later on its as if his song has now been released and we will have the scenes in the dark room which looks more proffessional as if he is now a signed artist so we can just carry on editing the first one or two minutes of the video but will probably not be able to finish it due to the lack of footage.

Second Lesson editing

This lesson we have carried on editing our music video on final cut express and have organised everything for filming in the dark room and possibly on the college basketball courts next lesson. The editing is going well and we have edited the first minute of the music video.

First Day of Editing

We have just uploaded all the clips to the computer and looked through to plan what clips we want where in the music video. We have pput together the first 20 seconds of the music video which includes lots of short cuts and all the lip syncing is in time to the music. i am pleased with how our video is coming along and how the begining looks. Next lesson we plan to carry on with the editing and do some research and planning into our filming on Thursday.

Filming Evaluation

We think the filming went well and we got the majority of the shots we wanted, however we still need to get some more shots which we plan to film in the dark room in college to make it look like a proffesional place and can represent the artist getting signed and recording a proper video as he has gone form his suburban town to making a proper video. The weather was good for the filming however after looking back at a couple of shots the shade is on the artist face and you can't see the lip synicing so we are unable to use some of these clips. The other mistake we made is not filming each clip for the whole length of the track so we will make sure we do this next time we film.

Our message to Toddla T-Permission

We decided to message the artist for his permission and to check it was O.K. for us to use the song. We contacted him via myspace and hope we will get a positive reply which we will put on the blog if we do.
We wrote: Hello Toddla T
We are from Long Road Sixth form college shooting a music video for your song Sky Surfin' and was just checking if i had your permisssion to use your song for the video
Thanks,
Alex Johnston

Here is a print screen of our message:

Shooting Schedule

We have booked the camera for the weekend of the 9th and 10th. We want to get shots of the Dj decks, our character writting the lyrics for the songs and him walking around and singing with his mates and about where he lives.
Then we will take the camera out during a lesson or when we have free time to film using the dark room in college or in the music departments recording studio if we get permisssion and it is free at the time.

Props List

Equipment:
Camera
Tripod
Digital Camera

In Screen Props:
Dj Decks
Pen and Paper
Headphones
Ipod

Questionnaire results

These are the results of our questionnaire.

1.    How do you find out about new music?
 Friends
 Music channels x2

2.    Where do you get your music from?        Youtube
                                                                   Limewire x2
                                                                   Apple store

3.    Do you read any music magazines, if so which ones?       No
                                                                                            Kerrange
                                                                                            N.M.E

4.    Do you watch music channels, if so which ones?        Kerrange
                                                                                      Kiss
                                                                                      Kiss,4 music, MTV

5.    Do you go on any music websites?      I Tunes
                                                                Kiss
                                                           
6.    What do you think are conventions of rap and grime music videos?
Girls, money, hometown, cars, gangs.

7.    What do you like about these kind of videos?      The energy and the story line that go with them.
                                                                                 Interesting.

8. What extra content do you like and expect when buying an album?           Unreleased Tracks
                                                                                                                   Poster
                                                                                                                   Bonus tracks and remixes



After reading our results we have found out that word of mouth is one of the main way people find out about new music. If we want our music to be heard the best music channels to put it onto would be kiss and MTV,  alot of the people that answered out questionnaire go on the kiss website and watch the program.

Storyboard

Shots

We want to use a variety of different shots during our music video to make the video more interesting and to show that we know how to use the cameras and what shots are appropriate for different cuts.
Some of the shots we plan to use are:
Establishing shots -  this will set the scene and show places around Arbury
Close up -  Will be used on the artist when they are rapping as well as:
Extreme Close Ups - On the rapper's mouth while singing as well as things like his bling.
Medium Tracking Shots - We will use this to follow the rapper as he faces on to the camera around the town.

Mise-en-scene

mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement—composition, sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting. Mise-en-scène also includes the positioning and movement of actors on the set. To make sure our music video relates to the song and the genre of music we have to make sure we use the right mise-en-scene in our shots. We have actors to play the rapper and Toddla T who is a DJ they look the right part for the roles they are playing but to make it more realistic they will wear costumes based on what we have researched that other rap, grime and dance hall artists are wearing. The person playing Toddla T will have big headphones around his neck to represent that he is a DJ and Msena who is playing the rapping character Wayne Marshall in our music video will wear similar clothes as pictured below such as leather jackets and hoodies and baggy jeans. Here is a mood board of types of outfits we plan for our rapper to wear so he can portray the right image.

Photos

After watching and evaluating what we liked and didn't like about the Empire state of mind music video which we posted earlier on onto our blog we have decided to have a similar intro to that video. This could be seen as intertextuality. We plan to use still photo images of around Arbury and possibly some shots in Cambridge that represent our video to be set in a suburban area and help establish where the video is set. We want the images to appear on screen in time to the intro music to Sky Surfing which we will do by editing it on Final Cut Express. We may also use Photo shop to edit some of the photos for example making them brighter or changing the contrast to make sure they look exactly how we want them to. The sort of places we will take photos of will be the buildings and the shops in Arbury.

Image from Empire State of Mind Music Video

Achieved today

We did our storyboard today and began listing our shots. As well as booking the cameras out for this weekend and discussing as a group what locations and mise-en-scene we plan to use in our video. We also looked for inspiration from similar music videos.

Location

We are planning to film the majority of our music around Arbury, we thought this would be a good place to portray a young artists life and trying to get signed as there is council flats there and it is a suburban town. Also one member of our group lives there and the rest can get there easily.
During our video we plan to film the artist walking around Arbury and we will film in a few different places including Kings Way Flats, Outside the One stop shop, Arbury square and in Michal's bedroom which can be the rap artists room also if possible we will try and film in a recording studio although this may be difficult.
As a lot of it will be filmed outside we have looked up the weather for this weekend, although Saturday it is foretasted to rain the weather on Sunday looks good so we plan to film it then so we can have good natural lighting.

Shot Ideas

This video has some shots which we may incorporate in our music video. The shots of buildings and the rapper we can use to similar effect in the village of Arbury. The video by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys has lots of shots we can use to good effect.

Inspiration

This music video uses some similar shots to what we plan on doing for our video, for example it is set in a British suburbia village with lots of shots of the locations such as the flats, although ours will focus more on the artists story and lifestyle rather than what goes on in the village around them. Another concept which is used in this video which we plan to use in ours is that the camera is filming the artists alot and they are looking at the third wall and into the camera which we plan to do in our video.

Deadlines

•Music Video Shooting Deadline: Monday 18th October 9am
•Music Video Rough Cut Deadline: Last lesson of week ending 22rd October
•Music Video Final Deadline: Last lesson of week ending 12th November
•Ancillary Products Deadline: Last lesson of week ending 26th November
•Evaluative commentary: Completed by end of last lesson week ending 17th December.
Cameras

1.Before the rough cut deadline, you will be able to take a camera for 2 overnights or 1 weekend. The first opportunity you will have for filming is Friday 1st October from 4.10pm.
2.Between the rough cut and the Final deadline, you will be able to have a camera in the lessons and for 1 overnight. No weekends.
3.You can have a stills camera in the lessons and for 1 overnight, from the point where filming commences. It is possible to have your video and stills cameras at the same time. This actually might be advisable.

We have booked our camera and tripod for the weekend starting Friday the 8th till Monday the 11th in the morning, we think this will be enough time to get all the footage we need and also give us time to get extra footage if we need some and let us start editing early. Hopefully we should be able to finish our planning by then.

Music Timeline

To help us get a better idea and to help us plan what we want to put in certain parts of the music video we listened to the track slowly and wrote down what happens and when the pace or tone of the music changes during the song. This will help us when filming and editing our video.

Music Video Director

 Chris Cunningham is an English film director and artist who was born in 1970. He started making music videos when he was a teenager in his own garage trying to recreate things from films he had seen. He is well known for his strange and different concepts he uses is his music video. The types of music he makes videos for are normally long and strange songs usually without lyrics so they go well with the videos. He can be seen as an infamous director in some ways as a lot of his videos get banned and some people frown upon and feel uneasy looking at his work, however this does help with publicity of his videos. He does a lot of work with the Aphex Twin which genre is electronic music. I decided to look at his work as he is a Grammy and Brit award winner who is quite a controversial director as well with very outstandingly different music videos.


Windowlicker and by Aphex Twin:



Come to daddy by Aphex Twin:



Similarities between these two videos which where directed by Chris Cunningham is that they both are quite abnormal and can make people watching feel quite uneasy, for example a lot of the characters in the videos are very strange looking. Also both of them do not have characteristics of conventional music videos as they both don't have the artist in the video so they aren't trying to sell the artist and they both so they don't have Goodwin's point of having to have close ups of the artists as a demand from the record label. I haven't noticed any obvious inter textual reference in either of the video's. I would say there is a relationship between the visuals and the lyrics though as the music video is sort of a story line to the song and in 'come to daddy' the television at the beginning sings the song like a artist would lip sync to there song. i have also found that a similarity throughout his music videos are the colours he uses rather then bright colours or black an white his videos are normally in colour but quite dark and this helps create an edge that most of his videos have.

Analysing a star

I am going to analyse Skepta and the music video Bad Boy. In this video he is at a party with all his mates and his girlfriend is at home upset that he has not had dinner with her. He portrays himself as the 'big man' at the party as he is going round shaking everyones hand showing he is popular and knows lots of people. They are all drinking champagne and expensive drinks showing his wealth and the target audience which is mainly teenagers will all aspire to have his type of lifestyle. Skepta is a huge grime artist in this country and has lots of fans and has appeared in the top 20 numerous times. He appeals to his target audience because his videos portray him as a 'cool' lad and a rich person which most teenagers aspire to be. His videos show lots of 'hot' girls which will appeal to the male market and this is a use of voyeurism for portraying girls to look sexy. Overall, in Skeptas music videos he captures his audience very well by using different shots of himself and portraying a luxurious lifestyle which most teenagers really aspire to have.

Selling the artist

Apart from to keep the audience interested and engaged for the three minutes of the song the music video normally aims to sell and advertise the artist, showing there strengths as an artist and what they can do. in most conventional music videos they do this by showing them dancing or peforming on a stage but with male rappers they usually have them bigging them selves up and rapping in to the camera. However there are exceptions such as some videos which dont even have the artists in it.

In Alesha Dixon's music video for Breathe slow it mostly is selling the artist with the two main scences they cut between being her dancing in a studio or her lip syncing to the song showing her talents and also there are quite a few voyeuristic shots of her body.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-503QA6F08g&feature=PlayList&p=35EE6175452FE1BC&index=0&playnext=1

Star analysis

Frisco is a famous grime artist in the UK scene, his videos portray him as part of a gang and living a hard lifestyle. This sells him to people who think they are in the same situation or people who are intrested in 'gangster' lifestyles. In all his videos he has a Gang in the background as well as it being set in london. The majority of his video focuses on him and him rapping rather than having a story line or anything. Also the video is quite simple and loks as if it could be rather cheaply made which i have found to be a recurring thing in a lot of grime or rap music video, which you can see by looking at both of these music videos. because its just him rapping for most of his music videos is good in my opinion because its basic and too the point and shows that he takes what he is saying seriously and doesn't need a music video with a story line or anything else. Although its mostly shots of Frisco they still edited the video with lots of cuts which helps keep the audience watching.

Questionnaire

These are the question we will be asking our target audience to find out what would be the best way of advertising and selling the music video, artist and the song. We will ask people by putting our questionnaire on social networking sites such as facebook as well as handing a few out to our friends.

1.    How do you find out about new music?

2.    Where do you get your music from?

3.    Do you read any music magazines, if so which ones?

4.    Do you watch music channels, if so which ones?

5.    Do you go on any music websites?

6.    What do you think are conventions of rap and grime music videos?

7.    What do you like about these kind of videos?

Analysing Past Students Work

I am going to analyse an old students music video. The one I have chosen is a mixture of recording and istopmotion. Here is the link for the video:



This video starts off with the artist singing with a guitar, this tells us the artist can play an instrument and is slightly different to other artists due to singing with a guitar, due to other artists just singing and having a backing track. The guitar scene is faded out by the camera panning upwards and towards a tree and then cuts into the istop motion.
         The istopmotion is linked to the lyrics extremely well, this is a common theme wtih istopmotion due to it being easy to make characters with playdough and you can suit charcters and places very well to suit the song, I think they used istopmotion also because the lyrics are a large part of the song and if the song was just the artist and the guitar this would be tedious and would not keep the audience interested for 3 minutes.

Analysing & Evaluating Past Students Work

1.Selling the artist - They show the artist skill of singing as he is peforming in the music video as well as him playing the guitar.
2.Voyeurism - They don't really use much voyeurism in this music video and i don not think that it would go well with the song as it is quite a slow romantic song.
3.Genre Characteristics - Has the typical love song theme with a girl and a boy.
4.Visuals + Lyrics - The group have obviously analysed the lyrics and based some of the music video around it for example when the song lyrics are about going to an underground saloon there is a scene with the girl and the boy meeting in a cafe.
5.Visuals + Music - The pace of the cuts is rather slow which does look good and goes in time with the music.
6.Intertextuality - I have not noticed any intertextuality in this music video.

Overall i think this is quite a good video as they have used a variety of different shots and they have good editing techniques such as a split screen.



I like the way in this video that they have edited the contrast or the brightness of the footage at the begging of the video which i think helps it look more professional and fits in with the genre of the music. Also the shots of the scenery at the beginning look very nice and quite artistic and helps to set the scene like an establishing shot. They have also used a lot of nice cut techniques between shots such as fading as well as using split screens. I think they could have improved there music video by having more cuts in it as i don't think that there is much going on that would keep someone interested for the whole length of the song for they could have added another scene to the music video to cut between, although i do see why they kept long duration shots which flow well with the slow beat and romantic song.

Mind map

This is our audience mind map, as a group we thought about what our target audience would look like, be like what activities they do in their free time, their fashion and what other artists they would enjoy listening to and what genre of music. We did this as we thought it would help us create a better understanding of what audience we are targeting so we can make sure the video will realte to them and something they would like to watch.