Evaluation Question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

This is our finished music video. The genre was Hip Hop. We created a music video for a song by Canadian rapper, Drake to his single 'Headlines'. 

To come up with an answer for this question, I think it's best to go into detail about what conventions even are. A convention is a way in which something is usually done, within a particular area. We get conventions in everything. Here I am going to focus on the conventions of music videos as this is the media product which I have created. A music video is a videotaped performance of a recorded popular song, usually accompanied by dancing and visual images interpreting the lyrics. Conventions of a music video are things that we expect to see throughout. These include:

• A variety of camera shots. Long shots, close up, extreme close ups, and mid shots. Close ups are used to reflect the emotion within the song and the lyrics as well as a connection with the audience. 
• A variety of camera movements, such as tracking panning and arc shots. These are used to follow the artist or the actor throughout the video.
• mise en scene:

- Props that are appropriate to the genre. E.g. Hip Hop would use Bling.

- Costume that is appropriate to the genre.

- Lighting that is appropriate. E.g. outdoor natural lighting, or indoor artificial lighting.

- Actors that are appropriate tot he genre. Such as ethnicity, age and gender are all important.

- A setting that is appropriate to the music genre.

• We all expect to see the artist or band members throughout the music video too.

Besides conventions of music videos, we all expect to see certain things in a particular genre of music video. We have created a Hip Hop music video. This had many conventions that we met, developed and challenged throughout. Hip Hop is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, which is a rhythmic speak that is chanted. This includes artists such as Jay Z and Drake. Conventions of the Hip Hop genre include:

• Usually a male artist in the foreground, dominantly in the camera and highly confident.
• The use of black and white in Hip Hop is often used in editing.
• Usually filmed in urban areas, this can suggest the characters life or background, such as 'rags to riches'.
• Females in the Hip Hop genre are usually wearing provocative clothing, showing a lot of skin and cleavage.
• Males often are the opposite to the females in Hip Hop, and wear baggy clothing with a lot of Bling. This connotes Hip Hop well and shows wealth.
• Lighting is often low key, reflecting on what the song is about.
• Actors are often bold and confident and proud of who they are. Sometimes we may class tattoos as a connotation of Hip Hop too.
• Props we expect to see are, a lot of jewellery, phones, money, sometimes guns. These are all things that make the artist look wealthy, or show a lower to higher class contrast. The gun being stereotypical of the genre linking with crime.
• Narrative - The storyline throughout Hip Hop music videos are usually about women. The artist usually left alone and not winning the girl. If they are not about women then the other storyline is often about crime and street life. We know this by the artists/characters roles and how the lyrics match with the visual.
• Iconography is signs and symbols that we expect to see throughout the video. In Hip Hop, we expect to see dollar signs, brands, clubs/parties, dominant gestures, big houses and champagne. Young money's 'Bedrock' below, is a video where lots of iconography is shown. 

Shots and editing used in Hip Hop:

Some of the shots that i found were often used in Hip Hop videos were:

• Low angled shots, these made the artist have more power and showed dominance and importance to the video.

• There is often, bright and coloured lights in editing and in club scenes. These make 
• Editing fits to the pace of the music in Hip Hop music videos. Meaning that if the music is fast, each frame will have to be just as quick.

Considering all of the conventions of Hip Hop as listed above, we met, challenged and developed these throughout our video. 

Conventions in our genre that we met:

• The appropriate use of black and white in editing
• Black artist/actor
• Fast paced editing

Conventions in our genre that we developed:

• A club scene, without the crowd.
• Having provocative girls around him, we linked a clip of a pole dancer to him instead of with him.

Conventions of our genre that we challenged:

• Bling, would usually be exaggerated, we kept it simple and classy
• We didn't have any of the artists friends around him throughout which is something that usually is throughout Hip Hop videos that we challenged.

To get some inspiration on what we wanted to include in our music video, we researched other music videos in the Hip Hop genre. We took things in videos and made them our own, developing the conventions throughout. Tinie Tempah's 'Passout' music video was useful as it gave us some ideas of different shot types and angles. Tinie Tempah smashes filament lights to build suspension in their video. We liked this idea, so we decided a bottle smashed by the artists was a good interpretation of this. 

Tinie Tempah's smashing of filament lights.

Editing:

Our developed interpretation.

The beginning of our video starts with establishing shots, and quick paced shots flickering between each other to establish the character and the setting, setting the scene throughout. Jay Z's video to 'Money,Cash,Hoes' also uses establishing shots for us to identify the setting, also showing the characters in the first few seconds of the video. I think this works well to our chosen genre as it fits with the pace of the editing.
Below is two shots from the start of a hip hop video by Jay Z. In comparison to the similarity in  our music video opening. The first two are shots from a Jay Z video. The second two are shots from our own video.

We decided after watching many other videos from the genre Hip Hop that editing was a key thing to think about and whether or not we wanted to keep it up with the pace of the music throughout. We did decide to keep up with the music after looking at music videos from the same genre. There are many effects used in Hip Hop music videos, some even being surreal effects. I found a Drake Video 'Over' which uses consistent effects throughout the whole video. Some of these effects I wanted to have in our video. We interpreted each effect differently. The use of green screening and the background effects worked best for this. At 1.25 in this video, the blurred effects of the artist is something I wanted to include in our music video. So that it wasn't too similar I had a look at many effects and below Drake's video is my interpretation of the blurred editing.

In many Hip Hop videos, girls are shown provocatively. We met this convention, however didn't have it throughout our video very often. We met this by having a girl pole dancing. The flashing lighting helped to set a scene that is often relevant in Hip Hop. Her gestures are very provocative which is good in Hip Hop because this is the way in which girls are represented in this genre . Below I put together two clips which we included in our music video.

We used different types of shots throughout our video, a lot being still yet we had a few hand held shots to represent the artists lifestyle. We have seen in various Hip Hop music videos, the use of handheld shots in effective ways. An example of this would be in a video that In analysed at the start of the year, again by Jay Z '99 problems'. This uses hand held shots effectively throughout.

Our videos hand held shots are when the artist is walking through a club. This is used to make him look important and hand made. This is an screenshot off our video of where we have used hand held shots.

Digipak

For my ancillary task I used a lot of conventions including track listing, bar codes, release dates and having the artist on the front cover.  I used these as they fit with the usual conventions of a digipak.They are an essential convention of a digipak so it was vital I included one on my digipak. We decided to have the artist on the front cover as I feel that this will draw people onto looking at the CD cover as it has a well known artist on the front. This is also a regular convention of a Hip-Hop digipak, as the artists are often very confident. 
An album that I took some inspiration from was Jay Z's 'reasonable doubt'. I liked this digipak because even though it was quite simplistic, it works well in promoting the artist and the genre.The use of black and white is effective too as this is a convention in the hip hop genre. This album also used a parental advisory label on. These are all things that I wanted to have on our digipak. His magazine advert for this album showed clear brand identity between the two as it has the image of the album on the front, also the same fonts and sizes which all link together showing clear brand identity.

After looking at this album and previous ones I have analysed earlier on, we came up with our own complete digipak which I think meets all the conventions of Hip Hop.

Advertising Our Product

We are now very close to completing our media product: a music video. So we thought that we should think about where and how we are going to advertise our product. We think that our target audience will be the sort of people that listen to Radio1xtra. This is a radio station that plays a lot of Hip Hop songs, old and new. They advertise new songs on air, and they also have a website where we think that our product could be successful on.
The majority of our target audience are online, and are fully interested in the music industry. Therefor we feel that another great way to advertise our music video would be online. The age group we are aiming to please too are those that are probably following their favorite artists on twitter, and liked them on Facebook. This tells us that Twitter and Facebook too will be a great way to share and advertise our media product. Reaching out to our target audience successfully. YouTube too, is full of advertisements to the latest tracks in many genres. YouTube will probably be one of the best places to advertise our media product.

Filming: Night Club & Studio

This is our final shots of filming that we did. Firstly we filmed the studio scene in a small music room at school. This room was very small and it was difficult to get the shots that we wanted. But we are still using the clips as cutaways throughout the video. These are the shots of Gideon in the studio. We put this shot into black and white on our music video. We did this because black and white connote the Hip Hop genre.

We have now filmed in Tokyo night club in Lincoln too. This was during the day, we got permission to use any of the rooms. We chose to use the VIP booths and rooms. We used a variety of angled shots, also a handheld shot of Gideon walking through the club. This was to represent the hectic lifestyle of Drake. These are some of the shots we used.

 Below are images of the two rooms that we used to film in.

Shooting Schedule

We are hoping to film for the last time to complete our video to a higher standard.
We are going to film at De Aston School once more, using the music rooms mixing and recording desks as a studio, so that the video has a bit more of a narrative to it. We have also received permission from a night club 'Tokyo' in Lincoln to film in a VIP booth for a couple of hours during the day. This should help to improve our video greatly as they're both professional looking places. Both in which we hope to look professional in our music video.
We are going to use a variety of shots for these scenes, as we have noticed that the camera throughout is very still, besides one pan that we have at the moment. We hope to include high angle shots, hand held effective shots and a high angled arc shot.
Below is our shooting schedule just for these two scenes.

Shooting schedule template from hjacklinmedia

Green Screen

Something we see in many Hip Hop videos, is the use of green screening. This can show the artist on any background wanted. Using the chroma key on Sony Vegas we put Gideon onto a black background. Chroma keying, is a special effects technique for compositing two images or video streams together based on color hues. So here, the background and the artist we wish to put together. These images are when we were filming using the green screen. We vhad to make sure that he stayed inside the screen so that when it came to editing, we didn't cut out any parts of his body.

I think that green screening worked really well for our video and we have managed to create some great effects that you are likely to see in  a Hip Hop music video. Below is two shots and backgrounds we made using the green screen and appropriate use of editing on Sony Vegas software.

 

Our Final Magazine Advert

This is our final poster advertising our digipak. We made this poster using Photoshop. The font for the title of the album 'Headlines' is the same font that we used on our digipak. We did this so that they had a connection to each other. I think that the black and white contrast works well on this magazine advert. We used a gradient colored banner at the bottom of this advert to promote the digipak. Without the digipak shown on the advert, we didn't think it was simple enough to show what it is being advertised. We included, young money record label's logo on this advert too. This was to promote the record company and artist too, as well as the digipak. 
Having a large and central image of the artist on the front worked well because it helps the audience to focus on him without any background clutter that leads the eye away from the image.
I am pleased with this advert as i think that this promotes the digipak as well as the artist successfully.

Student Magazine Advert; Analysis

Magazine Advert; Student Analysis. on Prezi

Magazine Advert; Analysis 2.

The second magazine advert I have decided to analyse is by Wretch 32 'Wretchrospective'. I chose to analyse this because it is from the same genre as what our magazine advert is.

Text:

The text on this advertisement is in two different fonts. The first being the cartoon style writing of the artists name. The second being the bold and dominant writing across the front telling us the album name, release date and featuring artists. The bold and large writing is something we associate with Hip Hop music as it's confident font representing the artist well. I like that there is not too much writing on the advertisement making it more eye catching so that we're not put off.

Artwork/Image:

The artwork on this advert shows a mixture of graphics and background. This also including an image of the artist himself. The effect of the graffiti background i think works well with the genre of music as Hip Hop can often be associated with urban backgrounds and places, signifying street crime and deviance such as graffiti. The artist is holding a silver chain necklace in this image with a cross on it. This signifies the religious views that there often are in the genre of Hip Hop. Having an image of the digipak on the advert is often a good idea to show what the album you'd like to buy looks like. However, in this case, the album front cover is the same as the image on the advert. Therefor isn't always necessary.

Info:
As mentioned, there is minimal amount of information on this advert besides what we really need to know. Featuring artists may be good to know before buying so that the audience can have some idea of the collaborations with other artists. In the right hand corner, there are logos of places the album is available to buy from. This is important in promoting the digipak so that it can be bought by the target audience.

Layout:

I think that the layout of the advert works well because the artist is central with everything else around the artist. This shows his confidence and bold personality that we expect from a Hip Hop artist. The layout of this advert is exactly the same as the digipak. This works well because it's easy for the target audience to link the poster and the album together subliminally.  

Overall, I think that this magazine advert is successful in promoting the digipak and also the artist.

Magazine Advert; Analysis 1.

 The first magazine advert I have decided to analyse is Jay Z and Kanye West 'Watch the throne'. I chose to analyse this as it's from the same genre as ours. This is a poster that i found advertising the album.

Text:
The font throughout the advert is all similar. The artists names are the boldest and the first thing that we see when looking at the magazine advert. This is because Hip Hop artists tend to be very confident and outgoing. The boldness of the titles reflect that personality. The next biggest writing on the page is the title of the album! This is important to the audience so that they know what it is they're buying. Also that the writing is in capitals, shows the confident character.

Layout:
The layout of the advert is very neat and tidy. With the main image and digipak in the center of the advert, makes it more eye catching and shows what the audience will be buying, grasping the attention of the target audience. The layout works well in this image centralising the main things such as the artists and the album itself.

Info:
There is quite a bit of information on this advert. Not too much that it puts the audience off and not too little so that we don't know enough about, which is good. The title of the album and of the artists is something that is essential to the advert for those wishing to know about it. Added information included on this advert is things such as 'pre order today' and the artists album website. Unlike many advertisements for albums, there is no date saying specifically when the album is to be released. Pre order today, works well in this case and looks more classy on the advertisement than a release date. The website includes more information on the making of the album which all links well to the advertisement. Also more information is on here such as the record labels in which helped to create the album. DefJam and Rocafella records are two labels which relate to the hip hop music industry well and help to promote the artists.

Image:
Having the image of the digipak helps to relate the poster to the album and promote the artist well. If the image was completely different, it wouldn't reach its target audience well enough for the advertisement to link with the actual album. The image of the two artists on the front works well so that the  audience know who they're listening to. Also them being central and at the front of the advert makes them seem dominant and confident artists that they are. This is often the case in Hip Hop which is why i think that the magazine advert is successful in promoting both the digipak for the album, and the artist.

What Is Brand Identity?

Brand identity is where a range of media texts can be associated with one another. For example, Jay Z and Kanye West have an album 'watch the throne'. Both the poster and the digipak link well. This is an example of brand identity.

Conventions Of Magazine Adverts

These are the things that we expect to see on a magazine advert that is advertising an album:

• Artist
• Release Date
• Brand identity
• Image
• Website
• Singles
• Tour dates
• Ratings
• Shops (hmv)
• 'Follow us on Twitter'
• 'Like us on Facebook'
• Record Label
• Parental advisory Label if necessary. 

Ancillary Task 2; Brief

A magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD) package.

Insides Of Our Final Digipak

Inside our Digipak, on the left hand side, we decided to make a six page pullout/lyric booklet for all the songs on the album. This is something we wanted to do as we hadn't seen many student digipak's the same as this. Each page with lyrics on has a different image. Each image is of the artist at different points throughout the video. This gives quite a clear concept of what to expect in our music video for Headlines. We used a white font for this, because we wanted the lettering to stand out and to be readable  I am pleased with the outcome of the pullout.

On the right hand side, we have the disk and a page behind the disk. These both have the same image on but scaled differently. The image is at different opacity's so that they're not exactly the same. I like the link between the two and think they work well with the rest of the digipak all linking together. The writing on the disk, simply says 'Drake - Headlines' as there is nothing else needed on the disk that we don't have printed anywhere else on the digipak.

Digipak Front & Back

Even though we designed something that is completely different to what we have done here, this is what we have come up with for our final digipak. After playing around with the gradient colours, the gold and black worked best with our genre. Gold represents the wealthy artist and meets the generic conventions of a Hip Hop album digipak. The titles saying the artists name and song name are also in gold. This makes it all link together nicely. On the front cover, we thought it was necessary to put on a parental advisory sticker. This is because, the song we created a music video for has bad language in. As does other songs on the album. Having an image of the artist on the front shows the importance of him as a dominant and confident artist. We used a programme called illustrator to create the whole digipak.



This is the back cover of our final digipak. We took the image of a mixing desk and edited the image in Photoshop. Canging it into black and white and adjusting the contrast. I like the depth of filed in this image and how the image leads your eye further in to it. Black and white is a convention of Hip Hop which is why we put this effect on it. The writing on the back is again quite a different kind of writing you may expect to see on a Hip Hop digipak, however we think it works nicely, representing a more classy Hip Hop artist. To make it stand out a bit more, we but a glow effect behind the tracklist. This will make it easier for the viewer sto see. On the back, we also have a barcode. We created this bar code using the bar code generator where we chose the numbers and style to get the final one. Also, record labels that we have used that promote the artist are also on the back. The small print writing isn't as important as the gold text throughout, but is something we see on many digipaks mentioning the producers and where it was made.

 

Feedback On Our Ideas

So that we could make the best possible digipak that our audience would like, we asked twelve people for feedback on their favourite idea.

Our second idea was the most favourited by the people we asked. They said the link between the back and the front work really well together and show us an idea of what is to be expected in the music video.

 However the inside of our second idea wasn't as strong as the outside. It was suggested to do a pull out on the left inside with the lyrics in instead of them spread among the whole page. 

This feedback was useful and we decided that we would go for this Idea hopefully with a pull out lyric book too. This is the sort of thing that we plan on doing for our digipak.

Digipak Idea 3.

This is our final idea for the digipak album. This image is an extreme close up of Gideon's face. This sort of close up shows extreme confidence in the artist and shows how he is a dominant figure. Again like in our other ideas, there is a bold, capital title showing confidence again. The title of the song in red is more highlighted than the artists name. This is to draw attention to the album to buyers. In the image, Gideon is wearing rayban's. These are to signify a wealthy artist and is a brand of sunglasses that we see a lot of Hip Hop artists wearing in music videos so that it meets the conventions of our genre.

For this inside, we decided we would go and take a picture of some 'beats' headphones on a mixing desk for the left hand side. This is some different things that we see throughout the video and is giving a hint to what the music video may include. The background of the right hand side will be red as then there is a colour code through the whole digipak.

The background on this back cover is similar to the first idea as it is very plain and simple. The background colour would be black, contrasting with the red writing which again is a generic convention of Hip Hop. Keeping it very simple doesn't over crowd the digipak too much either or lead your eye away from the text. At the same time this could be a bit boring for others that may judge a CD by its cover. Because that is the first thing most of us do.

Digipak Idea 2.

This is our second idea for a digipak for 'Headlines' This is one of our urban shots which we have already taken under a bridge while we were filming. The background of the image is urban looking and has pillars in. Gideon is in the foreground, this showing his dominance and confident character. The title and the artists name are both in a bold and capital font. Also the colour red. Red is signifying the confidence of the character.

On the inside of this idea, we decided it may work well to have the songs lyrics printed right across the page, and underneath where the CD disk is to go. This is something we have seen done in another Hip Hop album that we liked.

The background image for this back cover is a similar kind of shot  to the front. We took this whilst filming too and is in the same urban area to the front cover shot. I like this idea because both the front and the back images link together nicely. On the back of this too, as will be on all three ideas for our digipak will be a bar code and company logos and record labels. These help to establish both the genre and to both advertise and show recognition of who helped to create the album.

Digipak Idea 1.

This is the first idea that we came up with for the front cover of our digipak. This image on the front is a shot from our video which was originally a green screened shot. This has a black background and three images of Gideon layered on one another. 

The inside of the digipak on this idea, we decided to keep plain and simple. We did this so that it isn't too over crowded and keeps it looking clear and professional. 

This is the back cover of our first idea. This has an image of Gideon (our actor) on it. The composition of the image is with the subject to the right. This is because we want the track list to stand out against the image clearly. The track list will be white, capital lettering and bold in this first idea. This is a generic convention of a digipak in Hip Hop which is why we chose this lettering and font.

Analysis of a digipak 2.

This digipak that I have chosen to analyse, is the album and music video which we are recreating. This is Drake's second studio album 'Take Care'.

Front Cover:

The front cover of the album shows the artist. However in Hip Hop we would expect his facial expression and gestures to be more confident than they are here. Here he is showing quite an introvert appeal about himself and doesn't look like a dominant and confident person. This contrasts with the actual music though and how he is through his movements in his videos, so this shows that the conventions of the genre have been challenged in this digipak. There is a parental advisory label on the front cover of the album. This is important to the buyer to expect bad language throughout the album or at some point. The name of the album 'Take Care' is at the bottom of the cover. The font is not very out there and matches how it is trying to show the artists personality. The colour gold works well as it is linked to many other gold items throughout the digipak. Gold also represents wealth and upper class lifestyles which I think Drake is. The sticker on the front saying 'deluxe' is an addition to the album cover which is there to show that there are extra songs on this album as appose to the original album.

 Back Cover:

The back cover of this album is kept quite simple yet still gives the same effect. The black and gold colours are again to show wealth and upper class lifestyles, which promotes the artist well. The bar code is something we always get on a digipak which is also on this one. Along with the record labels and the company logos. This helps to promote the artist and companies helped to produce the album.

 Insides:

The insides of this album are kept neat and simple. There is a pullout on the left side of the digipak. This includes many recognition's to producers, companies which helped in making the album. Along with pictures of Drake (the artist). I like this idea to have a pullout inside the digipak, which is something i'd like to include in our digipak, along with lyrics. The disk again, is neat and simple which represents the artist. The insides and outsides of it all link together making the digipak more professional. Again the colours showing wealth and upper class lifestyle of the artist.

Overall, I think that this digipak has been very successful in promoting the artist. I would like our final digipak for our recreation of Headlines to be as professional as this one.