Final Music Video

This is our final version of our Music Video which we believe is of a high standard. The Music Video shows the two different artists experiencing traumatic events that have occurred to them and their friends in their lives. This can be seen in the non linear narrative in the Music Video, the narrative is in black and white as we wanted to create the sense of the characters remembering back to what has happened to their friends, almost like a flashback as it is a past event. we have also chosen to have children in our video because we wanted to create the fact that it is never too late to change your life and send the message to the youth population that if you do decide to change your life, you could be prominently rewarded for it as you are doing something positive.

Evaluation

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

Our media product was inspired by a music video that has a similar story line, similar camera shots and an urban genre. The music video we got inspiration from is 'Many Men' by 50 cent, just like our music video it has a gritty non-linear narrative showing shocking clips of memories he has witnessed through his own eyes. The media product of our Music Video is similar to 'Many Men' by 50 Cent in a way of the clothing being alike, the clothing in the Music Video makes the media product more realistic as it represents the characters personalities.

The picture on the left is an image from the Video "Many Men" by 50 Cent, this image shows the clothing that 50 Cent is wearing. He is wearing a red and white hat, white T-shirt, big red jacket and a chain, 50 cent may chosen to wear these clothes and accessories to create a more urban image within the Music Video which would trigger the audience to pay more attention to the character as they would look the part and it would be more professional as the sense of realism would kick in at this point. The colour red in his clothing represents "blood" that he is out to murder.

The picture on the left is an image of Lil Wayne and The Game from our Music Video product. The clothing in this image is very similar to the on above as The game is wearing a chain and a similar coloured jacket however Lil Wayne is wearing a blue jacket which contrasts what The game is wearing. We chose to do this because we wanted both colours to be represented as one and signify the same thing. The target audience for our Music Video would expect something like this in the clothing of the characters because it is appropriate for the genre.

Our music video broke away from the average Hip Hop/Rap conventions as we tried to portray and weave a positive message within the narrative, breaking stereotypes of so called 'gangster rappers' who are consistently shown by the media as being negative with there videos showing guns, drugs and violence. Instead we used children, the younger generation who must learn right from wrong. We also revealed footage of red and blue bandanna which would shock most people as they are sworn enemies, but wanted to reunite them for a positive cause and stop the violence. Furthermore we shown footage of the fire which denoted the fire as a life, like a candle in the wind, it can easily be taken however it can be saved depending what path you chose to take. Our Music product challenges the thoughts of the audience as it moves away from negative aspects in life to more positive things in life, like in our Magazine advert we have chosen to go with an awards ceremony theme what shows hard work in the real media it also shows that if you choose to do right you will get noticed and rewarded for it. The Music video challenges conventions of real life rap products as it sends the message and value that young children should do the right things in life if they want to be successful.

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

Our Music video, Magazine advert and CD case features the same elements of house style expressing the same ethos throughout. These different products link together to make them work effectively in our project. As we used the same effects and fonts consistently throughout the ancillary texts. We designed both the Music video and CD products with urban effects such as gradient dull lighting and urban locations, all the three products also have the main performers in to show who is sending a positive message to younger males, rather than what our message is about. The magazine page sells our product as it is a advising campaign showing our most disputed debut single 'My Life'. In the Music Video we have chosen to represent adolescent males that have done negative things in their lives but send a positive message. Through the non linear narrative in the video for younger children not to choose the wrong path in their life. In the Music Video we have chosen to include black and white flashbacks of a crime scene. This effects our product as it represents the fact if you do choose to pick the wrong path in life there are consequences. In our CD Case we have chosen to carry on the same message the Music Video has, we have chosen to add a quote from the artist "change your life before it's too late" representing and selling the product of changing your life from a young age and if you don't it might be too late and you could get caught in the gang life. In our Magazine advert we carry on the same themes but we have chosen to have a red carpet awards ceremony as it reinforces that if you choose the right path in life you could get rewarded for it and achieve big thing. For our Music video we have used the marketing technique of a test screening, this is an advantage as the audience would tell us what they don't like which we could change to make it more effective. Another marketing technique we used is viral marketing for the Magazine advert, this would help sell the product and make the audience more aware of when the product is out and what stores it will be available from. The CD Case makes it more easier to sell the product to people that can relate to the issues in the song and video as The Game and Lil' Wayne are sat on swings with them in colour and everything else in black and white, this reinforces that if you choose to do bad things you will be on your own and it will seem that the world is against you.

The effectiveness of the combination of our main product and ancillary texts can be seen below as the continuity flow in a similar style .

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Having an audience feedback has helped our group see what we have done well and what was not done well, how we could improve and what footage we could of used more. In our audience feedback someone mentioned that one of our backgrounds to our greenscreen was not very effective. From this feedback we decided to change this greenscreen background to something that suits that part of the song better. We did the audience feedback by getting a random group to watch our Music Video and giving them an audience feedback sheet to give us back some positive and critical acclaim on our Music Video. From the whole process of an audience feedback we have learnt that taking the audiences advice on board is very effective as they are not involved in the project and could spot any limitations that could be turned into very powerful strengths. During the audience feedback we received a suggestion for improvement on the lighting since our Music Video is about negatives lifestyles that could be turned into positives, this would mean that the audience wanted to see more dull scenes rather than bright as it would match in perfectly with the generic features of the theme in our Music Video, which would create a more effective impact on the audience for our Media product. Most of the audience that viewed our Music Video said that the locations in the Video were spot on and matched the song which emphasised the generic themes what the performers were talking about. we used locations such as a bridge, subway and a park, we thought of these locations as we knew that it would engage the audience to the video as the locations were very gritty which reinforces the urban side of the song. From our audience feedback we have learnt that it is very critical to stick to normal rap/hip hop conventions as that is what the audience expect to see, by following the usual rap conventions increased the sense of realism as the mise en scene would fit in with the rap song. The clothing of the two performers would also emphasise the sense of realism as usual rap and hip hop videos seem to associate the performers with big baggy and colourful clothing.

4) How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Before getting into the camera work and editing we planned our genre and what song we all wanted. Our group all contributed ideas, although as we all like the same genres it wasn't difficult to choose Rap/HipHop. Once we had chosen our genre, we went through many songs to decide our final one, we used youtube to look at different videos that wanted to do a Music Video on. Once we had chosen our final song, we used many different website to find out about the video and artists for our research. For our construction stage we used different media technologies such as Final Cut Pro, Tricaster and hand held camera's. We used the hand held camera's to film around Hulme, and we used Tricaster for our greenscreen footage. Then we used Final Cut Pro to edit our Music Video and Photoshop to create the print based items which is the CD case and Magazine advert. For our evaluation stage we also used the hand held camera and Final Cut Pro to record and edit the video's of our audience feedback and another video to explain media technologies is shown through the directors commentary below.

Directors Commentary (My Life)