The brief I chose to do was brief 1. A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:
• a website homepage for the band
• a cover for it's release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package)
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).
. Like in my first year, I had to create a blog at blogger.com, this is were I had to present all of my research. I began by thinking of an idea for my media product. I had to decide whether there was a narrative behind my music video or if I would follow the popular and conventional type of music video by doing a performance style. I thought about the genre, cast, location, props, style, costume, editing, mis-en-scene and cinematography that I would be using in order to produce an effective media product. My first idea began by me choosing the genre of my music video, which was a mix between pop/ R&B.
I began my research by looking at the different codes of conventions of R&B. In the early 1980’s a newer style of R&B developed, known as contemporary R&B. This is the type of R&B style that I wanted to incorporate into my idea for my chosen medium. Contemporary R&B is a music genre that combines elements of hip hop, R&B, and soul music. It’s a style of music developed by African Americans that combines blues and jazz, characterized by a strong backbeat and repeated variations on syncopated instrumental phrases. R&B has elements from funk, soul, pop, blues and hip-hop. Most R&B videos are narrative and performance based. They tend to represent wealth by showing off expensive possessions such as cars, designer clothing and lavish homes etc. I was going to incorporate this into my idea by using wealthy props, costumes and mis-en-scene . A lot of the focus in a R&B music videos is generally on the artists physical appearance and on the others in the video. There are many famous R&B artists in today’s society such as Beyonce, Kanye West, Rihanna, Usher etc… all of these artists have a similar look that lets the audience understand that R&B is their genre of music. All these are artists are mainly African American, and this is where this genre was founded, this to most people is a stereotype of this genre. In most R&B videos there is a great amount of dancing and performance. This can include anything from hip hop, break dancing and contemporary dance. The video's conventions are often focused on the physical looks of the artist or the extras, in most R&B music videos the men are usually dressed in either designer clothes or smart clothes and usually wearing lots of big gold jewellery, this is to symbolise their wealth and show their importance. Women in this genre of video are usually dressed in very little clothing as they tend to like showing of their body’s but they do usually have their hair and make-up quite extravagant looking to make them stand out as they try to have the main focus on them throughout the music video. R&B videos regularly use tracking shots, close-ups and mid-shots to show the emotions and body language of the artist and for the viewer to see the setting as they are usually located in pretty wealthy places and settings. One of the main themes is romance. The artist tends to try and portray either a theme of love, fighting or breaking-up in their video. This is one of the codes and conventions that help make the genre of the video recognizable to the audience.
I chose the song dynamite by Taio Cruz, this track was produced by Taio Cruz himself along with Max Martin, Bonnie McKee, Benjamin Levin and Lukasz Gottwald. The genre is R&B, Dance-pop. It was recorded at A side studios and released here in the UK on 30 July 2010. This is quite a recent and popular song when I was creating ideas in the begging for my video and it fitted my genre criteria very well as it was a mix of R&B and pop. At this stage I also done my own research of the history of music videos along with the notes I had from class to give me an idea of different ways in which I could present my media product.
Looking back at the history of music videos. Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action, filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action. Many music videos do not interpret images from the song's lyrics, making it less literal than expected. My research of this found that In the last few decades the importance of music videos has dramatically changed, as nowadays the music video is almost as important as the song. Music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings.
From this I gathered that my media product would have to completely follow the codes of conventions of R&B and pop to get the attention of my target audience in order for it to be a successful product. I made storyboards, chose my location and cast members and also carried out further research by doing analyses of up to date music videos, these were Rihanna: Only Girl, Swedish House Mafia: Miami to Ibiza. I talked about how these videos compared to videos from decades ago, how they had improved and how they were effective to the audience. The videos that I compared them to were Madonna: strike a pose, The Animals: house of the rising sun.
Decades ago these types of music video were the first to be as important as the track itself, for example Madonna’s strike a pose uses lots of codes and conventions that most videos these days use such as style, genre, performance, props, costume and editing.
Further into my planning and research I decided to change my idea, this was due to cast members not being able to film in my schedule. It was also from speaking to my teachers that I realised some of my ideas for the video would not be possible to create. As a lot of R&B music videos are filmed in nightclubs or at party’s, I wanted to carry this convention through to my product, but then realised if I were to film in a nightclub then the lighting wouldn’t be very good as most nightclubs are very dark inside.
I decided to change my song to more of a pop genre, and chose to do a song by Marina and the Diamonds, called OH NO!. With this idea I didn’t do much planning as I quickly changed my idea again and this was the idea that I stuck with till the end. I decided it would be a lot simpler to use only one cast member (Lucy Coggin) as it would be a more effective way to present a performance style in my media product, which is what I wanted to do. I once again changed the track, although I did stick with same genre as I did before of pop, although it slightly enters the genre of indie as well. I chose to use Kate Nash’s track “Mouthwash”, this track was produced by the label fiction, it was written by Kate Nash herself and it was released on October 1st 2007.
My aim for this video was to look quite girly and appeal to those interested in indie/pop music . I wanted a lot of the video to be performance based, with my cast member singing directly into the camera, miming to the lyrics, another idea for the video was to have some shots as just a coloured screen with the lyrics appearing on the screen as I have seen this before on music videos and it really appealed to me as it was very effective.
After finishing the filming I uploaded my footage onto the editing suites at college. I found this particularly difficult in the beginning, even with direction from teachers on how to use it as this was new media technology to me that I hadn’t yet used before. Further into my editing I began to come across different tools on the editing suites that would make my film more effective to the audience and also make it fit in better with the sound track. I used effects such as dissolve, titles and colour mattes. After a few days of editing my video finally came together. Altogether my video is 2mins 30 seconds long which is around average for most conventional music videos.
For the production of my ancillary texts, I took images of Lucy, creating different shots and angles so I had a wide variety to chose from when deciding which ones I would use for the covers of my digipak and my magazine advertisement. I took around five close-up images of Lucy and three long shots, all these images have been posted up on my blog. Again I decide to use Adobe Photoshop for the production of my media texts as I felt, since I used it a lot last year in the production of my work, it would be easier to use and its also great as it had all the effects and tools on it that I needed to make my images look effective and be able to add text to them. I have used Photoshop for all my ancillary texts but I decided to use Microsoft and Publisher to create mock-up Ict drafts of what I had planned my ancillary texts to look like. I had many different ideas for my magazine advertisement and digipak covers, and decided to look at other digipaks and advertisements to get inspiration for my own. I found that when doing my research into R&B digipaks and advertisements, the main them was quite dark and powerful through their use of mis-en-scene, props and location. When I researched more pop looking digipaks that they were brighter and in a way, compared to R&B, the combination of style on their ancillary texts had more of a relation to their videos, through the uses of the same colour schemes, costumes, props and shots.
I feel like I have done the same in my product, as my video is very bright and colourful which is the same theme that I have carried through to my ancillary texts. I have kept the same colour schemes throughout my work so that my music video and ancillary texts all fitted in with each other.
For my music video I decided to have some shots that were just a coloured screen with the lyrics appearing onto the screen, I thought this would have been really effective as I have seen this in other music videos, a lot done by the artist, who’s track I chose to use. although in the beginning I thought this would be a good idea, looking back at my music video I feel like I could have spent more time trying out different fonts and colour effects for them certain shots to make them look more appealing. I would also maybe of had some images popping up on these screens to fill them more. The colours that I have used, I feel are very appealing to my target audience as they are bright and bold and represent a fun and upbeat music video, which is what i wanted to do. i haven't used many props in music video, because this was my third idea i didn't really have the time to gather props together, I think that if I had started my video a lot earlier then it would have been a lot better than what it has turned out to be. I felt that some of the shots that I have used in my video are quite effective, for example; when the lyrics say "this is my face" I have zoomed in to my characters face, another, the shot when my character is spinning around, the lyrics are saying "this is my body" I feel like these were quite effective and would appeal to my audience.
Overall I feel my media product turned out okay considering, that I left it to quite late on into the year to even start my filming and then to edit, as I managed to finish my editing in two days. I think my ancillary texts go well with my media product, through the images, colours and text fonts that I have used. If I had to start all over again I would definitely start my filming straight away and done my editing, as i have slightly rushed things. This meant I also didn't have enough time to make improvements to my work and get things such as audience feedback.
