Evaluation - Question 1

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

My media products

My media products conform to the ideas of a typical professional approach to the music industry. My video is shot with base tracks, jump cuts, repeat shots of the artist, camera moves with the music and our artist looks directly at the artist to create a connection and an involvement with the video. 

My artists genre is R&B/Soul and for the original video i would say looking back to Andrew Goodwins ideas, that the original video was disjuncture(Disjuncture: This is where there is little connection between the lyrics and video or where the video contradicts the lyrics.). I think the song that I picked as a group worked best with this category. It follows the conventions of Vernalis's theory, using edits much more frequently than in a film, breaking this barrier allows us not to be distracted/bored, and our attention is focused on whats being performed on screen.

Base Tracks, Jump Cuts, Camera moves with music, repeat shots of artist, artist looks directly at camera to include audience.

I drew influences that helped me work on the Editing, mise en scene, camera work and motifs of my music video.

What videos was i influenced by and why:

INFLUENCES

Amy Winehouse - Back To Black 

Lana Del Rey - 'Video games and 'Born to die'

Beyonce - 'Run this world'

Ambersuit 'Not Looking For Sympathy' 

Emeli Sande - 'Heaven'

Yasmin  light up the world

Rihanna - Cheers (Drink To That)

Kanye West - 'Jesus walks'

Mise en scene/iconography

I was influenced for our music video by looking at the Mise en scene of other videos. Our video is called Heaven so we wanted to make the settings nice and calm to reflect this. We used Abney Park cemetery and the outside of the church to create a religious imagery. Amy Winehouse made use of the cemetery and the exterior of the church in her video, 'Back To Black'. I really liked these religious symbols like crosses and gravestones in the cemetery and used them to our advantage in the video.

Regents Canal was another of our base-tracks 
adding a upbeat summery lighthearted feel good sense to our video.  Ambersuit 'Not Looking For Sympathy' was set on Regents Canal and it added a really good feel to her video, but we made more use of the view and scenery.

Also, Lana Del Rey - 'Born To Die' is set in a church with a lot of religious icons, as well as the first version of Kanye West ' Jesus Walks', set in a church, while the other version shows a man carrying a cross.

Style/appearance: Our performer Emine Parker needed to be a fashion icon, who had a very modern up to date style, but also wasn't bursting out with colour or wearing something that wasn't suitable for the song, but at the same time still having a edgy look. We decided she was going to represent a elegant celebrity in modern trend wearing mainly black but adding something to brighten it up, such as lipstick and shoes. We took inspiration from our original artist Emeli Sande, while trying to steer away from her. She wore a striped white and black top which was very in at the moment, Rihanna wore it in her video 'Whats My Name'. 

I believe we created a very  good example of what a real artist would have worn and represented, having taken inspiration from artists in the now.

Effects and other influences we didn't get to put in.

As a group we wanted to add a old film effect to our music video and use the effect Emeli Sande used at the start of her video:

As well as this effect we wanted to have a constant retro feel, such as a old effect filter. It is used in such videos as Lana Del Rey 'Video game'

I wanted to make the video Heaven about humanity as a whole rather than separate religions. I wanted to originally do this by showing a very mixed ethnic selection together as one. For example in 'Love is my religion' by Ziggy Marley instead of showing lots of different religions, it points to the fact that love is the basis for them all.

I wanted to show a mixed variety of people coming down a estate block, with an occasional flash to angels. We didn't get the chance to do this, but i am happy anyway. An example of where i got this influence from is Natty - Badman, as he shows a variety of people mouthing his words.

For my Digipack I did my research and chose to go with a grey/black and white theme as it follows the conventions of real album covers, and I've seen many artists do for their albums. I thought for our artist it is very effective for an album cover, as she is a R&B/Soul singer.

This is my finished ancillary product, and i think compared to actual artists it compares very well and could be a real professionally made album.

        

As for my Advertisement, it replicates a real media form very well. The Artist name has the largest font size, promoting the debut artists name, the album cover is on there, a star rating by a magazine, when its out, where its available and what social networking platforms she's on.

Sam 

Question 1

What i would like you to do is to start by thinking about the main forms and conventions of music videos - we analysed these ideas at the start of the unit. Think back to the early blogs on Vernallis and Goodwin and look at the laminates. What you are writing about at the moment are stylistic ideas that you've borrowed from real videos rather than examining the forms and conventions and then looking  at how you use them. What you've got you can use but you must add to it.

Base Tracks, Jump Cuts, Camera moves with music, repeat shots of artist, artist looks directly at camera to include audience.